Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management Plugin

Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, training classes, charity fund-raisers, social functions, or even a big event like a school concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?

Managing event registrations can be a complex process. You may be required to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.

There are many advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily replicate repeat events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.

The problem is that setting this up can be quite expensive.

The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.

Announcing …

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration System

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily create your event and start receiving bookings in just a few minutes.

(Set up multiple events and process online registrations with Event Espresso)

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

Customize your event registration forms

You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.

View detailed information about event attendees

Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped 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 pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.

More info: Event Espresso

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 System

Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.

Higher Business Productivity

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

Essentially, you are facilitating attendees to enroll on their own.

Letting your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you focus more of your attention on creating a more unique event.

Complete Control Over The User Experience

As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.

Additional benefits include the following:

• Less 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 provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add-ons when you need added features.
• Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event sign-ups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may be interested in attending.
• Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can remain entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
• Own Your Information. You own all the information you collect from your event attendees.

Event Espresso Features

The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers a number of features to WP users. Here are just some of these:

• Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
• Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from one single event.
• Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Match your site’s design for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, plus HTML and CSS.
• Tax Administration. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to administer taxes for your event and report tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can configure taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
• Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display contact information throughout other areas of your site.
• Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing for the system-default ticket.
• In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 provides 3 detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
• Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your clients are and how they’ve done business with you.
• Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
• XML RSS Feeds. Automatically update site visitors, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
• Optimized For The Most Recent WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create visually enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
• Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is currently available in more than 15 languages, with more translations coming soon.
• Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides a CSV-based importing feature that lets you easily upload bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, tickets, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terminology, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
• Event Venue Management. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows details about venues to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform users of the location of your event. The venue record has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue web address, phone number, venue address, Google map, etc. You can also list venue profiles in different areas in your theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
• Automatic Updating. Event Espresso offers simple one-click updating to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
• Team Member Management. Save time and keep your data organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
• Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can also customize the page templates to display events in your own unique way.

Extra features include:

• Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most WordPress users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 makes possible more complex enhancements and customizations to the software.
• Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular site visitors whenever you need to make changes on your website. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
• Flexibility, Autonomy And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their site, 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 mission, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.

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

• Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in notification emails and email newsletters.
• Default surcharge (similar to adding a service tax to tickets).
• Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.

Event Espresso Add-Ons

As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the functionality of events.

Some of these add-ons include:

• Events Grid Template Addon: 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, it will use a default image.
• Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months ahead. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
• Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur in a certain date range.
• EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add 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 booking.
• Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files addon lets you bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
• Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add-on is suitable 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 promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
• Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
• Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
• EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track bookings, and accept payments from your website.

Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.

For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Plugin

Users – Testimonials

Here are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have written 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

”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design

”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.

Event Espresso Tips

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

After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your registrants.

Plugin Support

Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its users 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

Event Espresso provides robust support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.

In addition, Event Espresso boasts an established team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run your events.

Event Espresso Cost

Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:

• Personal License – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
• Everything Edition – This lets you install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
• Developer License – This license lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons 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. Presently, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management

Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review 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 software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.

Use the plugin’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.

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

Our Recommendation

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 site and you currently run any event that involves scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.

For complete details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management

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