Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community courses, non-profit fundraisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event like a community fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage event schedules, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give you more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily schedule an event and start accepting online registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to complete the registration process by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more energy on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy optional add ons only if you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may be interested.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Information. You control all the information you acquire from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you gather unique data using a custom event registration form on your site to plan a unique experience for your event participants.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Set up automatic booking and payment notification emails to communicate with your clients.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants so they can choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any added attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket price of the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of registrants and check in those who attend.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your blog readers updated about your events, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Upload Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and write your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post.
- Registrant Profiles. Manage each customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential participants who have not paid yet for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include links to the event information, a payment url and a url where they can download the invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize the templates to display events in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 permits more complex enhancements and customizations to the application.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers when troubleshooting.
- 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including participant data in confirmation emails and updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- 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 also be customized to display the event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web 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 add-on allows you to take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users can have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal details 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 previous events and pay for events.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is 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 right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon 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 add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events in an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register attendees to a selected autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin 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
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, conference promoter, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the support forum for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its clients attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The Event Espresso software provides comprehensive support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price 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 its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to notify developers about errors and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of event promoters.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you intend to run events that require managing dates and venues, registering attendees, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticket Registration Plugin
***
