Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, community courses, non-profit fundraisers, marketing events, or even a big event such as an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce previous events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily set up your event and begin processing online registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to enroll on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more time on creating a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional add-ons only when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can be conducted entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information collected from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users via standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the look and control settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured system-default ticket prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track event participants.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual processing later.
- No-Ticket Events. You can create events without requiring participants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any type of event, not only those that require tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous customers to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WordPress commenting settings.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive 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 signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Import Event Data. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that lets you import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Attendee Registration. EE 4 allows one person or people to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types at once. Event managers can control how many people are allowed to enroll in one session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Attendee Profiles. You can manage each attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and site visitors can tell others about your event using social media share buttons.
- Event Reports. Event reporting gives you data of all of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you’ve collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to your readers.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in notification emails and updates.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to further enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display your upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can schedule as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that allow you to bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you include your staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. People can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with an easy-to-use system that allows you to edit 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 enables web developers to design custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register participants to a chosen mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, concert planner, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time going through the user forum for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow or improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as many of its clients attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides amazing support that includes access to support forums, 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run and manage your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option lets you install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Look up the software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues, 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 – Event Management And Registration System For WordPress
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