Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as workshops, training courses, charity fund raisers, marketing events, or even a big event like a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily set up your event and start processing registrations in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing software.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to enrol on their own.
Letting your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more time on creating a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. This is made possible by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons only when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online bookings any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is conducted wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides several options to manage taxes for an event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the chance of spammers and bots making false registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA option that authenticate human activity.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual registration later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events pages by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past participants to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are set up in the WP commenting section.
- Keyword-Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links take advantage of your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links that use relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you get more traffic to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. The organization data include: business name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, company logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for all new events simply by checking a box.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and write and edit your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any standard WordPress post or page.
- One-Click Software Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy one-click software updating to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your website visitors can tell others about your event using social share buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize the templates to display events in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your events and how your information displays to your prospective event attendees.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s aim is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their objectives, the software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a common set of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Add on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of your 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 in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your event lists in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This add on lets you involve other users in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas 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 Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on lets other software applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, seminar planner, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time researching the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its end-users attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides robust support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one support and even a monthly VIP member pass that gives you access to community of developers, designers, event managers, publishers and webmasters that use Event Espresso tools, plus faster support response times.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option allows you to run Event Espresso on five domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to report bugs and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress web site and you currently run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration System
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