Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as workshops, training courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, marketing conferences, or even a big event like a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex process. You have to manage event schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data administration, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate similar events, give you more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily set up an event and begin accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more 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 Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to enroll themselves.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you spend more energy on creating a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy addons when you need additional features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new bookings any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process can be conducted entirely online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data obtained from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create as many different types of tickets as you need and set different prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Match your site’s look and feel for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and elements, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of your system-default ticket.
- Discount Codes. You can leverage promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage prospects to register now, or make your offerings more appealing for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical for helping to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper registration forms for manual registration later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your website visitors updated about your events, drive quality traffic and widen your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop your event page over time without publishing it to your site. You can keep building your event until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later date and time.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Upload Event Information. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that allows you to import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Participant Registration. EE 4 allows an individual or a group to pay for multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. You control how many people are able to enrol in a single registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, developers, designers, internet marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can interact with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential participants who have not paid yet for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will address registered customers who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event details, a payment link and a link where they can download the invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can also customize your page templates to display events in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 enables more complex enhancements and customizations to the plugin.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular site traffic whenever website maintenance is needed. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s objective 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add ons
In addition to an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to further 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 Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on 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 addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives 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 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 Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to change the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track registrations, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, seminar planner, or event professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as so many of its plugin users attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The software provides incredible support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License Edition – This option lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This option enables you to install Event Espresso on five sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending 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 Management And 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 pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular situation, or to report errors and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that involve managing dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and/or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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