Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, group courses, charity fund raisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex process. You will probably need to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate recurring events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily set up multiple events and begin receiving online registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many 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 digital presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to enrol on their own.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you direct more attention on delivering a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more 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 provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need new functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event sign-ups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can be performed entirely online, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data you collect from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you gather unique information using a custom event registration form on your web pages to create a customized experience for your users.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Match your web site’s design for your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, and HTML and CSS.
- Tax Admin & Reporting. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly by pre-configuring default prices.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or sending in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot attend your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record comments about users on their profile and how you’ve assisted your contacts. Private notes enables you to keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve interacted with them.
- Keyword-Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly permalinks with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you get more potential customers to your website.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for most of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for all new events simply by checking a box.
- Register Multiple Event Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or a group to register multiple attendees at once. You control how many attendees are allowed to enrol in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, web developers, designers, online marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can network with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize these to help event participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can list all events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your events and how the information displays to your readers.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a very large range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to significantly enhance the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these add ons 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 the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: 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 registration.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that allow you to bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Editions: This add-on lets you include your staff in the event management process and give new users the ability 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 assign them different permissions with different privileges, allowing others 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 WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees 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 Multiple 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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on gives event managers 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 allows web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a specified autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are a few 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
”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, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event planner, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the user forum for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its end-users attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides exceptional support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress website and you currently run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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