Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as seminars, group classes, charity fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a large-scale event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage calendar schedules, dates, attendee numbers, data processing and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event participants.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticketing Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create multiple events and begin processing registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it has been 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 pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price 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 improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to register on their own.
Letting your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more of your time on planning a memorable event.
Complete 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 users to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso 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 by using a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase addons when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can be completed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many kinds of tickets as you want and specify prices, maximum number of tickets, and more.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to manage taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and reuse attendee details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for the system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 provides you with the tools to gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have previously done business with them. Your Contact Profile page records the name, biography, contact details, event registration data, private comments, and more about each customer.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
- XML RSS Feeds. Keep your blog readers updated about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Latest WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build visually attractive event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout the software and your WordPress themes. Organization data include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone, VAT/tax number, your logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, planning new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- Register Multiple Event Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or a group to register multiple attendees at once. Event managers decide how many attendees are allowed to enroll in a single registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential participants who have not made payment for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered participants who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount they owe, and include a link to the event information, a payment url and a link to download the invoice.
- Event Reports. Event reports provides you with information of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers when troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, 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 in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event information when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of your event management process.
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 available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add on lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add on is suitable 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 lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to create 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 barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. Customers 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 Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on lets you auto-register participants to a selected mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have written 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
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”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, teacher, event promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time researching the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as many of its customers attest:
”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 Event Espresso plugin provides robust support with access to a support forum, comprehensive 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software sells for the amounts 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 when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress site and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration System For WordPress
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