Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a big event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online 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 grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create an event and start receiving online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out 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 a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to complete the enrolment process themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more resources on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing addons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process remains entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to end-users via standard 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 WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, and HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospective attendees and let them purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any added registrants.
- Default Prices. Create events fast by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 lets you understand who your clients are and how you have previously engaged with them. Your Contact Profile page stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration information, comments, etc. about each attendee.
- No-Ticket Events. You can create events without making it necessary for registrants to select tickets. Use Event Espresso for all kinds of events, not only when tickets are for sale.
- Private Contact Notes. Record notes about contacts on their profile. Private notes enables you to keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have assisted your customers.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you develop an event page at your own pace without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event page at a future time and date.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by checking a box.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. EE 4 allows a single person or a group to purchase multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers decide how many people are allowed to register in a single session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in any event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types like free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to help your participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make all events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how the information displays to site visitors.
- Metabox Management & Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility 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 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+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event details when adding new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Addon: 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 available, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can schedule as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your event lists in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you include your staff in the event management process and give new users permission 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 assign them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff 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 sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping cart. With the Multi-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 WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register participants to a selected 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 latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”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, teacher, conference promoter, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the support forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as so many of its satisfied plugin 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
Event Espresso provides robust support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the 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 tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress website and you plan to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues, registering participants, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
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