Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex process. You may have to manage scheduling, dates, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily set up your event and begin processing online registrations literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing solutions.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels 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 facilitating attendees to perform the enrollment process by themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more of your energy on delivering a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional add ons only if you need additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online sign-ups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can be conducted wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data you obtain from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Notification Emails. Easily set up automated registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospects so they can purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration information for any additional registrants.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket pricing.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check in everyone who attends.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your events by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WordPress native commenting settings.
- Optimized For The Most Recent WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Upload Event Information. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that allows you to quickly import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or a group to enroll multiple participants simultaneously. Event managers can control how many attendees are able to enrol in a single booking session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not paid in full for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance they owe, and include links to the event, a payment link and a url to download the invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize these to help your attendees to find what they’re searching for. You can list all events in a category on a custom event category page, make all events searchable by category, and color-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 visitors.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 facilitates more complex extensions and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations 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 & 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event data when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 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 Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- 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 image instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your web site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing 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 the personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also look up past events and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add-on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability 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 give them different permissions with different capabilities, so others 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 parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives potential customers 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 cart. With the Multiple 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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This add on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Users – Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its 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
The plugin provides comprehensive support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid 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 a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This lets you install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $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 software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues, booking participants, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
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