Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, community courses, charity fund-raisers, marketing functions, or even a big event such as a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate calendar schedules, dates, registration numbers, data entry, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create multiple events and start accepting online registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ various 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 bookings with social media and email marketing tools.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to enrol by themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more of your attention on creating a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third party provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase addons when you need additional features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event bookings 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is conducted entirely online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data collected from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Custom Notification Emails. Configure automated booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event registrants.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring default pricing.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with 3 useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event registrants and check-in everyone who has attended.
- No-Ticket Events. List events without making it necessary for registrants to select tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any kind of event, not only those that need tickets.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your customers updated about your events, bring in more visitors and widen your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Most Recent Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and stylize your event descriptions without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post or page.
- Attendee Records. Manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential attendees who have not paid yet for their admission with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount they owe, and include links to the event, a payment url and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events like free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your registrants to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make the events searchable by category, and color-code 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 existing customers.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular website traffic whenever you need to make changes on your website. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: 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 goals, 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 version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in confirmation emails and newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a series of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Add-on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager addon allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show the event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also view event history and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This add-on lets you include staff in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas 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 add-on.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: 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 addon, 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 event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add on allows you to auto-register attendees to a specific autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have written 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
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, seminar promoter, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management process and improve the experience of your participants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its plugin users confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
The software provides incredible support with 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option lets you run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 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. Currently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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