Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fundraisers, corporate conferences, or even a big event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex and time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Registration Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software enables you to easily schedule an event and start accepting bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, 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 updates.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits 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 existing website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution 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 enabling event participants to enroll themselves.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more energy on creating a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase optional addons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event sign-ups outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can remain wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many different types of tickets as you need and specify prices, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can purchase the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display venue information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your clients are and how they have done business with you.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot register for your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to customers, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Import Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that enables you to easily import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Attendees. EE 4 allows one person or a group to register multiple participants simultaneously. You decide how many attendees can enroll in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, web developers, web designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can engage 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 registrants and website visitors can help increase exposure for your events using social sharing buttons.
- Attendee Reporting. Quick-view event reports gives you information of all registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 enables more complex developments and customizations to the software.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed 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 mission, the company operates on a modular and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add-on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that occur within a certain date range.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users will have access to these special events. Members can also enter personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and pay for events.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential attendees 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 categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add-on allows you to automatically register attendees to a selected mailing list or group within MailChimp.
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 addons, check out the plugin here:
Users – Feedback
Here are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied users 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
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, seminar planner, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its satisfied plugin end-users confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides amazing support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This license lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – 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 plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you intend to run events that involve managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and booking seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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