Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, community classes, charity fund-raisers, 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?
Managing event bookings can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily create multiple events and begin receiving online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price 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 increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your clients to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more of your resources on organizing a more enjoyable 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 booking process that you want your users 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 service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add ons when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online bookings outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can be transacted wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information obtained from event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect specific information using a custom event registration form on your web pages to plan a customized experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to administer taxes for an event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse events information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your clients are and how they’ve done business with you.
- No-Ticket Events. Set up events without the requirement for participants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not only when tickets are required.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for commenting are specified in the WordPress built-in commenting system.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build your event page at your own pace without displaying it live on your site. You can keep working on your event until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event at a later time and date.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing, list waiting, limits on attendees, printable ticketing and more.
- Exportable Data. You can export all of your data gathered from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, implementing marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Event Venue Management. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 allows information about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information like venue capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also display all of your venues on various parts on your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a specific venue.
- Automatic Plugin Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy 1-click upgrading to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation up-to-date with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not paid yet for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will reference registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount they owe, and include links to the event details, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize your page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are fully compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data which can be useful for developers who are diagnosing problems.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s objective 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 company operates on a modular and highly efficient model 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 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to every ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many events in the future as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add on provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: 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 experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices 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 adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Registrants 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account 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 registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”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
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, seminar promoter, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the support forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as so many of its plugin customers confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides robust support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, premium 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This license option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $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 retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
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 plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For all 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 plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
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