Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community courses, charity fundraisers, marketing events, or even a large-scale event such as a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data collection, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event participants.
There are many 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 duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily set up an event and begin processing registrations literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your enrollees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more attention on planning a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only if you need additional features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online bookings 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can be kept wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information collected from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your web site to create a customized experience for your users.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, plus HTML and/or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running the events.
- Intelligent 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 details for any added participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your default ticket.
- Discount Codes. Offer promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to make a buying decision immediately, or simply make your events more appealing for others. Also useful if you want to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual registration later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social engagement to your event by allowing potential customers to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post comments that can help others choose whether or not to register. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WP commenting system.
- Keyword Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly permalinks with relevant keywords enhance the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you get a more targeted audience to your events.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso is currently available in 15+ languages, with more languages planned.
- Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing feature that enables you to easily import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert images and format your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, web developers, designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can help publicize your events using social media share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple event types like free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your attendees to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make all events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WP users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 makes possible more complex developments and customizations to the application.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers who are diagnosing problems.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 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 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the need to re-enter event information when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to each ticket).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to significantly enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you include staff in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business 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: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Customer Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”I have to say that it has been the right choice for me…I’ve been extremely pleased with the way my site is working.” Robin, RobinTime
”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 a motivational speaker, trainer, concert promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time researching the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP development rules. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as many of its 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
The Event Espresso software provides great support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, premium 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress website and you currently run any event that requires managing dates and venues, registering attendees, and selling tickets or 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
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