Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event like an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings is a time-consuming process. You may have to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, participant numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily create your event and start receiving bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even 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 chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to enroll by themselves.
Letting your participants to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more energy on planning a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a 3rd party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy addons only when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online sign-ups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features and addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process remains entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information gathered from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and set separate prices, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Configure automatic registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event clients.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any additional registrants.
- Default Prices. Create events fast with pre-configured default ticket prices.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Ticketless Events. Set up events without making it necessary for attendees to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any type of event, not only those that accept tickets.
- Private Contact Notes. Record notes about event participants on their profile and how you’ve interacted with them. Private commenting enables you to keep a record of when event attendees contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve helped your customers.
- Optimized For The Latest Version Of WP. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing, wait lists, limits on attendees, printable ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for many of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for all new events simply by checking a box.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes information such as venue seating capacity, venue web address, telephone number, venue location details, maps, etc. You can also display venues in specific locations in your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso provides simple one-click updating to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in an event description.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You control your customers’ records; who has enrolled, which event they have booked and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a CSV file for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your customers individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for normal site traffic when site maintenance is needed. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s goal 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 in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event information when adding new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- 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 addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal data into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view previous events and make payment for future events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is suitable 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 promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives potential customers the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multi-Event Registration addon, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to modify the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables web developers to build custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on enables other software applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”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, teacher, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as many of its customers confirm:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
The Event Espresso plugin provides great support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to manage your events.
Software Cost
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 purchasing one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends 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 latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to report bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that involve managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and/or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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