Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a big event like a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You may be required to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule an event and begin receiving online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing applications.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 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 the benefits and features of using the plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your 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 and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options 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 increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to perform the enrollment process by themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more resources on creating a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party provider. 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 additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new registrations 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can be kept wholly online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data collected from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Tax Admin And Reporting. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to administer taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to configure the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Set up events fast by pre-configuring system-default ticket pricing.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or send in paper registration forms for manual processing later.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event has become sold out. Additionally, you can specify that wait-list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your website readers up-to-date about your events, drive quality traffic and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and create and edit your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not fully paid for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance they owe, and include links to the event details, a payment link and a link to download the invoice.
- Accurate Participant Manager. You have control of your customers’ information; who has enrolled, which event they have registered for and what amount they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to an Excel spreadsheet for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows web-based software developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for normal website visitors whenever site maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 goals, the software has been built using 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 includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a series of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add ons
As well as a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to further expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to show an event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your web site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that allow you to bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you promote 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 attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability 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 venues. People can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon gives event managers a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit the look and feel 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 design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Here are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have posted 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
“I just completed my first event using Event Espresso. I really believe without Event Espresso my event would not have been the success it was.” Cathy Earle, Women Only Weekend
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, workshop promoter, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its customers confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The plugin provides incredible support with access to support forums, 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 solution you can count on to run your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional 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.
Search the plugin’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to report errors and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress website and you currently run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
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