Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as seminars, community courses, charity fund-raisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale 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?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex process. You will most likely have to manage event schedules, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate previous events, give you more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin allows you to easily create your event and start processing registrations literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. 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 EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of 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 web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating 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 improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to complete the sign-up process themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more attention on creating a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons only when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event sign-ups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add-ons (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 Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can remain entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information gathered from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many kinds of tickets as you need and specify prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Create a custom look for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and parts, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospects and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any added attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket price for your default ticket.
- Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a decision immediately, or simply make your events more appealing for others. Also useful for helping to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of participants and check-in everyone who has attended.
- No Ticket Events. You can create events without making it necessary for attendees to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for all types of events, not just when tickets are needed.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Keep notes about users on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve assisted them.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to develop your event over multiple sessions without publishing it to your website. You can continue building your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event pages to publish at a future date and time.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, limits on attendees, print-ready tickets and more.
- Import Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that allows you to easily upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Attendee. EE 4 allows an individual or an organization to purchase multiple tickets and different types of tickets simultaneously. Event managers specify how many attendees are able to enrol in a single registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Upgrading. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click updating to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential customers who have not paid yet for their registration 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 in full by name, display the amount they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a link to download a PDF invoice.
- Event Reporting. Quick-view event reports provides you with information of all registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how the information displays to site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors when you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- 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 mission, 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 comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the capabilities of your event management system.
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 available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add-on lets you display your events in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. Customers 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add-on: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on lets other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Feedback
Here are a few of the many testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Congratulations on an absolutely fantastic plugin. I’m really impressed with its functionality and add on features and will definitely upgrade my client’s production site to the premium version (when ready for launch) to incorporate all the features. As I have told another client “this plugin is the cat’s meow”.” Pete Mansel
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event promoter, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time going through the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its plugin customers confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
The Event Espresso plugin provides incredible support with access to support forums, in-depth 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This option lets you configure Event Espresso on five domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. 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 setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to report errors and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software
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