Ticketing Archives | Event Espresso

Event Espresso 4 Feature Showcase: Ticket Quantity, #Uses, Min and Max

Tuesday, September 17th, 2013

At Event Espresso we’re never content with what we’ve already accomplished with online event registration for WordPress. We’re always looking to make improvements so our customers can sell tickets online. There are so many significant developments coming soon to Event Espresso that we wanted to highlight some of the great changes that are on the way.

A New Ticket Selector to Control Every Option

The Ticket Selector in Event Espresso is being completely redesigned. we’ll show you the full redesign later, but just one powerful function will be the ability to control single ticket options.

Part of that redesign includes the power to control the Ticket Quantity, #Uses per Ticket, Minimum Number of Tickets and Maximum Number of Tickets.

Ticket Quantity

WordPress event managers will be able to set how many of each specific type of ticket is available. You may have only one type of ticket, or many different ticket options for attendees. You will be able to offer a limited number of, say, VIP tickets so you can give a certain number of attendees a special experience. You could also limit the number of promotional tickets that are available for sale, and so on. There are a lot of powerful things you can do with setting quantity limits to your online ticket sales.

Pro Tip: We’ll address this again later, but setting quantity limits for individual online tickets will be one form of setting seating limits for your event or venue in Event Espresso.

Number of Uses per Ticket

When you combine Number of Uses per Ticket with our mobile ticketing apps and ticketing add-on, you really become a professional event manager; you also make online event registration a breeze for your attendees. With the Number of Uses per Ticket, you can sell tickets to attendees that can be used any number of times. For example, if want to sell a ticket that will let people return to the same event twice (or more) then you can do that. You could configure your ticket sales so that attendees can reuse one ticket for all the events in your event series instead of having to print off and bring new tickets each time. This also allows you to let attendees use their ticket as a badge. On the other hand, if you want limit how many times someone can go through the food line, then you can do that too!

Pro Tip: What if you want offer unlimited access to your events or unlimited number of uses during a certain time period? Well, you’ll be able to do that too!

Minimum Number of Tickets Allowed to Purchase

It’s obvious that attendees have to purchase at least one ticket to attend your event. But what if you wanted attendees to purchase more than one ticket? You can sell tickets online with WordPress and require that attendees purchase more than one ticket at a time. For example, if you want to sell sponsorships to your event with the requirement that the sponsors purchase more than one ticket for their company, now you can set it up that way. What if you want to sell a family pack of tickets online and offer a discount for purchasing multiple tickets? Well, you can do that too.

Pro Tip: What if you wanted to sell tickets online with tiered pricing? You can now configure the price of each ticket to be different based on the minimum number of tickets they have to purchase. The more tickets you require, the bigger the discount. That’s awesome!

Maximum Number of Tickets Allowed to Purchase

What about the opposite situation, when you knew people would want to attend your event multiple times, but the goal of your organization was to engage with more unique individuals? Now you can specify that someone can only purchase a single (or any maximum you want) number of tickets per transaction. The Maximum Number of Tickets Allowed to Purchase also means you can specify the price of each ticket for a quantity range of tickets (e.g., purchase 5-10 tickets and the price of the ticket is $xx each; purchase 10-20 tickets and the price per ticket is only $x).

Pro Tip: Want to make it less convenient for ticket scalpers to hoard tickets? You can at least get in their way with Maximum Number of Tickets Allowed.

Are you a developer? Are you interested in having early access to Event Espresso 4 for preparing for its release? Take a look at our developer resources where you can request access to our GitHub repo and more.

All these features and more are coming soon to Event Espresso, the best registration and ticketing plugin available for WordPress. These features are in active development and could change between now and the first release. If you have an idea for a feature you’d like to see in the future, let us know! We’d love to hear from you.

Tags: EE4, online event registration, sell tickets online
Posted in Home Page, News, Ticketing, Development, New Versions, Tips & Tutorials | 16 Comments »

Event Espresso Brings Official Integration with Infusionsoft

Friday, June 21st, 2013

At Event Espresso we’re all about making our customers’ lives easier. We know that your time is precious. That’s why we are excited to announce the stable release of our Infusionsoft integration add-on.

Infusionsoft is touted as, “The only all-in-one sales and marketing software built for small business”. Just check out their latest press releases. With Infusionsoft, you can attract customers, automate marketing, close sales, and even sell online. Infusionsoft is designed to meet the needs of small businesses with less than 25 employees. They combine customer relationship management (CRM), marketing, and e-commerce into one, web-based system.

Now, with Event Espresso running along side your Infusionsoft account, you can push valuable customer data from event registrations on your website straight to your Infusionsoft database. No more copying and pasting data. Did I mention the process is automated?

