Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fund raisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event such as a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based web site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software lets you easily set up an event and start processing registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being rebuilt 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 pricing. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you direct more of your attention on organizing a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third 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 only if you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event bookings outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data obtained from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many kinds of tickets as you want and specify different prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Customizable Event Designs. Create a unique look and feel for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to handle taxes for an event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and reuse contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events fast by pre-configuring default ticket pricing.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track all participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of registrants and confirm those who have attended.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot participate in your events.
- Private Contact Notes. Keep comments about users on their profile and how you have assisted your customers. Private commenting lets you keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have helped your customers.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build your event over multiple work sessions without publishing it to your website. You can keep developing your event pages until you are ready to publish it live to your website, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later time and date.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to display throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. Organization data include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, phone, tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your data collected from event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, implementing new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Multiple Event Participant. EE 4 allows one person or a group to register multiple attendees at once. You decide how many people can register in a single registration session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of experienced event managers and plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can help promote your event using social media share buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize the templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 enables more complex extensions and customizations to the application.
- Metabox Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from the page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 software has been built using 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 provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further expand the functionality of the event management process.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: 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 the date.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This add on 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 Add-on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add-on is 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 add-on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code 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 barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers 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 allows developers to build custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register attendees to a chosen autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, festival planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time researching the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its satisfied plugin end-users confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The Event Espresso plugin provides exceptional support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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 WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This edition allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option lets you install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This lets you run Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends 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 Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about issues and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run an event that requires managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and/or selling tickets or seating, 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
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