Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fundraisers, marketing events, or even a big event such as a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings can be a time-consuming process. You will probably have to manage scheduling, availability, attendee numbers, data entry, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give you more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based site, you can easily install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software allows you to easily create an event and begin accepting online bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
More info:
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 And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to enroll themselves.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your attention on organizing a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy add-ons only when you need new features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social features and addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information gathered from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can gather specific information using a custom event registration form on your web pages to plan a great experience for your event participants.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Admin And Reporting. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to manage taxes for your event and report tax fees to registrants who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. 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 added registrants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring default pricing.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. You can leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to encourage people to take action now, or make your offers more affordable for others. Also useful for helping to increase sales of events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your customers are and how you’ve previously engaged with your clients. Your Contact Profile section stores the name, biography, contact details, event registration details, private comments, and more about each attendee.
- Ticketless Events. Promote events without making it necessary for registrants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any form of event, not only when tickets are required.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record comments about users on their profile and how you have interacted with your contacts. Private commenting allows you to keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with your customers.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events allow you to develop an event page over time without publishing it to your site. You can keep editing your event until you are ready to publish it on your website, or schedule your event to publish at a later date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the software and your WordPress themes. The organization fields include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, telephone number, tax number, your logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for many of your events, you can easily set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- Register Multiple Event Participants. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or a group to purchase multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers control how many people are able to enrol in one registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. Manage each registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can tell others about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Accurate Participant Management. You control your attendees’ records; who has enrolled, which event they have booked and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to Excel for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers individually or as a group.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for normal website visitors whenever you need to make changes on your website. You can still work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their site, 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 company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to all tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Addons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of the event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can add as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of your 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 show an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your web site uses 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 add-on allows you to take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users can have access to these special events. Members can also input personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and pay for new events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on allows you to promote 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 customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers 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 shopping cart. With the Multi-Event Registration addon, 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 Calendar Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 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:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, conference planner, or event management consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the user forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its plugin end-users confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides great support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option lets you install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
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.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues, registering attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
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