Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as seminars, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate events, or even a big event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a complex and time-consuming process. You may be required to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data processing and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate previous events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software allows you to easily set up multiple events and begin accepting online bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the software is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable 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 phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to register themselves.
Letting your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more of your resources on delivering a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add ons when you need new features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online bookings 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process is transacted entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information gathered from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up multiple ticket types and specify prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Set up automatic booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event attendees.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospective attendees and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse contact data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket price for your default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to know who your clients are and how you’ve done business with your clients. Your Contact Profile section records the name, biography, contact information, event registration information, private comments, etc. about each registrant.
- Ticketless Events. Create events without the requirement for attendees to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not only those that accept tickets.
- RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to users, bring in more visitors and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Most Recent Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to be used throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Your organization fields include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email, phone, tax number, company logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Venue Manager. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 allows details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of the location of your event. The venue record has many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you republish venue details like venue seating capacity, venue website, phone number, venue address, maps, etc. You can also list venues throughout specific locations on your WordPress theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a given venue.
- Registrant Profiles. Manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff 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.
- 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 also customize your templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to your visitors.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers when diagnosing errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, Event Espresso’s aim 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 software has been built using a modular and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to further enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these addons 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, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can add as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- 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 share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website can have access to your special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Users can also view previous events and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you involve other users in the event management process and give new users the capacity 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, so your staff can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing addon adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. 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. Customers 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add-on: The MailChimp add-on allows you to automatically register participants to a chosen autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many great 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
”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
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, concert planner, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management process and enhance the experience of your attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as many of its end-users attest:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
The software provides exceptional support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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 plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
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 user and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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