Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, community classes, charity fund raisers, networking conferences, or even a big event like a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex process. You will probably need to manage scheduling, event dates, attendee numbers, data administration, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule multiple events and start receiving online bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides 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 platform is being redeveloped 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 developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to enroll by themselves.
Allowing your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more of your attention on creating a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase addons when you need extra functionality.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain entirely online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information acquired from event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great built-in to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to use in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure as many different types of tickets as you need and specify prices, number of tickets, and more.
- Customized Confirmation Emails. Set up automated registration and payment notification emails to communicate with your participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Smart Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s details for any added attendees.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default prices.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track event attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual processing later.
- No Ticket Events. You can promote events without the requirement for attendees to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not only when tickets are required.
- Event RSS Feeds. Keep your customers up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you develop an event over time without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event until you are ready to publish it on your site, or schedule to publish your event at a future time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency name, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for most of your events, you can easily set up as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert photos and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize your templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular website traffic when website maintenance is needed. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- 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 objectives, the software has been built using a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in confirmation emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to every ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to further expand the capabilities 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 upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with many datetimes into a drop-down 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 show the event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your website 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 Template Add on: The Custom Template addon can display your events in a variety of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each 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 bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. People 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with a simple and 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 enables developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on lets you auto-register participants to a specified mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Here are just some of the testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is one of the nicest Event Managers (WP Plugin) I have come across.” Joe Distefano, Citizen Joe
”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
”I’m so excited to fire Eventbrite! Event Espresso has an amazing WP plugin for event management. We’re testing it now & are very impressed! In a nutshell Event Espresso saves us money & does everything Eventbrite did before. :)” Dustin Nay
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference planner, or event management consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its satisfied end-users attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
The Event Espresso software provides exceptional support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This option lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
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 setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of event promoters.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run events that require managing dates, times and venues, registering attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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