Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund-raisers, social functions, or even a big event such as a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a time-consuming process. You may be required to manage event schedules, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily set up multiple events and start processing registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing applications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event participants to perform the registration on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more of your resources on organizing a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only if you need new features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information gathered from event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many kinds of tickets as you need and specify separate prices, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to manage taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the chance of spammers and robots making fake registrations on your site by using reCAPTCHA settings that provide human validation.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event participants and confirm everyone who has attended.
- No Ticket Events. Set up events without making it necessary for participants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any type of event, not only when tickets are needed.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record observations about users on their profile. Private commenting helps you keep a record of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve assisted them.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to develop an event over time without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your event until you are ready to publish it to your website, or schedule your event page to publish at a future time and date.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Bulk Edit Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that enables you to quickly import a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or an organization to purchase multiple tickets and different types of tickets at once. Event managers specify how many people are able to enrol in a single session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Attendee Records. Manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized and easily within reach.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event registrants who have not fully paid for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will reference registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount they owe, and include links to the event, 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 types. You can also customize your templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are fully compatible with WordPress.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular and highly efficient 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:
- Duplicating events – limits the need to re-enter event data when creating new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows event categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- 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 even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you involve other users in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections 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 And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code 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 mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add on lets other applications, websites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, concert promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the support forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user support, as many of its plugin customers 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
Event Espresso provides great support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
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.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about issues and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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