Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund raisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event like an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex and time-consuming process. You may need to manage event schedules, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are many advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website, you can set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily create an event and begin receiving registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event participants to perform the registration themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more attention on organizing a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add-ons when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event signups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process is performed wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information obtained from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to plan a tailored experience for your users.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Easily set up custom automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with your customers.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides several ways to manage taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Smart 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 additional participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to know who your clients are and how you’ve previously engaged with your customers. The Contact Profile page stores the name, biography, contact details, event registration data, private comments, and more about each attendee.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is sold out. You can also specify that wait-list registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of engagement to your event page by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public comments are set up using the WordPress native commenting admin area.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to build an event in your own timeframe without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to publish it on your website, or schedule to publish your event at a future time and date.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing, and also allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, limits on attendees, printable ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to order multiple tickets and different ticket types at once. Event managers decide how many attendees can enroll in one registration session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Staff Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize your templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how your information displays to prospective event attendees.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for normal website visitors whenever website maintenance is required. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- 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 company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users will have access to these special events. Members can also add personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also view event history and pay for events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is great 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 addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the capacity 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. People 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This add on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Feedback
Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, workshop planner, or event professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the forums for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most 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 technical support, as so many of its end-users 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 great support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – 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 Licensing – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. 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 to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to report errors and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration Plugin For WordPress
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