Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You may have to manage scheduling, availability, attendee numbers, data entry, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, 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 very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily create multiple events and start processing online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few 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 website into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling attendees to enroll themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more of your energy on organizing a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy addons when you need additional functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features and addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process is transacted entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data gathered from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its customers through built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from one single event.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Easily configure custom automatic registration and payment confirmation emails to communicate with your customers.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured default prices.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event attendees and check in those who attend.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- RSS Feeds. Automatically update users, drive quality traffic and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly permalinks that use relevant keywords add to the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you bring more visitors to your site.
- Multi-Language Application. Event Espresso has been translated into 15+ languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Import Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you easily upload a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and create and edit your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Automatic Software Installation Updates. Event Espresso provides simple one-click software installation upgrading to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Team Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- 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 also customize the templates to display events in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for developers when troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 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 edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – reduces the work of re-entering event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Addons
In addition to a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow software users to significantly expand the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these addons 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 Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- EE4 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 share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add on allows you to bypass 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 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 from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants 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.
- Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you change the look and feel of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also lets developers design custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register participants to a particular mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
Customer Feedback
Here are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time researching the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as so many of its users attest:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
The plugin provides robust support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you install Event Espresso on 1 site 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 run Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. 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 to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Plugin
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