Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a regional festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings is a complex process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data entry, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event registrants.
There are many advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create multiple events and start accepting bookings in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about 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 completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to register themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your resources on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add ons only when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can be transacted wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you obtain from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure as many different types of tickets as you need and set prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Customized Notification Emails. Set up automatic registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with event participants.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides several ways to handle taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any additional attendees.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spammers and robots creating bogus registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA settings that provide human authentication.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Leverage promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage people to register immediately, or make your offerings more appealing for others. Also useful for helping to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or sending in paper-based registration forms for manual submission later.
- No Ticket Events. You can set up events without requiring registrants to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not only those that accept tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of interaction to your event pages by allowing potential prospects to ask questions about your event and previous attendees to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public commenting are set up using the WP commenting section.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create visually enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to be deployed throughout the plugin and your WordPress themes. The organization fields include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, telephone number, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Bulk Edit Event Data. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you easily import a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and format your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any typical WordPress post or page.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can tell others about your event using social media share buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize your templates to display events in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Control Box Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: 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 objectives, the company operates on a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add ons
As well as an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly expand the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- 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 Addon: If your website uses 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 lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will 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 look up previous events and make payment for new events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is 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 add-on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the capacity 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 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with an easy-to-use system that lets you change 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 enables developers to build their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp add-on allows you to automatically register participants to a particular autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”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
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event planner, or event management professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management process or improve the experience of your registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as so many of its satisfied plugin clients attest:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
The plugin provides robust support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority support and even a monthly VIP member pass giving 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 WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you set up 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 Edition – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
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 using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WP website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that involves managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration Software For WordPress
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