Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event like an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage event schedules, availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software enables you to easily create multiple events and start receiving online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform 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 learn more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to enrol by themselves.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more of your time on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online signups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is performed entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information acquired from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Custom Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you gather specific data using custom event registration forms on your web site to plan a tailored experience for your clients.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Set up automated booking and payment notification emails to communicate with event participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display attendee details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spamming and bot software programs creating false registrations on your site with reCAPTCHA settings to validate human activity.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how you’ve previously done business with your customers. Your Contact Profile page stores updated records like the name, biography, contact information, event registration history, comments, and more about each registrant.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of social sharing to your events by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are specified using the WP default commenting settings.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build visually enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Upload Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing feature that allows you to quickly upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Participants. EE 4 allows an individual or a group to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. You decide how many attendees are allowed to enroll in a single session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your site visitors can tell others about your events using social media share buttons.
- Transaction Reporting. Event reporting gives you data of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are 100% compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 objectives, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the capabilities of the event management system.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: This add-on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on can display your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect 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 site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing addon gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to change the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables developers to build custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on allows you to automatically register participants to a chosen mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Here are just some of the many testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”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
”Hello. I wanted to say that I’ve purchased Event Espresso twice now for two different organizations and have had great success with the purchases. Outside of photography, I also build small websites with WordPress as the CMS. I built two websites for two different martial arts organizations who host yearly seminars and tournaments. The plug in has provided a way for attendees to sign up online from both Canada and the United States with ease, and also allowed the organizations to easily manage payments, attendee lists, and many other aspects of the events. Thanks to Seth for creating such a great plug in, and for your constant support!” James Zedd, James Zedd Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, concert promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
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 process and improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its clients attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you will want to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This option enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one 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 specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of companies.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues, booking participants, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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