Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event like a music concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations is a complex process. You may need to manage event schedules, date availability, registration numbers, data processing, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create multiple events and begin accepting registrations literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate 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.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website or blog:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for event participants to complete the sign-up process themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more time on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional add ons only if you need extra functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new registrations 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can remain entirely online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information you acquire from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great built-in to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), and these can be managed from a single event.
- Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using a WordPress calendar.
- Tax Admin And Reporting. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to manage taxes for an event and report tax fees to registrants who purchase tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and display registrant details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events fast by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Promotional Codes. Set up promotional and discount codes to encourage prospects to take action now, or make your offers more affordable for others. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your customers are and how you have done business with your customers. Your Contact Profile section stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact details, event registration history, comments, etc. about each attendee.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached the maximum number of attendees. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- Event RSS Feeds. Automatically update your customers, drive quality traffic and widen your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WordPress. The EE 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event page designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Import Event Information. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you import a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, custom registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Multiple Participant Enrolments. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or people to enroll multiple participants at once. You decide how many attendees can enrol in one registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Profiles. You can manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily within reach.
- Team Member Manager. Save time and keep your business organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in any event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize your templates to display event information in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data that can be useful for developers who are diagnosing problems.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, 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 mission, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in notification emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to each ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
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 Drop-down Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories in a simple list. Clicking a category name displays the events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This add on adds 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.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on lets you display your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include others in the event management process 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 WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can 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 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.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential attendees the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multiple Event Registration addon, 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 Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register participants to a selected mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Congratulations on an absolutely fantastic plugin. I’m really impressed with its functionality and add on features and will definitely upgrade my client’s production site to the premium version (when ready for launch) to incorporate all the features. As I have told another client “this plugin is the cat’s meow”.” Pete Mansel
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed user, go through the support forum for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as many of its end-users confirm:
“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
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please 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 seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. 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 tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
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