Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, community courses, non-profit fund raisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event participants.
There are lots 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 copy settings for repeat events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based web site, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily schedule your event and begin receiving bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim 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.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits 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 digital presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to register by themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more of your energy on planning a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your participants to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third-party provider. This is made possible through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add-ons when you need added functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event bookings outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information you acquire from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Custom Notification Emails. Set up automated registration and payment notification email messages to communicate with your clients.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and display registrant data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of your default ticket.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize people to take action without delaying, or simply make your offers more attractive for others. Also useful if you want to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based forms for manual registration later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event has become sold out. You can also specify that wait-list registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for your event.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Keep notes about contacts on their profile and how you have assisted your customers. Private commenting lets you keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs leverage your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls that use relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your events.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, printable ticketing and more.
- Upload Event Information. EE 4 provides an advanced importing capability that lets you upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Register Multiple Event Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to book multiple attendees at once. Event managers specify how many attendees are able to enrol in one registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Software Upgrading. Event Espresso offers simple one-click plugin updates to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in an event description.
- Attendee Reports. Event reporting gives you data of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue has been collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are completely compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for normal website visitors when you need to make updates on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their site, Event Espresso’s aim 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 company operates on a modular and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to all tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display your scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add-on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can add as many events in the future as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that take place within a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your website 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 Template Addon: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your events in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is suitable 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 add on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to book 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 Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you edit 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 lets developers design 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 business marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Users – Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time researching the forums for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as so many of its users confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
Event Espresso provides incredible support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. 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 visit the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about errors and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run an event that requires managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticket Registration System
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