Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community classes, non-profit fund-raisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event such as a rave party, 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 time-consuming process. You will most likely have to manage scheduling, event dates, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce recurring events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software enables you to easily create your event and begin accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate 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 retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to enrol by themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more attention on organizing a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible through a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional add-ons only when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online signups 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process is performed entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information gathered from event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to create a great experience for your users.
- Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective registrants so they can choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. 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 added registrants.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of attendees and check-in those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has become sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed attendees pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Keep your customers up-to-date about your events, drive quality traffic and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WP. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout the plugin and your WP themes. Organization data include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, telephone, tax number, logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Data. You can export all of your data collected from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, planning new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and write your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- Attendee Records. Manage your attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Event Reports. Event reports provides you with data of all registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic whenever website maintenance is required. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, Event Espresso’s objective 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 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 over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your website is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the website can have access to these special events. Members can also input personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also look up previous events and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or events that others 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 control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. People 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”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
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time going through the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its satisfied clients attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support with access to support forums, comprehensive 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you should consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license enables you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Search the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin
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