Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as workshops, training courses, charity fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations is a time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data collection, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate repeat events, give you more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based web site, you can install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking solution.
Announcing …
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Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily set up multiple events and start processing registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event attendees to register on their own.
Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more attention on creating a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional add ons only when you need extra features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process can remain wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data you acquire from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users through standard features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of built-in to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up as many kinds of tickets as you want and set prices, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- Customized Notification Emails. Easily set up customized automatic booking and payment notification emails to communicate with event attendees.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to handle taxes for an event and report tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any additional attendees.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily with pre-configured default ticket pricing.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual submission later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. You can also make it a requirement wait-listed attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and past customers to post feedback that can help others choose whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for commenting are set in the WP commenting section.
- Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich Web links leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly permalinks that have topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your site.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, attendee limits, print-ready tickets and more.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the information collected from event customers into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add images and format your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post or page.
- 1-Click Plugin Updates. Event Espresso provides easy 1-click updates to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your installation compatible with new versions of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your website visitors can help publicize your events using social media share buttons.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You have control of your attendees’ details; who has enrolled, which event they have booked and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a CSV file for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your customers on a person-by-person basis or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web-based software developers to have more control and options over the content of your event pages and how your information displays to your site visitors.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the philosophy stated 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 objectives, the company operates on a model 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:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to further expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display your upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can add as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these 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 a date.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template addon can display your event lists in a number 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 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 attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add-on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on gives you an easy-to-use system that allows you to 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 build custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on gives permission for other software applications, websites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”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
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, seminar promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the support forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its satisfied plugin clients confirm:
”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 robust support including access to support forums, comprehensive 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can rely on to manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 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 specials being offered. Presently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer 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 software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of event promoters.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin
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