Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, charity fund raisers, social conferences, or even a big event such as an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably need to manage calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data processing and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are lots 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 replicate recurring events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily schedule an event and start accepting registrations in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing solutions.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being rebuilt 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 migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some 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 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 even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event attendees to complete the enrollment process on their own.
Letting your enrollees to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more energy on delivering a better event.
More 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 and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase addons only if you need extra features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event bookings any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process remains entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information gathered from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can gather unique data using a custom event registration form on your web site to plan a unique experience for your event participants.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Easily set up custom automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with event customers.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to administer taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to customize the look and control settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs making false registrations with reCAPTCHA tools that validate human activity.
- Promotional Codes. Set up promotional and multiple discount codes to encourage people to take action now, or make your offerings more affordable for others. Also useful if you want to increase sales of events close to timelines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of registrants and check in those who attend.
- No Ticket Events. You can set up events without the requirement for participants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for all types of events, not only those that accept tickets.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Provide automatic updates to users, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build visually enhanced event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout the plugin and your WordPress themes. Your organization fields include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, phone number, tax number, your logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Exportable Data. You can export all of your information collected from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, implementing new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert images and stylize your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any other WP post or page.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you network with an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can interact with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and site visitors can help publicize your event using social media share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple event types such as free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for event participants to locate what they’re searching for. You can list all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web-based software developers to have more control and options over your events and how the information displays to your prospective event participants.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data which can be useful for developers who are diagnosing application errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: 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 objectives, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including participant data in confirmation emails and updates.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow users to further expand the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display your scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with multiple datetimes 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.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add on lets you display your events in a range of exciting and interesting 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 lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your 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 shopping 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add on: This add on uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin add on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track registrations, 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 add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Users – Feedback
Below are some of the many testimonials that users have posted 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
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, workshop promoter, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your customers.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its satisfied plugin clients 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 comprehensive support including 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 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 WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller 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.
Use the software’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of event managers.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and/or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management System
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