Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, marketing events, or even a large-scale event such as an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complex and time-consuming process. You may be required to co-ordinate event schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are many advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily schedule multiple events and begin processing online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, 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 redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
For more details go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the 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 web site into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more resources on planning a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons only when you need new features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains entirely in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information collected from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. 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 one single event.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking fees before running events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured default ticket prices.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Offer promotional and discount codes to encourage people to make a purchasing decision without hesitation, or simply make your offerings more appealing for others. Also useful for helping to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or sending in paper-based registration forms for manual inputting later.
- No Ticket Events. You can list events without the requirement for registrants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not just those that accept tickets.
- Private Contact Comments. Record observations about contacts on their profile. Private notes lets you keep a record of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have assisted them.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to develop an event at your own leisure without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event until you are ready to publish it to your website, or schedule to publish your event at a future date and time.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is currently available in more than 15 languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for many of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform visitors of your event’s location. The venue record displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue details such as venue capacity, venue web address, phone number, physical and virtual location, map, etc. You can also display venues in different areas in your WP theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- 1-Click Plugin Installation Updating. Event Espresso offers simple 1-click plugin installation updates to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation up-to-date with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential registrants who have not made payment for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance owing, and include a link to the event details, a payment url and a link where they can download a PDF 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 event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers when potential software problems.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: 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 mission, the software has been built using a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event information when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
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 an event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management add-on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on allows you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add on lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity 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 allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing others to help you manage your events or 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 parts 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 addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. Registrants 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 gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables developers to design custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add on, 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 complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Users – Feedback
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that users 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
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time visiting the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its end-users confirm:
”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 robust support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of WP website owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
***
