Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as workshops, training courses, charity fund raisers, networking conferences, or even a big event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to manage scheduling, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress lets you easily create your event and start processing online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as it is being revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to enrol themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you direct more attention on organizing a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add ons when you need new features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online signups outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process is performed wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data collected from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many kinds of tickets as you need and specify different pricing options, number of tickets, etc.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Easily set up automated booking and payment notification emails to communicate with your clients.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to manage taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spammers and bots creating false registrations on your website by using reCAPTCHA tools to authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event registrants and confirm those who attend.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your users up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword-Rich Event Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks that use relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you drive more potential customers to your website.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, printable tickets and more.
- Import Event Information. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that allows you to upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform site visitors of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, venue address, map, etc. You can also display venue profiles in various parts of your theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- Attendee Profiles. Manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple event types like free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to help event attendees to find what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 facilitates more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for normal website traffic when you need to make changes on your site. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 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 provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the capabilities of the event management system.
Some of these addons 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Drop-down 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 Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: 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.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your event lists in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to 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 attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories using an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp addon allows you to auto-register participants to a selected autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the 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
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, show promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the support forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your event participants.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as many of its satisfied end-users attest:
”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 robust support that includes 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Product License Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds 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 online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management software, used by thousands of businesses.
If you own a WordPress website and you currently run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticket Registration Software
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