Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, marketing events, or even a big event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, available dates and seating, registration numbers, data administration, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create your event and start accepting bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits 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 digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to enrol themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you direct more of your energy on organizing a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need extra features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process is performed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information gathered from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start using 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.
- Customized Notification Emails. Easily set up custom automatic registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event participants.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to manage taxes for an event and report tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display registrant information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events fast by pre-configuring default prices.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or send in paper forms for manual registration later.
- Ticketless Events. You can create events without making it necessary for attendees to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not only when tickets are required.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are set in the WordPress commenting settings.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to build an event in your own time-frame without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event to publish at a later time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used for events, such as currency name, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and write your event descriptions without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any typical WP post.
- Attendee Profiles. Manage your customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and site visitors can spread the word about your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types like free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize these to help event attendees to find what they’re searching for. You can list all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your events and how the information displays to your prospects.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers who are potential application problems.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement 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 objectives, the software has been built using a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events management add-on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many events in advance as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays event categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: 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.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will 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 their personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up previous events and make payment for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add-on lets you include other users in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections 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 addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add-on adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity 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. Registrants 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 WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on lets you automatically register participants to a specific autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, show promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time visiting the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its plugin customers confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides robust support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to run your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. 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 specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run an event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration System For WordPress
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