Here is how the integration works:

1. A customer registers for an event on your website and the data is transferred to InfustionSoft.

2. The customer pays for the event using either a built-in Event Espresso payment gateway or your Infusionsoft Merchant account.

3. The customer is shown a payment confirmation back on your website.

4. Once the customer has made a successful payment, the payment record is updated within the Infustionsoft app.

The add-on is included in the Developer License Package, so our Developer License holders can take advantage of this tool today, at no extra charge! The add-on can also be purchased separately and used with any of the other license packages.

Get it here!

Expand your possibilities today with the Infusionsoft integration for Event Espresso.

Tags: ecommerce, sales, Infusionsoft, integration, marketing, crm, customer relations management
Posted in Addons, Registration, Ticketing, Event Registration | No Comments »

Over $20k In Discounts Given To Non-Profits

Thursday, June 20th, 2013

Non-profit

Each of us at Event Espresso loves to help other people and businesses be successful. So, as a company, it’s only natural for us to lend a hand of appreciation to those who do the same. Since December of 2011 we have had the privilege of offering discounts to qualifying non-profit organizations. We have issued discounts to all types of organizations, from human rights groups, to economic development organizations and even political parties.

Non-profits all over the world have saved a cumulative of over $20,000 on Event Espresso products in the last year and a half. We are humbly proud that we have been able to do this. With the power of WordPress at it’s foundation, Event Espresso can help any organization, large or small, be successful in their event registration and ticketing.

A few testimonials…

I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn't have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.

Abdullah J.

My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.

Kelly
College Station Independent School District

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

If you are a non-profit, and would like to take advantage of our non-profit discount, please complete the Non-profit Discounts application, and we will be in touch as soon as possible. If someone you know could benefit from this offering, please pass the message on to them; and how you can help.

Tags: donations, discounts, non-profit, organizations, charity
Posted in Events, Registration, Ticketing, Event Management, non-profit, Event Registration | 2 Comments »

JSON API Plugin Now Available

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

The new Event Espresso API addon allows other applications (other websites, mobile apps, etc) to access your Event Espresso data through an application programming interface (API).

What kind of really useful stuff can I build?

Using the Event Espresso API, you can get information on all events and attendees, and even check attendees in and out of events. Supposing you have WordPress installed and active on mysite.com, once this addon is activated you can send an HTTP GET request to http://mysite.com/espresso-api/v1/events/public to retrieve all the event information from your site in JSON or XML format, which your client application can then use and display however you like. You can access and work with most of the Event Espresso admin features, allowing you to create solutions based on your needs. The API enables developers to build innovative and engaging applications that can interface with any website that uses the Event Espresso plugin for events, classes, meetings, scrapbook conventions, concert ticketing, including:

Mobile applications (e.g. Event Espresso mobile apps)
Custom onsite and offsite calendar integrations
Custom event lists with role based (public/private) access to event data
Custom website app integrations
Role-based access to attendee data
Cached database queries
Offsite registration forms (coming soon)
Ability to create customized analytics

Is the API supported?

Yes, Event Espresso customers have access to our Restful API Codex and support in the support forums. The API is compatible with Event Espresso version 3.1 and 3.2 (coming soon).

How does it work?

The Event Espresso API gives developers a complete API platform for directly accessing data event and attendee data securely and efficiently from outside your web server. All a developer needs to know about is the API Endpoint URL for your site. Example: http://staging.eventespresso.com/testdrive/espresso-api/v1/events/public.pretty_json

How do I get access to the addon?

Anyone with a current Event Espresso Business or Developer Support License or Ticketing addon can download this addon for use on their site, from within their profile/account page.

Is this a replacement for the Espresso Services API?

Yes and No. The current versions of both the Event Espresso iPhone and Android mobile apps CANNOT be used with this API. However, you should have no problems running both API’s side by side. We are working on switching over the iPhone app to the new API as soon as possible. We are also actively looking for someone to help us switch the Android app to the new API. The new Event Espresso iPad app will be available soon.

Why did you create this addon?

We are hoping the addition of this addon will drive developer adoption around for Event Espresso plugin and our community of dedicated users.

Tags: Mobile, applications, api, json, xml, apps
Posted in Addons, Ticketing, Development, API | 4 Comments »

Event Espresso, Johnny Winter sell $35k in less than 48 hours

Monday, February 18th, 2013

We all know Event Espresso can do lots of different types of events. One of the most basic events — by which I mean, one that Event Espresso lends itself naturally to — is concerts and performances. Music venues have a maximum capacity — which can be set with the maximum number of attendees setting — and venue information can be stored in the venue manager and used to provide information and a Google Map about the venue. With the seating chart, ticketing add-on and mobile app, you can sell actual seats and check people in at the door.

