Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, non-profit fund-raisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event such as an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings is a complex and time-consuming process. You will probably need to manage event schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data entry, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily set up your event and start receiving online registrations literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated 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 solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event attendees to register by themselves.
Letting your enrollees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more resources on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full 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 an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add-ons when you need additional functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event bookings outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite their friends who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process is transacted entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information collected from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you gather specific information using a custom event registration form on your website to prepare a unique experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Match your site’s look and feel for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospects and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the risk of spamming and robots making fake registrations by using reCAPTCHA features to provide human validation.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your clients are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is sold out. You can also make it a requirement waiting list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of social sharing to your events by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for commenting are set using the WP built-in commenting admin area.
- Optimized For The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing, list waiting, limits on attendees, printable tickets and more.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the information gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- Event Venue Manager. The venue management feature in Event Espresso 4 lets information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform users of the location of your event. The venue record displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes information such as venue seating capacity, venue website, telephone number, physical and virtual location, map, etc. You can also display all of your venues in different locations on your WP theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a particular venue.
- Automatic Software Upgrading. Event Espresso provides easy one-click software updates to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and site visitors can tell others about your event using social share buttons.
- Attendee Reporting. Quick-view event reporting provides you with information of all the registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: According to the mission statement on their 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 company operates on a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in notification emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to every ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to further enhance the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events manager addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices 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 enter personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up event history and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This addon lets you include staff in the event management process 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 WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do 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 add on.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability 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 door. Customers 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.
- Events Calendar Add-on: This add on uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 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 registrant data, track registrations, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Here are a few of the 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
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, conference planner, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its customers 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 incredible support with access to a support forum, in-depth 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 developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run your events.
Event Espresso Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
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 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.
Look up the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report issues and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress website and you plan to run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration System
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