Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate events, 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 or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data administration, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create your event and begin receiving registrations literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits 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 existing website into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated 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 solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to register on their own.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your energy on planning a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need additional functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event bookings 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can be performed wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you collect from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Custom Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can gather specific information using a custom event registration form on your site to plan a customized experience for your attendees.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Match your web site’s look and feel for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, plus HTML and CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect registration fees prior to running the events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the chance of spamming and bot software programs creating false registrations on your site with reCAPTCHA settings that provide human authentication.
- Discount Codes. Provide promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to register without hesitation, or make your offerings more appealing for others. This is also practical for helping to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and previous participants to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WP native commenting system.
- Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword-rich URLs take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you bring more visitors to your site.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency name, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, etc.
- Import Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that enables you to upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and write and edit your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any standard WordPress post or page.
- Automatic Upgrading. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click software upgrades to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can help promote your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different types of events like free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your registrants to find what they’re looking for. You can display all events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement on their web site, 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 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 over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to further expand the functionality of the event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with many datetimes 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 show the event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on allows you to bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: 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 addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential customers 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 shopping cart. With the Multi-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 Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Customers – Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”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
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, festival planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the support forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow or improve the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent user support, as so many of its satisfied users confirm:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
The plugin provides robust support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 Cost
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license lets you run Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration System For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin
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