Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event such as an art exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, event dates, registration numbers, data processing, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are lots 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 previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software allows you to easily schedule an event and start receiving online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments 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 and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: 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 significantly different than the older EE 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually move completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to register by themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more energy on creating a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy addons when you need additional functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can remain wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the data you acquire from event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to end-users through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using custom event registration forms on your web site to plan a tailored experience for your attendees.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration fees before running events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration information for any additional registrants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs making false registrations by using reCAPTCHA tools to provide human validation.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Provide promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage people to register now, or make your events more appealing for price-sensitive prospects. Also useful for helping to increase sales of events close to timelines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event participants and check in everyone who attends.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t register for your events.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your users updated about your events, drive quality traffic and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build highly aesthetic event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency name, currency symbols, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your information collected from event customers into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, devising marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add graphic images and write your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Upgrading. Event Espresso offers easy one-click plugin installation updating to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and site visitors can help publicize your event using social share buttons.
- 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 even customize your page templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your event pages and how your information displays to readers.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility 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 mission, the company operates on a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in confirmation emails and email newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a series of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow users 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. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many events in advance as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that take place in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This add-on lets you include other staff in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different privileges, so others can help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain parts of your WP 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.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. People can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 allows developers to build their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API add on gives permission for other software applications, online tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Here are just some of the many testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, event planner, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow and enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its satisfied clients 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
The software provides incredible support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you should consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option enables you to 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 Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to report problems and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management software, used by thousands of event promoters.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Registration System For WordPress
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