Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund raisers, social events, or even a big event such as a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings can be a complex process. You will most likely have to manage calendar schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily set up an event and start receiving online registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
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 current online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to enrol on their own.
Letting your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more attention on delivering a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional add-ons when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process is transacted wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and specify unique pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Set up automatic booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event registrants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect money before running your events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse registrant data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spamming and bots making fake registrations on your website by using reCAPTCHA features to provide human validation.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of participants and check in everyone who has attended.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your site visitors up-to-date about your events, drive quality traffic and widen your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to develop your event page over time without publishing it to your website. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to take things live, or schedule your event page to publish at a later time and date.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout Event Espresso and your WP themes. Organization information include: business name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email, telephone, tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Bulk Edit Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that enables you to quickly import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to register multiple attendees at once. Event managers specify how many attendees are able to register in a single registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in any event description.
- Attendee Reports. Event reports provides you with information of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to your prospective event participants.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 objectives, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in confirmation emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Addons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to further expand the capabilities of the event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to search for events that take place within 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 addon comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your events in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your 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 cart. With the Multi-Event Registration addon, 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 Calendar Add-on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories using an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”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 a motivational speaker, trainer, conference planner, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as many of its users confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides robust support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This edition enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report problems and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and/or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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