Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as seminars, group classes, charity fund-raisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably need to manage calendar schedules, dates, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to participants.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily schedule multiple events and begin accepting registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling event attendees to perform the sign-up process on their own.
Letting your customers to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your time on organizing a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional addons only when you need additional features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online signups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can be conducted wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data acquired from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can gather specific information using a custom event registration form on your web pages to prepare a customized experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect registration payments before running your events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any added registrants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs creating bogus registrations with reCAPTCHA tools to authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or send in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot register for your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to your users, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to build an event over time without publishing it to your website. You can keep working on your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency name, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue details such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical, maps, etc. You can also display all of your event venues on specific sections of your theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a given venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff member 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.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple event types such as free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize these to help event participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are completely compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from the page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: 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 mission, the software has been built using a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a group of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to significantly enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these addons 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 the event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- 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 your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website 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 their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts 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.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This add on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add on lets you auto-register participants to a selected mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds 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:
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that satisfied customers 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
”I have to say that it has been the right choice for me…I’ve been extremely pleased with the way my site is working.” Robin, RobinTime
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, concert promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as many of its satisfied plugin end-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
The software provides robust support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to manage your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of WP site owners.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, registering attendees, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
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