Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, charity fundraisers, marketing events, or even a big event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage event schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data entry, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule an event and begin processing online bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand 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 is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 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 read more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a fully-featured 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.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to register themselves.
Letting your enrollees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more of your time on creating a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy addons when you need added features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process can remain entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the information you acquire from event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many different types of tickets as you need and specify prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Registrants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money before running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse registrant information throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the risk of spammers and bot software programs creating false registrations on your web site by using reCAPTCHA tools that provide human validation.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you know who your clients are and how you’ve done past business with them. The Contact Profile page stores the name, biography, contact information, event registration history, private comments, and more about each registrant.
- No Ticket Events. You can set up events without the requirement for participants to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not just when tickets are needed.
- Private Contact Comments. Keep observations about users on their profile. Private notes lets you keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with them.
- Works With The Most Recent WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build aesthetically enhanced event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used when promoting your events, including currency name, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Bulk Upload Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that lets you easily upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add photos and create your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, developers, web designers, digital marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can interact with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff 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 your event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types like free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for event attendees to find what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular website traffic whenever you need to carry out maintenance on your website. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s aim 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow plugin users to significantly expand the functionality 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 available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events management add on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many events in the future as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of these 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 image instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on can display your events in a variety of exciting and interesting 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 from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multiple 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 Multi-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 Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 lets developers build custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register attendees to a selected mailing list or group within MailChimp.
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 addons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”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
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show promoter, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its plugin 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
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This license option lets you install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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