Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event such as a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You have to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data entry, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up your event and begin accepting online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and 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 read more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to perform the registration process by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your attention on delivering a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a third-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add-ons only when you need added features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event bookings 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can be conducted wholly in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information collected from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of built-in to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many types of tickets as you want and set separate prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Admin And Reporting. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to administer taxes for your event and report tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any additional registrants.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly by pre-configuring default ticket prices.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with 3 detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or send in paper forms for manual processing later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential prospects to ask questions about your event and past attendees to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are set up using the WordPress commenting admin area.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date WordPress Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create aesthetically beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso has been translated into 15+ languages, with more languages planned.
- Exportable Information. You can output all the information gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert images and compose and edit your event descriptions without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post.
- Attendee Records. Manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in your event description.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You have control of your customers’ information; who has registered, for what event and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of event attendees to an Excel spreadsheet for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers individually or collectively.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are 100% compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for normal site traffic when website maintenance is required. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s goal 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 and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Addons
As well as an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 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 an event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many events in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to display an event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This add-on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability 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 your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue door. 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website:
Customers – Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, seminar promoter, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as so many of its satisfied clients attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option lets you install Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing 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 Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about problems and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of event managers.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, booking participants, and/or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
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