Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as workshops, group classes, charity fund-raisers, social events, or even a big event such as a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a complex process. You may have to manage scheduling, date availability, attendee numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress plugin lets you easily set up multiple events and start receiving bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
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 response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options 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 need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are facilitating attendees to enroll themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you direct more time on creating a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution 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 purchase add-ons when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can be kept entirely online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you obtain from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create multiple ticket types and set prices, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Match your web site’s look and feel for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to registrants so they can purchase the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display contact data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the chance of spammers and bot software programs creating fake registrations by using reCAPTCHA tools that provide human validation.
- Discount Codes. Set up promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to register now, or simply make your offers more appealing for others. Also useful if you want to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of participants and confirm everyone who has attended.
- Ticketless Events. Set up events without the requirement for attendees to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any form of event, not just those that accept tickets.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to ask questions about your event and previous customers to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WordPress built-in commenting settings.
- Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks that include relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more visitors to your website.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the plugin and your WordPress themes. Organization data include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, phone, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the data gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, implementing new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 lets information about venues to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform users of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you republish details such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical, directions map, etc. You can also display venues throughout various areas in your WordPress theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a given venue.
- Automatic Upgrades. Event Espresso provides easy one-click plugin installation upgrading to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information 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 Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize the templates to display event information in your own unique way.
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.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers when diagnosing errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 goals, the software has been built using 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 comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and updates.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Addons
As well as a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to further expand the functionality of your event management system.
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, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: 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.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your 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.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add on lets you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is 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 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 pricing to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-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 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 Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that lets you modify the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also lets web developers design custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are just some of the many testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”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
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, workshop promoter, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as so many of its customers attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
The Event Espresso plugin provides great 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 proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This edition lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run an event that involves managing dates and venues, enrolling participants, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager System
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