Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate functions, or even a large-scale event like a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex and time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage calendar schedules, event dates, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily schedule multiple events and begin accepting registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the 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 existing online presence into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to enroll by themselves.
Letting your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more of your attention on organizing a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add ons when you need additional features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online sign-ups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain entirely online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you obtain from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using custom event registration forms on your site to create a tailored experience for your event participants.
- Customized Notification Emails. Easily set up customized automatic booking and payment notification email messages to communicate with event participants.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to handle taxes for an event and report tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Intelligent 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 registrant’s information for any added registrants.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the likelihood of spamming and robots creating bogus registrations on your website by using reCAPTCHA option that provide human validation.
- Discount Codes. You can leverage promotion and discount codes to incentivize visitors to take action without hesitation, or simply make your events more affordable for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual registration later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Keep observations about a contact on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve helped your customers.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, implementing marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Management. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 lets details about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform attendees of the location of your event. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse venue details such as venue seating capacity, venue website, venue phone number, venue location details, Google map, etc. You can also list venue profiles on different areas on your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a given venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can interact with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can tell others about your event using social media share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple event types such as free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your participants to find what they’re looking for. You can display 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 these easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that interest 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 application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers who are potential errors.
- 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a common set of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name displays the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your 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 site users will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal information 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 previous events and pay for events.
- 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 allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to register for 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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on gives you an easy-to-use system that lets you change 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 web developers build custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are just some of the many testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, festival promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the forums for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its plugin users confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition enables you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Look up the software’s 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 report issues and share 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 preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or reserving tickets, 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
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