Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as workshops, training courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, social events, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations is a complex process. You will probably need to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and seating, attendee numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Registration Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily set up your event and begin accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been redeveloped 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 phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
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.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are enabling event attendees to enroll on their own.
Letting your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more energy on planning a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin 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. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need additional functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new bookings 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite their friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process is conducted entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you acquire from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you gather unique information using custom event registration forms on your site to plan a unique experience for your event participants.
- Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospects and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Provide promotional and discount codes to incentivize people to make a purchasing decision without delaying, or make your offerings more appealing for price-sensitive customers. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 lets you know who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached capacity. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to your customers, bring in more visitors and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- SEO Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich Web links take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you bring more traffic to your website.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be run in 15+ languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by checking a box.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 allows details about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform site visitors of the location of your event. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information such as venue capacity, venue website, telephone number, physical, map, etc. You can also display venue profiles in different areas in your theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with a community of experienced event managers, web developers, web designers, internet marketers and business owners who also use the plugin. You can engage with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your website visitors can help increase exposure for your events using social sharing buttons.
- Attendee Reports. Quick-view event reports gives you data of the registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 enables more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 company operates on a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the work of re-entering event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes 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 occur within 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 all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is 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 right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping cart. With the Multi-Event Registration add on, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on gives you an easy-to-use system that lets you change 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 web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Congratulations on an absolutely fantastic plugin. I’m really impressed with its functionality and add on features and will definitely upgrade my client’s production site to the premium version (when ready for launch) to incorporate all the features. As I have told another client “this plugin is the cat’s meow”.” Pete Mansel
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the forums for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its satisfied plugin users confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides exceptional support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you will want to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that involves managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration Plugin
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