Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund-raisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex process. You have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and seating, registration numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to participants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin enables you to easily create an event and begin accepting registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many 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 web site into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased 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.
Basically, you are making it easier for event participants to enroll by themselves.
Allowing your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your resources on organizing a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add-ons only when you need extra features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event bookings any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process is completed wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data gathered from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many great built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many different types of tickets as you need and set different prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 provides several ways to handle taxes for an event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-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.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the likelihood of spammers and bots making false registrations by using reCAPTCHA settings that authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can join a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can specify that waiting list attendees pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past participants to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are specified in the WordPress commenting settings.
- Keyword Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links with relevant keywords add to the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you drive more potential customers to your events.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, limits on attendees, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for most of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Multiple Event Attendee. EE 4 allows one person or people to purchase multiple tickets and different types of tickets at the same time. Event managers control how many people are allowed to enrol in one registration session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can engage with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your data 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 type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can also customize the page templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are fully compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic when site maintenance is needed. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: 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 goals, the company operates on 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 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to all tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to display an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web site 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 Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you include staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the ability 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 capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WP 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.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees 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 Multi-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 Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to change 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 enables web developers to design custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on lets other software applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time visiting the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its users attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The Event Espresso software provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, 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 run your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about bugs and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress website and you currently run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
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