Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, charity fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a large-scale event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex process. You will probably need to manage scheduling, available dates and seating, attendee numbers, data collection, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate recurring events, give event managers more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create multiple events and start processing bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups 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.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enroll by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your attention on organizing a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd party provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can be kept wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information you acquire from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fees to registrants who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring default prices.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or sending in paper-based forms for manual submission later.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has become completely sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event by encouraging potential registrants to ask questions about your event and past customers to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WP default commenting section.
- Works With The Latest WordPress Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be used throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Organization information include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, phone number, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 lets details about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue record displays many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you add information such as venue capacity, venue website, phone number, venue location details, Google map, etc. You can also display all of your event venues on various parts in your WP theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Updates. Event Espresso provides simple one-click software upgrading to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients who have not paid in full for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount they owe, and include links to the event information, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You control your participants’ date; who has enrolled, for what event and what amount they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your event attendees individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the work of re-entering event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Add ons
In addition to an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow plugin users to significantly expand the capabilities of the event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Add-on: 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, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your website is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon is capable of displaying your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- 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 perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. People 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon gives event managers 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 allows web developers to build custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API add on enables other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users 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 searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, festival promoter, or event management professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its plugin customers 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 software provides robust support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license lets you install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration Plugin For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
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.
Search the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WP site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
***
