Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as seminars, community classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event like a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex process. You will most likely need to manage scheduling, available dates and seating, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily create multiple events and start accepting online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
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Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels 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 improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enroll by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more time on delivering a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add-ons when you need additional functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process is kept wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data you collect from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to users through standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of built-in to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Configure automatic registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event registrants.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to manage taxes for your event and report tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the look and control settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly with pre-configured default prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how you’ve done past business with them. Your Contact Profile page stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact details, event registration data, private comments, etc. about each client.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- Private Contact Notes. Keep comments about a contact on their profile and how you have interacted with them. Private commenting helps you keep a record of when event attendees contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with them.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to develop an event page at your own pace without publishing it to your site. You can continue developing your events until you are ready to publish it to your site, or schedule to publish your event page at a future date and time.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is currently available in over 15 languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can output all the data collected from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, planning new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and create your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you interact with a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, marketers and businesses who also use the software. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can help spread the word about your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You control your attendees’ information; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they have 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 a CSV file for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your attendees individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 facilitates more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their 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 objectives, the company operates on 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 includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that allow you to override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add-on lets you involve staff in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission 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 privileges, 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 sections of your WP 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.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Attendees 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you 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 lets developers design custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Feedback
Below are some of the testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
“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
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, concert promoter, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time researching the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as so many of its satisfied plugin customers attest:
”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 a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to run your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration System For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s 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 report issues and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress web site and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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