Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community courses, non-profit fund-raisers, social events, or even a large-scale event like a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations is a complicated and time-consuming process. You have to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin enables you to easily schedule your event and begin processing online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and fully featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to enroll on their own.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more attention on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add ons only when you need extra features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains wholly online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, plus HTML and/or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, enabling you to collect money prior to running events.
- Intelligent 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 registrant’s details for any additional attendees.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and robots creating fake registrations by using reCAPTCHA option to validate human activity.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Offer promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a decision without delaying, or make your events more appealing for others. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event participants and check-in everyone who has attended.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your users up-to-date about your events, drive quality traffic and widen your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- SEO Friendly URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly permalinks with relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your website.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be used throughout the plugin and your WordPress themes. Your organization fields include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, phone, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Data. You can output all the information gathered from event customers into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, implementing marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in EE 4 allows details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays details like venue seating capacity, venue website, phone number, venue address, Google map, etc. You can also display all of your event venues on different locations in your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not paid in full for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference registered customers who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance owing, and include a link to the event details, a payment link and a link to download a PDF invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize the templates to display events in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 facilitates more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can add as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- 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 show the event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add-on allows you to bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This addon lets you include others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential customers 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 Multiple 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 Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to change the design 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 included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon allows you to automatically register participants to a chosen mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials that 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
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, concert planner, or event management consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the support forum for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its customers 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
Event Espresso provides robust support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price 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 its software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that involve managing dates and venues, enrolling attendees, and reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
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