Event Espresso - WordPress Event Management Plugin

Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as workshops, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale event like an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?

Managing event registrations can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage event schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.

There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.

The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be expensive.

Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.

Introducing …

Table of Contents

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Software

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Software

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin lets you easily schedule an event and begin processing online registrations in just a few minutes.

(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)

Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.

Customize registration forms

You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.

Access detailed information about your event attendees

Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of this plugin.

To learn more about the plugin go here:

Event Espresso

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 site:

Hands-Free Event Registration Management

Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing 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 virtually doing away with the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.

Basically, you are making it easier for event attendees to enrol on their own.

Allowing your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you direct more resources on creating a better event.

Complete Control Over The User Experience

As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.

Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:

Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost 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 users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add-ons only when you need added features.
More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new sign-ups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested.
Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can remain entirely in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
Own Your Data. You own all the information you collect from your event participants.

Event Espresso Features

The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers many unique features to web site owners. Here are just some:

Fast and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
Event Calendar. Attendees can easily find your events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to handle taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for the system-default ticket.
Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track participants.
Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your customers are and how you have previously done business with them. Your Contact Profile page stores the name, biography, contact information, event registration information, comments, and more about each attendee.
Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot register for your events.
Event RSS Feeds. Keep your blog readers up-to-date about your events, drive quality traffic and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs leverage your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly urls with relevant keywords add to the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your events.
Multi-Language Application. Event Espresso is is available in over 15 languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
Upload Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that allows you to easily upload a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
Register Multiple Attendees. EE 4 allows an individual or a group to enroll multiple participants at once. Event managers decide how many people can enrol in one registration session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso lets you interact with a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, marketers and businesses who also use the software. You can interact with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential clients who have not fully paid for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the amount owing, and include a link to the event details, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
Accurate Event Attendee Management. You control your customers’ date; who has registered, for what event and what amount they 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 a list of event attendees to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants on a person-by-person basis or all at once.

Additional features include:

Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for basic users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 enables more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers who are potential problems.
Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 objectives, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.

The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:

Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event data when adding new events.
Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to tickets).
Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.

Event Espresso Add-Ons

In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further enhance the functionality of events.

Some of these add ons include:

Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display the scheduled events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with many datetimes into a dropdown 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 be customized to display an event thumbnail image instead of a 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 lets 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 WP 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 members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users can have access to your special events. Members can also input personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also view event history and make payment for new events.
Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Editions: This add-on lets you include others in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas 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.
EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add-on adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon 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. Registrants 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
EE4 Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with an 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 allows web developers to design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on allows other software applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).

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

For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:

Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management

Customer Feedback

Below are some of the many testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:

”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”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
”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, trainer, festival planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.

After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your participants.

Event Espresso Support

Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its plugin end-users attest:

”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe

Event Espresso provides amazing support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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.

Additionally, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.

Software Cost

Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:

Personal License – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
Everything Edition – This option allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
Developer License – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on five domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.

Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System For WordPress

Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.

Event Espresso – Additional Info

Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.

Look up the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about errors 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 WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used by thousands of users.

If you own a WordPress-powered site and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates and venues, booking participants, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.