Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event like a concert, 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 time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate event schedules, event dates, registration numbers, data processing and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily schedule your event and start processing registrations in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between 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 the platform is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to register themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more attention on organizing a better 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 users to experience.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional add ons only if you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process remains entirely online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you collect from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and components, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the display settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spammers and robots creating false registrations with reCAPTCHA settings that provide human validation.
- Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a decision now, or make your offers more attractive for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical if you want to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how they’ve done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has become completely sold out. Additionally, you can specify that wait-list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and previous participants to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WP default commenting admin area.
- Keyword Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword rich Web links leverage your WP Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly urls that use relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Organization data include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone, tax number, your logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Bulk Edit Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that enables you to quickly import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, ticketing details, pricing, registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Event Venue Management. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 allows details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information such as venue capacity, venue website, phone number, physical and virtual location, maps, etc. You can also display venues on various locations in your theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a given venue.
- Attendee Records. Manage each registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize these to help event attendees to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web 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 model 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 over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add on 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 then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your event lists in a variety of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add-on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the door. 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 allows developers to build custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, event planner, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its plugin end-users confirm:
“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 comprehensive support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of 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 amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin 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.
Search 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 specific situation, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration System For WordPress
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