Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group classes, non-profit fund raisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event such as a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You may have to manage calendar schedules, dates, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin enables you to easily set up an event and begin accepting online registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth and 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.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling event participants to register by themselves.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more of your energy on planning a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. The cost is kept low through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy addons when you need new features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can be performed entirely online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information acquired from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users through standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure as many types of tickets as you want and set different prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Custom Notification Emails. Easily configure automated registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event clients.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect money before running events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and reuse events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of the default ticket.
- Discount Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to encourage people to register without delays, or make your events more attractive for price-sensitive customers. This is also practical for helping to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and check in everyone who attends.
- No-Ticket Events. Create events without making it necessary for registrants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not just when tickets are for sale.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your website readers updated about your events, bring in more visitors and widen your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you develop your event page over multiple sessions without displaying it live on your website. You can continue working on your events until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event at a future time and date.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, printable ticketing and more.
- Bulk Edit Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you quickly upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Attendee. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or people to order multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. You can control how many people are allowed to enroll in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, designers, web marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can interact with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Team Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your attendees’ date; who has enrolled, for what event and what amount they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to Excel for additional reports, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows web-based software developers to have more control and options over the content of your event page and how your information displays to your visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular site visitors whenever website maintenance is required. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s goal 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 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 over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Add ons
As well as a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to significantly expand the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can schedule as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template addon lets you display your events in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. People can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a chosen mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, show planner, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as so many of its satisfied end-users attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The Event Espresso plugin provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option lets you configure Event Espresso on five sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 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 plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
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