Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as workshops, training courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, social conferences, or even a big event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event 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 costs, help you easily replicate recurring events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based site, you can set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily schedule multiple events and start accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
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 website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to perform the enrollment process themselves.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more energy on planning a more enjoyable event.
Full 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 clients to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. This is made possible by using a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase optional addons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite their friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can be completed entirely in digital form, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data collected from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you configure as many kinds of tickets as you want and set prices, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospective attendees so they can choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of the system-default ticket.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 includes three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. You can also specify that wait-listed members pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event by encouraging potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post comments that can help others decide whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public commenting are set up in the WordPress commenting system.
- Works With The Latest Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used when hosting your events, such as currency name, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Exportable Data. You can export all of your information gathered from event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and create and edit your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any other WP post.
- Attendee Profiles. Manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their information organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can spread the word about your events using social media share buttons.
- Transaction Reports. Event reporting provides you with data of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue has been collected.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are 100% compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Control Box Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement on their web site, Event Espresso’s objective is to “empower business and organization leaders with the event registration, ticketing and management tools that maximize the success of events.” To achieve their goals, the company operates on a 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 for including registrant data in notification emails and email updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly expand the capabilities of events.
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 an event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can also specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add-on can display your event lists in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your 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 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.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon lets you automatically register participants to a selected mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”Hello. I wanted to say that I’ve purchased Event Espresso twice now for two different organizations and have had great success with the purchases. Outside of photography, I also build small websites with WordPress as the CMS. I built two websites for two different martial arts organizations who host yearly seminars and tournaments. The plug in has provided a way for attendees to sign up online from both Canada and the United States with ease, and also allowed the organizations to easily manage payments, attendee lists, and many other aspects of the events. Thanks to Seth for creating such a great plug in, and for your constant support!” James Zedd, James Zedd Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, event planner, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management process and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its satisfied clients attest:
“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
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This enables you to run 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 option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you plan to run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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