Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, corporate 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 book to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data processing, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily set up an event and start accepting bookings literally in a few 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 full control over your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
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 attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are enabling event attendees to register themselves.
Letting your attendees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more time on organizing a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add-ons when you need additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event bookings 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process is conducted entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information collected from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and parts, and HTML and CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration fees prior to running your events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse registrant information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Discount Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to incentivize visitors to register now, or simply make your offers more affordable for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or sending in paper-based forms for manual processing later.
- No-Ticket Events. Set up events without the requirement for participants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all types of events, not just when tickets are for sale.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Automatically update users, drive quality traffic and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Latest WordPress Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create visually enhanced event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout the software and your WP themes. Organization information include: business name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone number, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your data gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, implementing new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add photos and create your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to help your participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
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 100% compatible with WordPress.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- 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 objectives, the company operates on 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:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to further enhance the functionality of the event management system.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: 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, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can add as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to display an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: This addon adds 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.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users can have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal data into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view event history and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This addon lets you involve others in your organization to help manage your events 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 other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts 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 Addon: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code 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 barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add on enables other applications, online tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Customers – Feedback
Here are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, seminar planner, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its end-users attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
Event Espresso provides robust support including access to a support forum, in-depth 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress 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.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you may want to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
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 documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of event promoters.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Registration Plugin
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