Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, group classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event like a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings is a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to manage event schedules, date availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily create an event and begin processing online bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
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
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to enrol by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more of your energy on organizing a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process remains entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data gathered from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Configure automatic booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event clients.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to manage taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default pricing.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or send in paper-based forms for manual registration later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot register for your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Automatically update your users, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event over time without publishing it to your site. You can keep developing your event pages until you are ready to go live, or schedule your event to publish at a future time and date.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to display throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. The organization information include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip code, email, telephone, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Bulk Edit Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that allows you to easily import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and create your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- Automatic Plugin Updating. Event Espresso offers easy 1-click software installation updates to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not fully paid for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click. Your invoices will address registered participants who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance owing, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Event Reporting. Quick-view event reports provides you with information of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are 100% compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers who are diagnosing errors.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s objective 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 modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in confirmation emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add ons
In addition to a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Grid Template Add on: 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 organizes events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events related to that category and closes 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 even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website will have access to these special events. Members can also add personal data into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up past events and make payment for new events.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon 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 add on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential attendees 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 shopping 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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with an easy-to-use system that lets you modify 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 lets developers design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add on gives permission for other applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its users confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 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. When we last checked, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report bugs and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you intend to run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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