Event Espresso

Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?

Co-ordinating event registrations is a time-consuming process. You may need to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.

There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate similar events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.

The problem is that this can be quite expensive.

Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.

Presenting …

Table of Contents

Event Espresso

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up multiple events and begin processing bookings literally in a few minutes.

(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online registrations)

Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.

Create custom event registration forms

You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.

Access detailed information about your event attendees

Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers 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 the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable 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 retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.

More info:

Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress

Benefits Of Using Event Espresso

Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:

Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System

Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.

Higher Business Productivity

By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.

Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to complete the enrolment process themselves.

Letting your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more of your attention on delivering a memorable event.

More Control Over The User Experience

As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.

Some additional benefits and advantages include:

Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons when you need extra features.
More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested.
Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can be completed wholly online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data obtained from event participants.

Features

Event Espresso provides functionality to users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers many features to WP users. Here are just a few:

Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many types of tickets as you need and set unique pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments prior to running your events.
Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display registrant data throughout other areas of your site.
Spam Protection. Prevent the chance of spammers and robots making bogus registrations on your site by using reCAPTCHA features that provide human authentication.
In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes three comprehensive in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual registration later.
Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t attend your events.
Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for commenting are set up using the WP default commenting settings.
Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls that use relevant keywords add to the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be used throughout the software and your WP themes. Your organization fields include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email, phone number, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
Bulk Import Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing feature that lets you easily import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
Event Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform attendees of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue website, venue phone number, physical, Google map, etc. You can also display venue profiles throughout different parts on your theme and on a venue listing 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.
Registrant Records. Manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not paid yet for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered participants who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the balance they owe, and include links to the event, a payment url and a link where they can download the invoice.
Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize your page templates to display event information in your own custom way.

Additional features include:

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for general WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 enables more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the workflow configuration.
Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: 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 mission, 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 comes with 40+ additional features, including:

Email shortcodes that includes participant data in confirmation emails and updates.
Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to tickets).
Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.

Add ons

As well as a very large range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further expand the capabilities of events.

Some of these addons include:

Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display scheduled events by location. 4 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 the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
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 also be customized to display an event thumbnail image instead of the date.
EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: This add on adds 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.
WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to these special events. Members can also add personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up previous events and pay for future events.
Seating Chart Addon: 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 addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
EE4 Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. People 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.
EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to edit the look and feel of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register participants to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.

Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.

For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:

Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management

User Feedback

Below are a few of the testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:

”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company

”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com

”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

Event Espresso Tips

Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, event promoter, or event management professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.

After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your customers.

Product Support

Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as many of its satisfied customers 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 comprehensive 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 a well-staffed team of experienced 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 Cost

Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:

Personal License – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
Everything License Edition – This option lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
Developer Licensing – This edition lets you configure Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one 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. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager

Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.

Additional Plugin Info

Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. 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 for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report problems and leave feedback.

For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.

Our Recommendation

Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of users.

If you own a WordPress-powered site and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.