Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as workshops, group courses, non-profit fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event like a trade show, 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 time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, attendee numbers, data processing, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based web site, you can install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily schedule your event and start processing online bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin 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
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into an automated and fully featured 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 literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enroll themselves.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more time on organizing a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a third-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add ons when you need added features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event registrations 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process is kept entirely in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data you obtain from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to use in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can collect specific information using custom event registration forms on your site to prepare a customized experience for your attendees.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Create a custom design for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and elements, plus HTML and CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to administer taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spammers and robots creating false registrations with reCAPTCHA settings to validate human activity.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track event participants.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you know who your customers are and how you have previously done business with them. The Contact Profile page stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact details, event registration history, comments, and more about each customer.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event is sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Keep your customers up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and widen your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WP. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used in your events, including currency, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for all new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Multiple Attendee Enrolments. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or an organization to pay for multiple tickets and different ticket types at once. You can control how many attendees are able to enrol in one registration by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- One-Click Software Installation Upgrading. Event Espresso provides easy one-click upgrades to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Accurate Event Attendee Management. You control your participants’ records; who has registered, for what event and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to Excel for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your event attendees on a person-by-person basis or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s aim 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 software has been built using 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 includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow users to significantly enhance the functionality of the 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 upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is 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 add on lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing 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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on gives you an easy-to-use system that lets you 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 lets web developers build custom templates using one of the templates included as a source template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written 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
”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
”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 an education services provider, trainer, concert promoter, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the forums for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your customers.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent customer support, as so many of its users attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides amazing support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This enables you to install Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current 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 Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, 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.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
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