Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, community courses, non-profit fundraisers, networking 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 registrations is a time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, registration numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can install an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily create multiple events and start accepting online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the software is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event participants to complete the registration process on their own.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more of your resources on planning a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third party provider. This is made possible through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional add ons when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be performed entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information collected from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. Create a unique look and feel for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, and HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse contact data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of your system-default ticket.
- Discount Codes. You can leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to take action without delaying, or simply make your events more affordable for price-sensitive prospects. Also useful if you want to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of participants and confirm everyone who has attended.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t register for your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record notes about event attendees on their profile and how you have interacted with your contacts. Private commenting helps you keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to develop an event page over multiple work sessions without displaying it live on your website. You can keep editing your event pages until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event page at a later date and time.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event page designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that enables you to import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Participant. EE 4 allows one person or people to enroll multiple participants at once. Event managers control how many attendees can enrol in a single registration session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Plugin Updating. Event Espresso offers easy one-click updates to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your data 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 your event description.
- Transaction Reports. Quick-view event reporting provides you with information of all registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you’ve collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your event page and how your information displays to your readers.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular site traffic when site maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 objectives, the company operates on a modular 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+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in notification emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to further enhance the capabilities of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add-on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your events in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is 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 directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling 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.
- Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you modify the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows web developers to design custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Hello. I wanted to say that I’ve purchased Event Espresso twice now for two different organizations and have had great success with the purchases. Outside of photography, I also build small websites with WordPress as the CMS. I built two websites for two different martial arts organizations who host yearly seminars and tournaments. The plug in has provided a way for attendees to sign up online from both Canada and the United States with ease, and also allowed the organizations to easily manage payments, attendee lists, and many other aspects of the events. Thanks to Seth for creating such a great plug in, and for your constant support!” James Zedd, James Zedd Photography
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, workshop promoter, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as many of its satisfied end-users attest:
”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 comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you may want to consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management System
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