Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, group courses, charity fund-raisers, social functions, or even a big event like a community fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings is a complex process. You need to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, participant numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce previous events, give you more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule your event and begin receiving bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options 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 increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to perform the enrollment process by themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more of your attention on creating a more enjoyable event.
Full 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 users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a third-party service. This is made possible by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional addons only if you need new features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online signups 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can be completed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information acquired from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Custom Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can gather specific data using custom event registration forms on your site to plan a tailored experience for your attendees.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. You can customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s template options and components, and HTML and CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any added attendees.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the risk of spammers and bot software programs making false registrations with reCAPTCHA option to authenticate human activity.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Provide promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize visitors to register now, or make your events more appealing for others. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event participants and confirm those who attend.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- Private Contact Notes. Record comments about event registrants on their profile and how you’ve assisted them. Private notes helps you keep records of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links leverage your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks with relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you drive more traffic to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Organization data include: organization name, address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email, telephone number, tax number, company logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Bulk Edit Events. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing capability that enables you to upload bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 allows information about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform potential registrants of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue details like venue seating capacity, venue web address, telephone number, physical, maps, etc. You can also list venue profiles on different sections in your WP theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- One-Click Software Updates. Event Espresso offers easy one-click updating to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential participants who have not paid in full for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount they owe, and include links to the event, a payment url and a url where they can download the invoice.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your participants’ date; who has registered, for what event and how much they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of event attendees to an Excel spreadsheet for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants on a person-by-person basis or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for normal site visitors whenever you need to carry out maintenance on your website. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- 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 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 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in confirmation emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to further expand the capabilities of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Grid Template Add on: 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, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your website uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your event lists in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This addon lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts 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.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. Attendees 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit 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 allows developers to design custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
- JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on enables other software applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that 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
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, event planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the support forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its clients attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The software provides great support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Plugin
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