Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event such as a community festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a complex process. You will probably have to co-ordinate event schedules, date availability, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.
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 reproduce similar events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up an event and begin processing online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing software.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software 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 pricing. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
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 existing online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better 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 manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to complete the enrollment process by themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more attention on planning a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy addons only when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process remains entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data collected from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of built-in to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up as many different types of tickets as you need and set separate pricing options, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly with pre-configured system-default ticket prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper-based registration forms for manual inputting later.
- No Ticket Events. You can list events without requiring attendees to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not only those that need tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential prospects to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public commenting are set up using the WP native commenting system.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows information about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform site visitors of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue details like venue capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, physical, maps, etc. You can also display venue profiles in specific locations of your theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage each registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can spread the word about your events using social media share buttons.
- Event Reporting. Event reports gives you data of all the registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, Event Espresso 4 allows for more complex extensions and customizations to the plugin.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the 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 mission, the software has been built using a modular 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:
- Email shortcodes for including participant data in emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Add ons
As well as an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add-on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that allow you to override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon 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 addon 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 manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode 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 barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with a simple and 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 allows developers to build custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, show planner, or event management 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, search the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its users attest:
”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
The plugin provides robust support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 a well-staffed 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.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you will want to consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to configure 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 set up Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
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