Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event such as a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex and time-consuming process. You have to co-ordinate calendar schedules, dates, attendee numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce previous events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule your event and begin processing online registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin 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 developers aim to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
More info:
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 existing digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to perform the enrollment process on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more of your energy on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible through a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add-ons only if you need new features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process can be conducted wholly online, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and reuse registrant details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spamming and robots making false registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA tools that confirm human activity.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or send in paper-based forms for manual processing later.
- Ticketless Events. You can promote events without the requirement for registrants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all kinds of events, not just when tickets are needed.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Record observations about event participants on their profile and how you’ve assisted your contacts. Private commenting lets you keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve assisted them.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events allow you to build your event at your own leisure without displaying it live on your site. You can continue working on your event until you are ready to publish it on your website, or schedule to publish your event at a later time and date.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Import Event Data. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that allows you to quickly upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. EE 4 allows one person or people to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types at the same time. You can control how many attendees can enrol in one registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. You can manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Staff Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in your event description.
- Accurate Participant Manager. You have control of your attendees’ information; who has registered, for what event and what amount they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of event attendees to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your customers individually or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 facilitates more complex extensions and customizations to the application.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s goal 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 in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in emails and email updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to significantly expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to show an event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: 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 provides PHP files that allow you to override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas 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 add on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants 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 Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with 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 build custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add on lets you auto-register participants to a specified mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”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 an education services provider, presenter, concert promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the user forum for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its plugin clients 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 software provides exceptional support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 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 is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of event promoters.
If you own a WordPress web site and you currently run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and/or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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