Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training classes, charity fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a big event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a complex process. You may have to manage scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered website, you can install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin enables you to easily create multiple events and begin receiving online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased 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 and signups manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to perform the registration on their own.
Allowing your attendees to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more energy on planning a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add-ons when you need additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process can remain wholly online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information obtained from event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WP theme and display events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket price of the system-default ticket.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Set up promotional and multiple discount codes to encourage prospects to make a purchasing decision now, or simply make your offers more attractive for price-sensitive customers. Also useful if you want to increase sales of events close to deadlines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event participants and confirm everyone who attends.
- Admin Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and can’t participate in your events.
- Event RSS Feeds. Provide automatic updates to customers, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft Events. Draft events enable you to build your event page over time without displaying it live on your website. You can keep editing your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event to publish at a future time and date.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in more than 15 languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data collected from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling advanced reports, planning marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Management. The venue management feature in EE 4 lets details about a venue to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform visitors of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes venue information such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, venue address, maps, etc. You can also display all of your event venues in different sections of your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a specific venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, designers, digital marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can engage with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and site visitors can help increase exposure for your events using social share buttons.
- Event Reporting. Quick-view event reports provides you with data of all the registrations and transactions, allowing you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you’ve collected.
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 site visitors.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors whenever website maintenance is needed. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in notification emails and email newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an incredible range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow plugin users to further expand 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 an event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many future events as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can also be customized to show an event thumbnail image instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add-on can display your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- 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 ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your 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 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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to modify the look and feel 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 provided as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on allows you to auto-register attendees to a selected mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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:
User Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman, KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, show planner, or event professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your event customers.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive end-user support, as many of its clients 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
The plugin provides comprehensive support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email support and even a monthly VIP member pass that gives 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
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 should consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This license enables you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest price: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
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.
Use the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about bugs and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and booking seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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