Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as workshops, community courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event bookings is a complex process. You have to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate recurring events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software lets you easily schedule multiple events and start receiving online bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event participants to perform the registration on their own.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more energy on delivering a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional add-ons when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online bookings outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can be kept wholly in digital form, significantly reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to users through standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to plan a customized experience for your event participants.
- Custom Notification Email Message. Configure automatic booking and payment notification email messages to communicate with event clients.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with several payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the look and control settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spamming and bot software programs making fake registrations by using reCAPTCHA settings that authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track all participants.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your customers are and how they’ve done business with you.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- XML RSS Event Feeds. Keep your users up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and widen your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich event page Web links take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks with relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your site.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your information gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, implementing new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 lets information about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue record displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you republish venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue website, telephone number, venue address, map, etc. You can also display venues on various locations of your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a given venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in your event description.
- Accurate Participant Manager. You control your attendees’ information; who has registered, which event they have booked and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a CSV file for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your attendees on a person-by-person basis or collectively.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular website visitors when website maintenance is required. You can still work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 objectives, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Add-on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management add on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many events in advance as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on allows you to override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Editions: This add-on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, allowing others to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts 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 addon.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Registrants 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 Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events in a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp addon allows you to auto-register participants to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
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 add ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are just some of the many testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time researching the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Event Espresso 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 excellent technical support, as so many of its clients confirm:
”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
The Event Espresso plugin provides comprehensive support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Pricing 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. When we last checked, the plugin retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, 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.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP 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 an event that requires scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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