Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fundraisers, social events, or even a big event such as a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex and time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, event dates, registration numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin allows you to easily schedule multiple events and start processing bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing applications.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin software 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 the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to perform the registration themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more of your time on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. 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 add ons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process is kept wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information gathered from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure as many types of tickets as you want and set separate pricing options, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Create a unique look and feel for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s template options and components, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect registration fees prior to running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper-based registration forms for manual submission later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot participate in your events.
- XML RSS Feeds. Automatically update customers, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to develop your event over time without publishing it to your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to take things live, or schedule your event page to publish at a later date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to be deployed throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. The organization fields include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email, telephone, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert images and create your event descriptions without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you network with an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and your website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different types of events like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to help event participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make all events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 facilitates more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for normal site visitors whenever site maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a series of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events management addon lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that take place in 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 add on is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to your special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view past events and make payment for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives 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 shopping 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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon allows you to auto-register attendees to a specified autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, festival promoter, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the support forum for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its satisfied clients confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 5 sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to report errors and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and/or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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