Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, community courses, charity fundraisers, social events, or even a large-scale event like a festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You may have to co-ordinate scheduling, availability, registration numbers, data collection, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily reproduce recurring events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
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Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule your event and begin accepting online bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich application that gives you complete control of 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 ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
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 existing website into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to complete the enrollment process themselves.
Allowing your customers to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more resources on delivering a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy optional add-ons when you need new functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event sign-ups 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is performed wholly online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data collected from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up as many different types of tickets as you need and set different prices, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Registrants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, enabling you to collect money prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and reuse attendee data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spamming and bots making false registrations by using reCAPTCHA option to validate human activity.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or sending in paper-based forms for manual processing later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t attend your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your event pages by allowing potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for comments are configured via the WP commenting settings.
- Keyword-Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links that include topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your content and is favored by search engines, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your website.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is being translated into 15+ languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Upload Event Data. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing feature that allows you to easily import a lot of event data at once. You can export, edit and upload data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WordPress Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add photos and stylize your content without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post or page.
- Automatic Software Updating. Event Espresso provides simple 1-click software upgrading to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation compatible with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential customers who have not paid yet for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance they owe, and include links to the event details, a payment link and a url where they can download the invoice.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your customers’ records; who has enrolled, which event they have registered for and what amount they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a CSV file for additional uses, send customized payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers on a person-by-person basis or all at once.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to site visitors.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular and highly efficient 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+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to browse for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to your special events. Members can also enter personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and make payment for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Versions: This add on lets you involve staff 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 your staff can help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multi-Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees the ability to book 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 shopping cart. With the Multi-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.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories using a nice graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track registrations, and accept payments from your web site.
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 here:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that customers have written 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
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, show promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the forums for tips and practical ways to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great 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 robust support including access to a support forum, in-depth 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 WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to manage your events.
Software Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license option allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This edition enables you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration Plugin For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Look up the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about bugs and share feedback.
For all 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 booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you currently run events that involve managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
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