One of our users who has been working with Event Espresso for a long time has built a couple sites for a couple music venues in Canada that have really paid off. His name is Mark and he runs Muskoka Graphics, a small design and development studio. His background in the music industry led to some jobs for local venues which ultimately needed to be able to sell tickets online. In the early days, this was handled by a simple, customizable script Mark wrote that would handle the PayPal purchase. But as these websites grew, so did his need for a more robust, reliable platform, and that’s when he found Event Espresso.

Early Event Espresso adoption leads to success

In the early days Mark contacted us often and we saw this as an opportunity to really stress test the plugin for our ideal client — someone running an actual venue on Event Espresso. Mark says the thing he likes most about using Event Espresso is the support. “These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Most of the early issues in those days had to do with scale — these were venues that were selling events out quickly which wasn’t something we had previously had the opportunity to test for. This led to numerous speed and stability enhancements in the plugin. After a while, we stopped hearing from Mark.

So imagine our surprise and enthusiasm when he contacted us to let us know that one of the two sites he’s built using Event Espresso made over $35,000 in less than 48 hours running the latest version of Event Espresso!

World Class Entertainment

Peter’s Players is a small, 88 seat theatre that specializes in world class artists like Johnny Winter, Taj Mahal and John Lee Hooker. The other venue Mark maintains, the Kee, seats 1000 and also brings in top tier artists and has seen Snoop Dogg, April Wine and The Tragically Hip. Says Mark, “I have watched [Event Espresso] perform on my server after a mass email have over 40 people buying online almost simultaneously. I have watched [Event Espresso] sell 1000 tickets in 3 hours. They are rock solid and I trust them with my clients businesses.” Mark uses mostly the out-of-the-box features of Event Espresso — waiting lists, coupon codes & early registration discounts, and invoices — but also takes advantage of the WP User Integration add-on to provide member discounts for registered users.

Powering 100 million ticket sales a year

This is only the latest success story of Event Espresso. Recently, Garth pulled together some numbers based on the User Survey responses we’ve been collecting over the past year. With the user-survey data we were able to estimate that Event Espresso powers over 250,000 events and sells over 100 million tickets per year! This deserves its own blog post in the future, but we thought you’d find it interesting that the example above is not the exception.

Is your business or organization among these? Let us know in the comments! And please share with us your Event Espresso success story, we’d love to hear it.

Tags: tickets, concerts, venue, johnny winter, mark wigston, muskoka graphics, peter's players, event management, the kee, event registration, music venue, concert ticket sales
Posted in Registration, Ticketing, Event Management | No Comments »

Update! iPhone/iPod Touch App, Mobile Ticketing API, and Ticketing Addon

Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012

In order to keep up with the latest, and greatest, changes to the Apple iOS (version 6). We recently launched an update of our own. We completed a major overhaul (mostly performance and stability improvements) of our Mobile Ticketing app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Ticketing addon and the Mobile Ticketing API have been updated as well. Both of these systems have received security and optimization updates.

It is highly recommended that you update to the latest versions of these systems. If you have questions, comments, or concerns. Please let us know in the forums.

Posted in Addons, Registration, Ticketing, New Versions, WordPress Plugins, Features | No Comments »

Using Event Espresso as a Haunted House Ticketing System

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

Event Espresso is a powerful event management and registration system that can be used for many different types of events. It’s been used for everything from Yoga classes to hockey games, but did you know that it can also be used as an onsite ticketing system for your haunted house?

Why go through the hassle when you can manage your ticket sales right from your own website?

The haunted house is fun, and booming, but many haunted houses (like these two based locally in Salt Lake City) waste your money by using a third-party online ticketing system. These third-party ticketing systems tack on a “Ticket Surcharge” or “Booking Fee” for each ticket purchased, in addition to transaction fees that are usually incurred by the company hosting the haunted house company. Not good!

How can Event Espresso help you?

Event Espresso gives you many tools right at your fingertips to handle your haunted house ticketing. Right out of the box, you have access to a registration and payment system through your favorite merchant gateway. Many haunted houses will change their schedules, running more shows/admissions the closer you get to Halloween. With the Calendar add-on, included in all packages, you can let your visitors know what nights your haunted house will be open and let them purchase tickets for the night they want to attend.

Event Espresso - Event Overview 2039 Local Test Site 2014 WordPress

Make your life easier with recurring events!

