Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as seminars, group courses, non-profit fund raisers, networking conferences, 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 registrations is a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage scheduling, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate repeat events, give you more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin lets you easily set up an event and begin processing registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between 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 expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are enabling event participants to enroll themselves.
Allowing your clients to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more resources on delivering a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a 3rd party provider. This is made possible by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons only if you need new features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new bookings any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is performed wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data you collect from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to use in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you gather unique data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to plan a unique experience for your clients.
- Custom Notification Emails. Easily set up customized automatic booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with your registrants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect booking payments before running your events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. 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 attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for the default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or send in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. You can also make it a requirement waiting list attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous customers to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are set using the WordPress commenting system.
- SEO Friendly URLs. Keyword-rich Web links leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links that include topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in over 15 languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for all new events simply by checking a box.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert images and write and edit your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WP post or page.
- Automatic Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy one-click updating to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and site visitors can help publicize your event using social share buttons.
- Event Reports. Event reporting provides you with information of the registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money has been collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for general users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 makes possible more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for web developers who are potential errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web 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 mission, 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 comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your 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 addon lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also view event history and make payment for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives potential customers the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping 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 Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with an easy-to-use system that allows you to edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows developers to build custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- 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 registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”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 motivational speaker, presenter, show planner, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time going through the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as many of its customers attest:
”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 robust support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to manage your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. 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 sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report errors and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you intend to run any event that involves scheduling dates and venues, registering attendees, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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