Likelihood to Recommend Well suited for sessions and events information with the exception of large white space areas when viewed. Depending on how your organization is set up the only "less appropriate" area for us would be the actual accounting side, but that is because our accounting department prefers to maintain invoices, etc out of their own system. However, the invoices provided by A2Z does aid them when the are reconciling to their own system
Read full review As far as I have found, Event Espresso has no peer. Yes, there are other WordPress plugins that provide for event registration, including a few available through Code Canyon, but none of them promise the rich feature set and robust support of Event Espresso. It seems to be the only real game in town, but luckily it's a good product. It's highly extensible, so it should scale well to any size or type of event. Through add-ons, it's doubtful there is an event scenario it can't handle. And because it runs on WordPress, you can incorporate it as part of your site--the plugin even does a good job of picking up design cues from your theme, or you can customize it using CSS.
Read full review Pros Very easy for the exhibitors and the attendees to navigate the floor. It looks very crisp and is easy to print. The online exhibitor search field is awesome - so easy for our attendees to map out who they want to visit. The support team is very responsive and the training opportunities are flexible. Read full review Instead of sending traffic to a third party, Event Espresso allows us to integrate our registration straight into our website. Easy to set up, dependable platform, and a variety of payment channel alternatives. Read full review Cons Coming from software where I had a huge amount of access to the "backend", it would be nice to be able to manipulate areas of the Exhibit Floorplan a little easier with regard to items like tables, chairs, stages, etc. Maybe add some icons that could be pasted into the floorplan for faster success? The agenda within A2Z does not give you the ability to host on your own conference site. The agenda view is sometimes perceived as being too long, there's a lot of extra "white space". Read full review Integrating account creation with WordPress should be included in the core product, not an add-on. It's extremely frustrating to have to pay extra for that, especially when that add-on is not as flexible as it needs to be (for example, if someone is enrolling for a class on behalf of someone else). The data visualization is a mess. That feature doesn't seem to ever work and it should be left out until it does. The ability to show participant data on the front end is extremely limited. Event Espresso does provide a few hooks and some limited documentation on this feature, but I feel it should be more robust. Perhaps that can be a focus of future releases. Read full review Alternatives Considered A2Z is so much better than ExpoCad. It is easy for the exhibit sales team to use and it is easy for the attendees and vendors to use. Pulling the program book is a cinch now. I don't understand how people still use ExpoCad?!
Read full review I looked at EventBrite, but it wasn't customizable enough for our needs and didn't provide the level of integration with our website that I desired. I also looked at the ticketing system offered by The Events Calendar for WordPress (by Modern Tribe), but it too lacked the feature set we needed. Only Event Espresso offered all the features, customization, and integration we desired and needed.
Read full review Return on Investment Positive - it provides one place from which primary players in the conference could pull information. A2Z maintains consistency and lowers the discrepancy issue when everyone tries to keep their own little database. Positive - Time Saver. No negative that I can recall. Read full review Event Espresso has literally changed the lives of our volunteer organization, saving hundreds of hours of time and eliminating the frustration of paper enrollment. The add-ons allow you to accomplish just about any event registration goals you might have. It's an extremely powerful product. Integrating the plugin into our website was a breeze, and it's approachable enough where volunteers can create the classes and conduct the online enrollment all in a web browser. Read full review ScreenShots A2Z Events by Personify Screenshots