Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as workshops, group courses, non-profit fundraisers, networking functions, 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?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event participants.
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 lower expenses, help you easily replicate similar events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily set up an event and start receiving online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into an automated and fully featured 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.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to complete the enrolment process on their own.
Allowing your attendees to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your time on creating a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third party service. This is made possible through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy addons when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite friends who may also be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process remains entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data you obtain from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great built-in to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Create a custom design for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s template options and components, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. 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 additional participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
- RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to customers, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of prospects with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build an event page over time without publishing it to your site. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later date and time.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used for your events, including currency, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Upload Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that allows you to upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about venues to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue record has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays details like venue capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, physical, maps, etc. You can also display venues throughout different locations on your WordPress theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- Registrant Records. Manage your attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not made payment for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount they owe, and include a link to the event details, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events like free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to help your participants to find what they’re looking for. You can display all events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra 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-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 makes possible more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in confirmation emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand 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 upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can add as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web site is featured on 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 add-on allows you to take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your 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 data into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This addon lets you include other staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas 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.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the 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 Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with 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 allows web developers to design custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on allows other software applications, web tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, conference planner, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its plugin clients confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides exceptional support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, 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 run and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option allows you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This lets you install Event Espresso on five sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you currently run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
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