Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as workshops, training courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, social events, or even a big event like a food fair, 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 complicated and time-consuming process. You need to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, attendee numbers, data processing, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing 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 reduce costs, help you easily replicate previous events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can install an inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin allows you to easily create an event and start receiving bookings in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing applications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as it is being revamped 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 company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and 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 practically doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enrol on their own.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more of your resources on planning a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need extra features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process remains entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data you obtain from event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its customers through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using custom event registration forms on your site to plan a customized experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event Designs. Match your site’s design for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, plus HTML and CSS.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to administer taxes for an event and report tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly by pre-configuring default pricing.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event attendees and check-in everyone who attends.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of interaction to your event page by encouraging potential customers to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are set up using the WP built-in commenting system.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to be used throughout Event Espresso and your front-end templates. Organization information include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram profile URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or an organization to register multiple participants at the same time. You specify how many people can register in one booking session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Event Reports. Event reports provides you with information of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money has been collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to readers.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to match your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web 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 mission, the software has been built using a modular and highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes attendee data in notification emails and updates.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: 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 Dropdown Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- 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 also be customized to show the event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This add-on 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 add-on provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is suitable 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 add on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to book 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 cart. With the Multi-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 Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp addon lets you auto-register participants to a particular mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new add ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”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 an education services provider, trainer, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management process and enhance the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as many of its users 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
The software provides robust support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso 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 options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This option enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
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.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to report bugs and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of businesses.
If you own a WordPress site and you currently run events that involve managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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