Event Espresso

Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as workshops, training courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event such as a regional festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?

Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, attendee numbers, data collection, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event participants.

There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and grow your sales.

The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.

The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can set up a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.

Announcing …

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Event Espresso

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up multiple events and start processing bookings in just minutes.

(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)

Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.

Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms

You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.

Access detailed information about event attendees

Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.

To learn more about the plugin go here:

Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management

Plugin Benefits

Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:

Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution

Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.

Increased Business Productivity

By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.

Basically, you are facilitating event attendees to complete the enrolment process themselves.

Allowing your customers to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you direct more energy on planning a memorable event.

Full Control Over The User Experience

As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your participants to experience.

Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:

Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own solution or using a third 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 add ons when you need additional functionality.
Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event sign-ups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite friends who may also be interested.
Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process remains wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
Own Your Information. You own all the data acquired from your event participants.

Plugin Features

The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users via standard features (these come with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers many built-in to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:

Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in no time.
Customized Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your web pages to prepare a customized experience for your event participants.
Customized Notification Email Message. Easily configure automated booking and payment notification email messages to communicate with your participants.
Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments prior to running events.
Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket price of the default ticket.
In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of registrants and check-in those who attend.
Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can participate in your events.
RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to your customers, drive quality traffic and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
Keyword-Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword-rich Web links take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links that have relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more traffic to your events.
Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to display throughout the software and your WP themes. Organization fields include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, phone, tax number, logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for many of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by checking a box.
Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and create your content without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
Registrant Profiles. You can manage each customer’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
Staff Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in any event description.
Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You control your participants’ details; who has enrolled, for what event and what amount 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 a list of attendees to an Excel spreadsheet for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your registrants on a person-by-person basis or all at once.

Extra features include:

Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers when troubleshooting.
Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 mission, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.

The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:

Email shortcodes that includes participant data in emails and newsletters.
Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to each ticket).
Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.

Event Espresso Add-Ons

As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further expand the functionality of your event management system.

Some of these add-ons include:

Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display all upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
Events Calendar Table Template Addon: 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 the date.
EE4 Events Social Sharing Add on: This add-on adds 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.
Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your events in a range of exciting and interesting ways.
Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Versions: This addon lets you involve others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the capacity 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 staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
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 barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. 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 gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you change the design 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 their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a specific mailing list or group within MailChimp.

Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.

For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:

Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Manager

Customers – Testimonials

Below are some of the testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:

”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”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

Event Espresso Tips

Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.

After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time visiting the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process and enhance the experience of your event registrants.

Plugin Support

Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent technical support, as so many of its end-users attest:

”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 incredible support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 a solution you can rely on to organize and manage your events.

Plugin Pricing

Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:

Personal Licensing – This enables you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
Everything Edition – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
Developer License Edition – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons 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 special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration System For WordPress

Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.

Event Espresso – Additional Info

Event Espresso regularly adds 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.

Use the software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and leave feedback.

For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.

The Bottom Line

Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands.

If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.