Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, non-profit fund raisers, marketing events, or even a large-scale event such as a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin enables you to easily set up your event and begin receiving online bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using 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:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your participants to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more time on delivering a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy addons only when you need added features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event sign-ups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process is conducted wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data acquired from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through 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 unique built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can gather unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to create a tailored experience for your clients.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration fees prior to running the events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spammers and bots creating fake registrations on your site by using reCAPTCHA tools that confirm human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual submission later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. You can also specify that wait-list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post comments that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WordPress commenting section.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WP. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build visually attractive event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used when promoting your events, including currency, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Bulk Upload Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that lets you import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform attendees of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue information like venue capacity, venue website, telephone number, venue location details, directions map, etc. You can also list all of your event venues on various parts in your theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you engage with a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, online marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not fully paid for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event information, a payment link and a url to download the invoice.
- Transaction Reports. Event reporting provides you with information of all the registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s aim 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 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 includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and updates.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all 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 lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays event categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name displays the events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your 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 addon allows you to take full 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 your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view previous events and pay for events.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multi-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 Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you modify 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 their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon gives permission for other software applications, web sites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that users have written 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
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, show promoter, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the forums for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow or improve the experience of your participants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its plugin clients attest:
”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
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 software you can count on to run and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option enables you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain 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 setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress users.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and booking seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software
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