Event Espresso - WordPress Event Management Plugin

Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as workshops, group classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, marketing events, or even a large-scale event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?

Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex process. You will most likely be required to co-ordinate calendar schedules, date availability, attendee numbers, data processing and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event participants.

There are many benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.

The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite expensive.

Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based site, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.

Presenting …

Table of Contents

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration Software

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Registration Software

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily schedule an event and begin accepting online registrations in just minutes.

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

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

Create custom event registration forms

You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.

View detailed information about your event attendees

Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the plugin is being revamped using a different structure to enable future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.

Go here to learn more:

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager And Ticket Registration Software

Benefits

Here are just some 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 current website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.

Better Business Productivity

By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations and signups manually.

Basically, you are facilitating participants to perform the enrolment process on their own.

Allowing your enrollees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more resources on delivering a more unique event.

Full Control Over The User Experience

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

Additional benefits include the following:

Reduced Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only if you need extra functionality.
Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social features and add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may be interested.
Green And Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process remains entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from event participants.

Plugin Features

The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers many unique features to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:

Fast and easy to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using a custom event registration form on your web site to prepare a customized experience for your clients.
WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
Ticket Selector. Present multiple ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the look and control settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
Default Prices. Set up events fast by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows 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 at the door, or sending in paper-based forms for manual submission later.
Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can and can’t attend your events.
Private Comments On Contacts. Record observations about a contact on their profile and how you have interacted with your contacts. Private notes helps you keep a record of when event registrants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
Keyword Rich URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs take advantage of your WordPress Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly web links that use relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more potential customers to your site.
Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing processes, and allows you to automate the 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 tickets and more.
Upload Events. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing capability that lets you quickly import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and upload details about events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
Venue Manager. The venue manager in EE 4 lets details about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays details like venue capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, physical, Google map, etc. You can also display venues on specific parts on your WP theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a particular venue.
Automatic Updates. Event Espresso provides simple 1-click software installation upgrades to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can help publicize your event using social media share buttons.
Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize your page templates to display event information in your own custom way.

Additional features include:

Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows you to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to your visitors.
Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular site traffic when you need to make updates on your site. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 objectives, the software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.

The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:

Duplicating events – streamlines the work of re-entering event details when adding new events.
Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to all tickets).
Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.

Add ons

As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow plugin users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.

Some of these add-ons include:

Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many events in advance as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to browse for events that take place in a certain date range.
Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files addon provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Versions: This add-on lets you include staff in the event management process 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 WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers 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.
Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to edit 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 custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp addon allows you to automatically register participants to a particular mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.

Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.

To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:

Event Espresso

Plugin Users – Feedback

Here are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:

”It’s been very comprehensive and covers exactly the aspects of event registration that we needed for our site plus some features that we didn’t even need but could still use in the future. Very Excellent Plugin!” Tristan Hall, Area 12:2 Youth Group
”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 a gym owner, teacher, concert promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.

After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the support forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management process or enhance the experience of your registrants.

Product Support

Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as so many of its end-users 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 incredible support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.

In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can rely on to organize and manage your events.

Event Espresso Pricing

Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:

Personal Edition – This license lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
Everything Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
Developer Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.

Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso

Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.

Event Espresso – Additional Plugin 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.

Look up the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a particular use-case, or to report issues and give feedback.

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

The Bottom Line

Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands.

If you own a WordPress website and you plan to run any event that involves scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.