Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as seminars, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event like a regional festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings is a time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, available dates and seating, registration numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily set up multiple events and begin processing registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits 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 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 price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more of your resources on planning a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. This is made possible through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional add-ons when you need new functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can be kept entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information collected from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your site to prepare a great experience for your customers.
- Custom Notification Emails. Set up automated booking and payment notification emails to communicate with event customers.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running the events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and display contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spamming and robots creating bogus registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA tools to validate human activity.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track event participants.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 lets you understand who your clients are and how you’ve done business with them. Your Contact Profile page records the name, biography, contact information, event registration history, private comments, etc. about each client.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and previous participants to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for comments are set up in the WordPress commenting settings.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you build your event over time without publishing it to your site. You can work on your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event to publish at a future time and date.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Organization data include: business name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email, telephone number, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add photos and create your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post or page.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can interact 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+.
- Staff Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in any event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types such as free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for event participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on an event category page, make all events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are 100% compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for normal site visitors when website maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility 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 software has been built using a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to display an event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website can have access to these special events. Members can also input personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also look up event history and make payment for future events.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is great 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 lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. People 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories using a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that customers have written 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
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, workshop planner, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the forums for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as many of its satisfied clients attest:
“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 software provides great support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in various 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 versions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This lets you install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
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