Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, community classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, marketing events, or even a big event like a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data collection, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily create your event and begin receiving registrations in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and 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 doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more attention on delivering a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can be transacted wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information you collect from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. You can customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, plus HTML and/or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration payments prior to running events.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any added registrants.
- Default Prices. Create events fast with pre-configured default ticket prices.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual submission later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached capacity. You can also make it a requirement waiting list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Keep your users updated about your events, drive quality traffic and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop your event page over time without displaying it live on your website. You can continue editing your event pages until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is is available in 15+ languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for many of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for all new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Multiple Attendee Registration. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or people to purchase multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers decide how many people are allowed to register in one session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Upgrading. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click upgrading to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not paid in full for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with one click. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the balance owing, and include links to the event information, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events like free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to help event attendees to find what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows you to have more control and options over your event page content and how your information displays to readers.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers when troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a very large array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
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 Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize 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 the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users can have access to these special events. Members can also input personal data into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also look up event history and make payment for new events.
- 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 lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees 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 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 Calendar Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers 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
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, concert planner, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time going through the support forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its clients confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides exceptional support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on five domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to report issues and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues, registering participants, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin
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