Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as seminars, training classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a big event like a trade show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex and time-consuming process. You have to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data entry, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software allows you to easily create your event and begin accepting bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event attendees to perform the registration by themselves.
Allowing your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your resources on delivering a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional add-ons only when you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new signups 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data gathered from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its customers through standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Customize your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and parts, as well as HTML or CSS.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides several ways to manage taxes for your event and report tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- 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 attendee’s registration details for any added registrants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of your default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual submission later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
- Private Contact Comments. Keep notes about users on their profile and how you have helped them. Private commenting enables you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich URLs leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls that have relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your events.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso has been translated into 15+ languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Upload Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you upload bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Event Participant. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or an organization to order multiple tickets and different types of tickets at the same time. You specify how many people are able to enrol in a single session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you engage with an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can interact with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients who have not made payment for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance they owe, and include links to the event details, a payment url and a link where they can download the invoice.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You have control of your customers’ records; who has enrolled, which event they have registered for and how much they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to Excel for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your customers individually or as a group.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows you to have more control and options over your content and how the information displays to your prospective event attendees.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for normal site visitors whenever you need to carry out maintenance on your site. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility 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 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons 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 the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events manager add-on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- 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 also be customized to display an event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- 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 your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices 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 enter personal details into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also look up event history and make payment for new events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect 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 from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you 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 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 Calendar Add on: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories using an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on permits other software applications, online tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462
”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
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time going through the support forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great end-user 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
Event Espresso provides amazing support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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 WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This lets you install Event Espresso on five domains. It includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Plugin 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
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report issues and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you intend to run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues, enrolling participants, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
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