Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as workshops, community classes, not-for-profit fund raisers, networking 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 register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to manage scheduling, event dates, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily create an event and start processing bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: 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 revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages 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 existing online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to 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 literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to complete the sign-up process by themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you spend more time on organizing a memorable 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 participants to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. This is made possible through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event signups 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social features and addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data you acquire from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you gather unique information using custom event registration forms on your web site to prepare a great experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event Designs. Customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, and HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective attendees and let them choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and bots making false registrations with reCAPTCHA option that authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or send in paper forms for manual submission later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t register for your events.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Record observations about users on their profile and how you have interacted with your contacts. Private notes enables you to keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you’ve assisted your contacts.
- Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword rich Web links leverage your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links that use relevant keywords add to the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you bring more visitors to your site.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be run in more than 15 languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, ticketing information, prices, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or people to book multiple participants at once. Event managers control how many attendees can enroll in a single registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy 1-click plugin updating to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can help promote your events using social share buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. 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 your event page content and how your information displays to your prospective customers.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: Event Espresso states on their website that their mission 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the capabilities 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 upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add-on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to display an event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This addon lets you involve other users in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability 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 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 addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Attendees 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on enables other software applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management process and enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its clients attest:
”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 software provides amazing support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run your events.
Product Pricing
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 downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticket Registration System For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress site and you plan to run events that involve managing dates, times and venues, booking participants, and/or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration System
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