Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as seminars, community courses, charity fundraisers, corporate conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce previous events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP lets you easily set up an event and begin accepting online bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to allow for 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 retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels 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 improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your resources on creating a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase addons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online bookings 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can be conducted entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you collect from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its customers through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few:
- Fast and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you gather specific information using custom event registration forms on your site to create a unique experience for your event participants.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Set up automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with event registrants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect booking fees before running your events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of the default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track event attendees.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your customers are and how you have done business with your customers. The Contact Profile section stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration details, comments, and more about each registrant.
- Ticketless Events. You can set up events without requiring attendees to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all types of events, not just those that need tickets.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Record notes about event attendees on their profile. Private commenting enables you to keep records of when event attendees contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have assisted your contacts.
- Works With The Most Up-To-Date WordPress Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you create aesthetically enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Country Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue management feature in EE 4 allows information about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform users of the location of your event. The venue profile has many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue details like venue seating capacity, venue site URL, telephone number, physical and virtual location, maps, etc. You can also display venues throughout specific 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 all the events for a specific venue.
- Attendee Records. Manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events like free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize these to help event registrants to find what they’re looking for. You can display all events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 lets you create a log file with debugging data which can be useful for web developers when troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the mission statement on their web site, Event Espresso’s aim 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 as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Add ons
As well as an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to significantly enhance the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- 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 Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays event categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Addon: This add on adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after booking.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on can display your events in a variety of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon 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 allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. 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.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to change 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 allows developers to build custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, 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.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso rocks! I use it for my dance class registrations. Unlike most dance studios where people have to call or send an email in advance, Event Espresso puts a registration form right there in front of the user and allows me to collect valuable information from the user during the registration process with custom questions such as “Do you have previous dance experience?” or “How did you hear about us?”. It also gives my site a professional look and feel.” Ral, Ral’eau Salsa Dance Company
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, presenter, event planner, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow or enhance the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its plugin clients confirm:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides amazing support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to manage your events.
Product License Cost
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This option allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase 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 retails 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 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 Plugin Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its 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 using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your particular use-case, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), booking participants, or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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