Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, community courses, charity fund raisers, marketing conferences, or even a big event such as a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You may have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily copy settings for recurring events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily set up an event and start receiving registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the 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 website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels 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 virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more resources on organizing a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own system or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons when you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains entirely online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the information you obtain from your event participants.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to handle taxes for your event and report tax fee components to customers when purchasing tickets. You can administer taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display contact information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Promotional Codes. Offer promotional and discount codes to encourage visitors to take action immediately, or make your events more appealing for price-sensitive prospects. Also useful for helping to increase sales of events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper-based forms for manual inputting later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential attendees to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for commenting are configured via the WordPress native commenting admin area.
- Search Engine Friendly Event Page URLs. Keyword-rich URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks that include relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be used throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Your organization information include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, phone, tax number, company logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue management feature in EE 4 lets details about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform attendees of your event’s location. The venue record displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you republish venue details such as venue capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, physical, location map, etc. You can also list venues in different locations of your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive 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 given venue.
- Registrant Records. Manage each registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your website visitors can tell others about your event using social sharing buttons.
- Event Reports. Quick-view event reports gives you information of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s objective 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 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 provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event information when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to every ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add ons
As well as a very large number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display scheduled events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays the categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name shows all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants 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 addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site 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 booking form. Your users can also view past events and make payment for future events.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon 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 add on allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multiple Event Registration add on, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you change 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.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”Just bought an Event Espresso license for an upcoming conference website we are working on. The custom registration forms functionality rocks!” Eric Sopp, Inside Design
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow or improve the experience of your participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as so many of its satisfied plugin clients confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
The Event Espresso software provides amazing support including access to a support forum, in-depth 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to run your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option lets you configure Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase 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 Registration And Ticketing Management
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to report problems and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration Plugin
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