Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, networking conferences, or even a big event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data administration, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily create an event and start accepting bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more of your energy on organizing a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept low through a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only if you need new features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online sign-ups outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process is kept entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you collect from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many types of tickets as you need and specify separate prices, maximum number of tickets, and more.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, and HTML and CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse venue details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured default pricing.
- Discount Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a purchasing decision without delaying, or simply make your offerings more affordable for others. This is also practical for helping to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and confirm those who attend.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can register for your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of social sharing to your events pages by allowing potential prospects to ask questions about your event and past customers to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for comments are set in the WordPress commenting system.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you build your event over multiple sessions without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event at a future time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add graphic images and format your content without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any standard WordPress post.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your information 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 an event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize the page templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers 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 & Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, 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 mission, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a very large array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 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, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with many datetimes 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 display the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your event lists in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. 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.
- Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Registrants 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 Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon provides you with an 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 included templates as a base template.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on lets other applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are just some of the testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the support forum for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other 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 end-user support, as many of its satisfied plugin 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 including 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run events that require managing dates and venues, registering attendees, and/or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
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