Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community classes, charity fund-raisers, corporate functions, 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 register to attend?
Managing event bookings is a time-consuming process. You may need to manage scheduling, event dates, participant numbers, data administration, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give you more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin allows you to easily schedule an event and begin accepting online bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
Learn more 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 website:
Automated 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 website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event participants to register on their own.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more of your energy on organizing a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive 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 Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase optional add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may be interested.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can be completed entirely online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data gathered from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect specific information using custom event registration forms on your website to plan a tailored experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Match your site’s look and feel for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and parts, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to registrants so they can purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the chance of spammers and bots making bogus registrations with reCAPTCHA option to confirm human activity.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your clients are and how you’ve done business with them. The Contact Profile section records the name, biography, contact information, event registration history, private comments, etc. about each registrant.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of social sharing to your event by encouraging potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are set using the WordPress native commenting system.
- Keyword-Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly permalinks with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you bring more potential customers to your website.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing, and also allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing, wait lists, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for many of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for all new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert images and format your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WP post or page.
- Registrant Profiles. Manage your registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and website visitors can spread the word about your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for event registrants to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 enables more complex extensions and customizations to the application.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for normal site traffic when website maintenance is needed. You can continue to work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web 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 goals, the software has been built using 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:
- Email shortcodes that includes customer data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to every ticket).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 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 the event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name displays all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add-on can display your events in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect 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 addon lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your 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 Multiple 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.
- EE4 Events Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers 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 design custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register participants to a chosen mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, workshop planner, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as so many of its users confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The Event Espresso plugin provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, premium 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to run your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons 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 special offers. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For all 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 management plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues, enrolling attendees, and reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Plugin
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