Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event such as an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a complex process. You have to manage event schedules, availability, registration numbers, data collection, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin enables you to easily create multiple events and begin accepting online registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event participants to enroll by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your time on organizing a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add ons only if you need new functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event sign-ups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain wholly online, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data gathered from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running the events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display attendee data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and bot software programs creating fake registrations on your web site by using reCAPTCHA features that provide human validation.
- Discount Codes. You can leverage promotion and discount codes to incentivize visitors to make a purchasing decision now, or simply make your offers more attractive for others. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to timelines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and check in those who attend.
- Ticketless Events. Promote events without the requirement for attendees to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not only those that need tickets.
- Private Contact Commenting. Keep notes about users on their profile and how you’ve interacted with your customers. Private commenting allows you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve assisted them.
- Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword rich URLs take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks that use relevant keywords add to the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you get more traffic to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to be used throughout the plugin and your WP themes. Organization data include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone number, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the data gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, planning new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager feature in EE 4 lets information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform potential attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue information such as venue capacity, venue website, venue phone number, physical, Google map, etc. You can also list all of your event venues in specific areas on your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential registrants who have not fully paid for their admission with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click. Your invoices will reference registered customers who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount owing, and include links to the event information, a payment link and a link to download the invoice.
- Transaction Reports. Quick-view event reporting gives you information of all the registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your event pages and how the information displays to prospective customers.
- Control Box Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: Event Espresso states on their website that their mission is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their goals, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to further expand the functionality of the event management system.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many events in advance as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to browse for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users can have access to these special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include other users in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives potential customers the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping cart. With the Multi-Event Registration add on, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you change the look and feel of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also lets developers design their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register participants to a specified mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are just some of the testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time visiting the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its plugin clients attest:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
The Event Espresso plugin provides amazing support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority support and even a monthly VIP member pass giving you access to community of developers, designers, event managers, publishers and webmasters that use Event Espresso tools, plus faster support response times.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report bugs and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run an event that requires managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Plugin
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