To make your life easier creating events, you can also use the Recurring Events Manager to create recurring events that happen on a schedule or manually add dates to a recurring series to have more control over the specific pattern of recurrences. Each occurrence is specific for that event date, so you have full control over the number of tickets you can sell and put a limit on the number of registrations if you need to.

What about volume discounts?

With the new Volume Discounts add-on, you can give your visitors discounted rates if they purchase a specific number of tickets.

Check your guests in at the gate

Once your attendees are registered, you can create custom tickets that can be scanned at the door by our mobile ticketing apps for Android and iOS to grant admission.

Don’t believe us that Event Espresso is suitable for a haunted house?

Visit Panic Park in Scottsdale, Arizona, an amazing, five acre scare park that takes place in an abandoned amusement park. Frustrated with having to go through third-party services, they turned, instead, to Event Espresso to power their online ticketing and scan print at home tickets at the door.

Posted in Home Page, Addons, Events, Registration, Ticketing, WordPress, Featured Posts, Event Registration, Tips & Tutorials | No Comments »

How To Sell Season Tickets with Volume Discounts

Tuesday, September 11th, 2012

University of Utah Hockey

Our friends at the University of Utah Hockey needed a way to sell season tickets to the students and local hockey fans. We added the Multi Event Registration addon to their site and helped them customize their Event Espresso installation so they can sell season tickets.

However, they also needed a way to sell the tickets with volume discounts after a certain amount of tickets were added to the customer’s shopping cart. With the new Volume Discounts add-on, a discount is applied to the total amount of the tickets. Volume Discounts allows the team to sell tickets at a discounted rate which works perfectly for people that purchase a season pass to all the games up front. Volume Discounts is currently in beta and will be made available as part of our premium licenses soon, but for now you can download and play with the beta version.

We recommend using categories, so you can assign a volume discount to a specific category, but you can also assign a volume discount to all categories. For their site, we set the discount threshold at $70. Once the total value of the price in the cart hits $70, the total for all tickets is discounted 50%.

To take a look at final result, visit the University of Utah Hockey’s season tickets page. If you are a license holder for Event Espresso, you can learn more about how we set up their season tickets, download the beta version of the plugin for free (for a limited time) and learn about the custom function we added to their site to automatically add 1 seat to all items in the cart, by taking a look at the new Volume Discounts doc here.

Tags: university of utah hockey, volume discounts, multi event registration
Posted in Addons, Ticketing, Tips & Tutorials | No Comments »

Printable tickets updated and included in the Business and Developer Licences

Thursday, August 9th, 2012

Event Ticketing Plugin for WordPress

When we launched the new website we also added a few gems into a few of the licenses. One of those jewels is that our WordPress event ticketing plugin (addon) is now included in the Business and Developer Licenses, at no additional cost.

Our event ticketing plugin gives you the ability to require tickets to your event. After registration, attendees are given a PDF or HTML ticket to print (which can be customized) and bring with them to the event. With our WordPress mobile ticketing apps you can scan the tickets to validate payment and check-in attendees at the door.

Event Ticketing Plugin Updated

We’ve also made some upgrades that include:

HTML-based tickets that you can customize yourself
Print a ticket at home or view it on your mobile device
Venue information and Google Map integration right in the ticket
Upload your business logo to display on your ticket right from the back-end
Support for multiple ticket templates that can be assigned to different events

Our printable event ticketing addon is better than it’s ever been and more affordable than it’s ever been.

WordPress Mobile Ticketing Apps for iPhone and Android Devices

Save More than 57%

Our event ticketing addon sells for $169.95, but it has been included in the Business License for free. That makes the value of the Business License over $425, but it’s all been bundled for only $179.95. This saves you more than 57%, and you can save even more with the Developer License.

If you have the Business or Developer License, download it today from your account page. If you don’t have the Business or Developer license yet, upgrade today.

Do you already use the Ticketing addon? We’d love for you to comment below with how you use tickets for your event, how it helps you and share an example of your sweet new ticket design.

Posted in Home Page, News, Addons, Ticketing, Versions, Licenses | No Comments »

Now Available: Multiple Event Registration Add-on

Friday, May 27th, 2011

We’d like to make a quick announcement that the Multi-Event Registration Add-on is now available for purchase. We understand that it took longer to complete than we wanted it to, and we still have plans for its future, but we couldn’t hold it back any longer. This add-on allows allows attendees to register for multiple events during a single checkout, and even add additional attendees. This add-on makes it easy for your attendees to register by giving them an option to reuse the information later in the registration form if they are registering the same person for multiple events. (more…)

Posted in News, Addons, Registration, Ticketing, New Versions, Event Management, Features | 3 Comments »

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