Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings, such as workshops, group courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event such as a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complex process. You will most likely be required to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating, attendee numbers, data entry, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily set up multiple events and begin accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
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 online presence into a fully-featured and automated 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.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to enroll on their own.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more attention on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add-ons when you need new features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online bookings 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process remains entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data you collect from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Easily configure automated registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event attendees.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective attendees so they can purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional registrants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and bots creating bogus registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA option that validate human activity.
- Discount Codes. You can leverage promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage visitors to register without delays, or make your offerings more affordable for price-sensitive customers. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based forms for manual inputting later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Record observations about event registrants on their profile. Private commenting allows you to keep records of when event attendees contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve assisted your customers.
- Optimized For The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create visually enhanced event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is currently available in more than 15 languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue management feature in EE 4 allows information about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays information such as venue seating capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, venue location details, maps, etc. You can also list venue profiles on different areas of your WordPress theme and 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.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with a community of experienced event managers, web developers, designers, web marketers and businesses who also use the software. You can network with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and site visitors can help publicize your event using social media sharing buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize the page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over your events and how your information displays to site visitors.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from your page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 mission, the company operates on 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 includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – reduces the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to each ticket).
- Default payment status.
Add ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 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, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown 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 also be customized to show an event thumbnail instead of a date.
- 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 all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon lets you display your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability 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. 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.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events in an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add on: The Event Espresso JSON API add on gives permission for other software applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that users have posted 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
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management process and enhance the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its customers 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
The software provides amazing support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license lets you configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
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 software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues, booking participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
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