Do you currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, non-profit fund-raisers, social functions, or even a large-scale event such as a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event sign-ups can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, participant numbers, data administration, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate previous events, give you more control, create a better customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can install an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily set up your event and begin accepting online registrations in minutes.
Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online registrations
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use various event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the plugin is being redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here: Event Espresso
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many benefits 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 current online presence 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 seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event participants to perform the enrollment process on their own.
Letting your clients to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more resources on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third party service. The cost is kept low through a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy addons only when you need additional features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event signups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with friends who may be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process remains wholly online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique built-in to WP users. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times 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. Attendees can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money prior to running your events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration information for any added attendees.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily by pre-configuring default pricing.
- Discount Codes. Set up promotion and discount codes to encourage visitors to register now, or simply make your offers more appealing for others. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your clients are and how they’ve done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. You can also specify that wait-listed attendees pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Keep your users updated about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider audience with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop your event page over multiple sessions without publishing it to your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule to publish your event at a later time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used throughout Event Espresso, including currency name, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the data gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, planning new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add graphic images and stylize your event descriptions without having to learn HTML or CSS, just like any other WP post.
- Automatic Software Upgrading. Event Espresso provides simple one-click updates to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your software installation up-to-date with new versions of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your website visitors can tell others about your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Transaction Reporting. Event reports gives you data of all the registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 permits more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: 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 mission, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in notification emails and email newsletters.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse a group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow plugin users to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons 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 an event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events manager add-on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can add as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of your 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 be customized to display an event thumbnail instead of a date.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give 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 fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Users can also view past events and make payment for future events.
- Seating Chart Addon: 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 offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues right from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on gives you the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you 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. Attendees 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 Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on gives you an easy-to-use system that lets you 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 lets web developers design custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Addon: 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 event attendee data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Manager Plugin
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
“EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
“This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
“I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, concert planner, or event management professional, there are just 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 support forum for new ideas and practical ways to improve your event management workflow or improve the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress development guidelines. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as many of its users confirm:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
The plugin provides incredible support including access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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.
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 depend on to manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you should consider downloading one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This option lets you run Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 32 Premium features, 5 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $99.95.
- Business License Edition – This lets you configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 32 Premium features, 14 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $199.95.
- Developer License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 32 Premium features, 18 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $549.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about issues and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
[su_shadow style=”right”][su_panel shadow=”none”]
Do You Need Help To Manage Your WordPress Site?
The WordPress Maintenance Plan will take the stress out of running your site, allowing you to take care of business…
[/su_panel][/su_shadow]
Disclaimer: This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product images used in this review have been sourced from the plugin’s own website.
