Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as workshops, community classes, charity fundraisers, corporate functions, or even a big event like an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complex and time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages 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 previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can easily set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software enables you to easily set up an event and begin accepting registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to register on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you direct more energy on delivering a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users 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 developing your own system or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add ons when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is performed entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users through standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can gather unique data using custom event registration forms on your website to prepare a unique experience for your users.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using a calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse attendee information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing for the system-default ticket.
- Discount Codes. Provide promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage visitors to make a decision now, or make your offers more attractive for others. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or sending in paper-based forms for manual registration later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential prospects to ask questions about your event and past customers to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WordPress built-in commenting system.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to build your event page at your own leisure without publishing it to your site. You can keep editing your event pages until you are ready to publish it to your site, or schedule to publish your event page at a future date and time.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Bulk Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that allows you to upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or an organization to purchase multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. You specify how many attendees can register in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you network with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can network with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential participants who have not made payment for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered customers who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount owing, and include links to the event, a payment url and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Transaction Reports. Quick-view event reports provides you with data of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money has been collected.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 facilitates more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, 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 objectives, the software has been built using 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 comes with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in confirmation emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to further enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web site is featured on Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to these special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also view past events and make payment for events.
- 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 perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers 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 Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you change 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 web developers design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API addon permits other software applications, websites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written 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
”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
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time going through the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as many of its customers confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides exceptional support with access to a support forum, comprehensive 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license enables 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 of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Info
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.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of WordPress users.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you currently run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and booking seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Software
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