Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event like a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations is a time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, date availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily schedule an event and begin receiving online registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: 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 fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to register themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more resources on planning a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. The cost is kept low through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons only when you need added functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new signups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can be performed wholly online, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data obtained from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many different types of tickets as you need and specify prices, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to manage taxes for your event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your default ticket.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. You can leverage promotion and discount codes to encourage prospects to take action immediately, or simply make your offerings more affordable for others. This is also practical if you want to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event registrants and check-in everyone who attends.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can attend your events.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Record notes about users on their profile and how you’ve assisted them. Private notes enables you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve helped your customers.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date WordPress Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used for events, such as currency name, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Upload Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that allows you to easily import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and create and edit your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can interact with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and site visitors can tell others about your events using social media share buttons.
- 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:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular website traffic when you need to make changes on your website. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement 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 objectives, the software has been built using a modular and highly 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 includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 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 an event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: 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 Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso 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 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 single pricing to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to book 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 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API addon permits other software applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”I have to say that it has been the right choice for me…I’ve been extremely pleased with the way my site is working.” Robin, RobinTime
”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, presenter, show promoter, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its satisfied plugin end-users confirm:
”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 amazing support including 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition lets you set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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.
Look up the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to report errors and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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