Happy Birthday Event Espresso
The original version of Event Espresso, first named “Events Registration with PayPal IPN”, later renamed to “Advanced Events Registration”, was released on April 20, 2009 and has been rewritten a total of three times since its initial inception, and is now aptly named “Event Espresso”. After three name changes and three complete rewrites, here we are. It all started out as a simple plugin for my wife. All she needed was a way for people to register for her scrapbooking classes and events. I couldn’t find any good plugins that were easy for a non-tech person to manage events and accept payments. So I went ahead and created my own solution.
In addition to celebrating our second year as the premiere events registration and management plugin for WordPress, this month was especially awesome! Thanks to my business partner and long time friend, Garth Koyle, Event Espresso is $40,000 richer. Garth wrote a winning 30-page business plan and gave an outstanding presentation that ended up winning first place–and $40,000–in the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge. This extra money will allow us to spend more time expanding our current services and framework, to bring you the best event registration system for WordPress.
As of January 2011, we had 1400+ purchases of the premium version, and over 15,000 downloads of the free version on WordPress.org. We now have over 18,000 downloads of the free version and almost a 5 star rating! We have been featured on WP Plugins.com, WPCandy (several times), and WPMU.org (two times). This year is also bringing us the first Mobile Ticketing App for WordPress (very excited about this!) In addition to all of that, we have also given out over 200 non-profit discounts to non-profit organizations all over the world.
Last, but NOT least, I would like to give a BIG THANKS! To all of our customers and the WordPress community that have made this an awesome two years. Without YOU and ALL of the wonderful feedback you have provided throughout these past two years, we would all still be paying high fees to Eventbrite and the other companies. This year we plan to make a dent in their pocket books and bring even more features, while still keeping you in control of your data, events, and hard-earned cash!
Please take the time to:
- Share your Event Espresso story with us, using the comment form below or email
- Let us know how Event Espresso has helped you grow your event business or organization
- Tell your friends, your community, your church, or the world about Event Espresso
- Sponsor a WordCamp!
Very exciting, Seth. Congrats on the new funds and your purely accidental fame. Go hug your wife!
Happy Birthday! Congratulations for bringing such a useful product to maturity in just 2 years.
Event Espresso is an essential part of our charity event, which is a mix of a village fete, boat show, camping site craft exhibit and a musical festival. With such a mixed event we were able to quickly create booking forms for each part. All in all a really versatile tool.
Our charity thanks you Seth!
Happy B’Day!