Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fundraisers, social conferences, or even a big event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You may need to manage calendar schedules, date availability, attendee numbers, data processing, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce previous events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create an event and start accepting bookings in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing software.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few 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 digital presence into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even 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 virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to enroll on their own.
Allowing your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more resources on delivering a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional add-ons when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new sign-ups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process is conducted entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data you obtain from event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to users through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure multiple ticket types and set separate pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Match your site’s look and feel for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, plus HTML or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running your events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spamming and robots creating false registrations with reCAPTCHA settings that provide human authentication.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 provides you with the tools to know who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. Additionally, you can specify that waiting list members pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous customers to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are specified in the WordPress commenting settings.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you build your event over multiple sessions without publishing it to your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to publish it to your website, or schedule to publish your event at a future date and time.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is being translated into over 15 languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data collected from event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, planning marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Multiple Event Participant. EE 4 allows a single person or an organization to purchase multiple tickets and different ticket types at the same time. Event managers can control how many people can register in a single session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Plugin Upgrading. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click plugin upgrading to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation working with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients who have not fully paid for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount owing, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Event Reporting. Event reports gives you data of the registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for normal website traffic whenever you need to perform maintenance on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 mission, the software has been built using a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event information when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Addons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display your scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager add-on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your website is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add on lets you display your events in a variety of visually exciting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you include others in the event management process and give new users the ability 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 assign them different permissions with different capabilities, 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 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 add-on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multiple Event Registration addon, 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 View Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the testimonials that users have posted 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
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”Thank you, we just did 2 sell out seminars of 50 attendees in 48 hours using Event Espresso and it was awesome. My wife was able to pick up on the processing backend with ease. You have done a great job on getting this system together – very simple, clear and well laid out With powerful functionality. I am so glad I dumped the old booking application we had and gave Event Espresso a go. Just wanted to say thanks, and thanks for the very patient, friendly and speedy assistance in helping me to get it all set up at the start. Many thanks to you and your team. A grateful customer.” Nicholas de Castella, Emotional Intelligence Trainings
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, event planner, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as 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 Event Espresso software provides comprehensive support including access to a support forum, 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
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 should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to run 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 set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the pricing 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 or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report errors and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, or selling tickets, 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 Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin
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