Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, training classes, not-for-profit fund raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event like an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate calendar schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data entry, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create your event and start receiving bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize 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 in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been redeveloped 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 price. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity 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 improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to register on their own.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more time on delivering a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy optional add-ons when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain wholly online, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you collect from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective attendees so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display attendee details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spamming and bot software programs creating fake registrations by using reCAPTCHA tools that provide human validation.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or send in paper registration forms for manual submission later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Keep notes about users on their profile. Private notes enables you to keep a record of when event registrants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve assisted them.
- SEO Friendly Page URLs. Keyword rich Web links leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your events.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. The organization data include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, phone, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add photos and write your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- 1-Click Upgrading. Event Espresso offers simple one-click software upgrades to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and site visitors can help increase exposure for your event using social share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to help event attendees to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are fully compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for developers when potential application errors.
- 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 modular 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:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in confirmation emails and updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Add ons
In addition to a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. 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 enables your users to search for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This add-on lets you include your staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission 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 allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff 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 sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. 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 addon 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 web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time researching the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management process and enhance the experience of your participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as many of its users confirm:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
The plugin provides incredible support with access to support forums, in-depth 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list 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 the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to report errors and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress site and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
***
