Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fund raisers, marketing functions, or even a big event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You may need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event attendees.
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 duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily schedule an event and begin processing online bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the 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 site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for participants to enrol by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more attention on planning a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a 3rd party service. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy optional add ons when you need additional functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online registrations any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can remain entirely online, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information acquired from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your website to plan a great experience for your clients.
- Custom Notification Emails. Set up automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with event participants.
- Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly by pre-configuring default ticket prices.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. You can leverage promotion and multiple discount codes to encourage prospects to make a decision immediately, or simply make your events more appealing for price-sensitive customers. Also useful if you want to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how you have done business with them. The Contact Profile page stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration information, private comments, and more about each attendee.
- No-Ticket Events. Promote events without making it necessary for participants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not only when tickets are for sale.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events page by allowing potential registrants to ask questions about your event and previous customers to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WordPress commenting settings.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build visually attractive event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is being translated into 15+ languages, with more languages planned.
- Bulk Import Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that allows you to import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Manager. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets details about venues to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform potential attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information like venue seating capacity, venue website, venue phone number, venue address, directions map, etc. You can also display all of your event venues in specific parts in your theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a specific venue.
- Registrant Records. Manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and website visitors can spread the word about your event using social share buttons.
- Accurate Participant Management. You control your attendees’ details; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they have 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 Excel for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your attendees individually or all at once.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are compatible with WordPress.
- Control Box Management & Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely deleted from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including registrant data in notification emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of the event management process.
Some of these add ons 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 Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices 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 add personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and pay for new events.
- 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 for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on allows you to offer 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 attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Event Ticketing Addon: 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 addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that lets you modify 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 lets web developers build custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on lets other software applications, web tools, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, festival promoter, or event professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the support forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as so many of its satisfied users 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
The plugin provides great support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you install Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This edition enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s online documentation pages for 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 errors and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and/or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticketing Registration System
***