Cvent is a cloud-based enterprise event management company with nearly 4,000 employees and over 300,000 users worldwide. Cvent offers software solutions to event planners and marketers for online event registration, venue selection, event management and marketing, onsite solutions, email marketing, and attendee engagement. Cvent's suite of products automate and simplify the planning process to maximize the impact of events. Cvent provides hoteliers with an integrated platform, enabling…
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Event Espresso
Score 9.9 out of 10
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Event Espresso headquartered in Utah offers an event registration and management platform supplying automated help for ticketing and ticket purchases, registration forms and pricing, promotions and correspondences (e.g. email), multiple attendee registration, and other features.
If you have a big event (over 300 people) that requires an app, has a substantial agenda and/or lots of sponsors - then Cvent Event Management is for you. I would never recommend it to a client that didn't have a ton of cash, as it's an expensive asset. If you have a complicated event in any way shape or form, it is a LIFE saver.
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.
Cvent Event Management's platform offers a great way to build out diverse event structures. Their platform is very customizable so it can work with almost any event structure there is.
Their software integrates extremely well together. We use them for our event App and On-Site solutions and being able to have each piece be a one-stop facet is great. I don't have to edit different aspects in multiple different places since they systems all work cohesively.
The customer support is fantastic. Between having our own set team assigned to us for questions as well as various methods to reach out to them through chat, open cases, phone calls and emails, you're always able to get ahold of someone. Whenever I have had an issue that the person I was speaking with didn't have the solution for, they always escalate it until they get the answer for me.
The Exhibitor and Speaker Management tools really help reduce redundancy and keep track of all facets of the event. Especially when there are upwards of 50 of each it can be hard to track all of the elements needed from them. Cvent Event Management allows you to assign tasks to each exhibitor or speaker and can send reminders to those with incomplete tasks.
You have to implement a workaround to use images in your session descriptions.
They tend to add features by acquiring other platforms, but then don't always cleanly integrate them into Cvent itself, so they always seem sort of ratcheted on.
The media and document library is pretty basic, so you need to take extra steps to link PDFs and other documents within the registration process if you choose to host the docs on Cvent.
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.
We are very pleased with the features that Cvent gives us. The ease of use and the immediate support when something does stump us. Cvent provides us with everything that we need to run a successful event. The only reason I did not Rate Cvent as a 10 is the cost
Cvent has a lot of functionality, which can be overwhelming to new users who are not too technically savvy. However, Cvent does a great job of providing tools and support for users to learn and troubleshoot. I also appreciate the work and progress that Cvent has been making in Accessibility.
Cvent does go down pretty frequently. And while it often doesn't impact day to day use usually, if it does go down at the wrong time, you may not be able to access very important event information when you need it. Usually outages do not last very long, but it could still be a very bad situation if this happens at the wrong moment
The company offers 24/7 customer support, including phone, email, and chat support, to ensure that we can get help when we need it. Additionally, the platform has a comprehensive help center and knowledge base, including user guides, tutorials, and FAQs, which help us troubleshoot issues on our own. Cvent also provides training and support resources, including onboarding assistance, live training sessions, and webinars, which help us get the most out of the platform. Overall, Cvent appears to be committed to providing excellent customer support and resources to its users, which can help ensure a positive user experience and successful events.
Our on-site trainer was very knowledgeable in the product and gave us very important pointers on best practices and how to perform tasks in the simplest manner
It would have been nice during implementation if we had received more pointers on how to organize our parked report folders, libraries, etc. to avoid the mess we find ourselves in today. If we had known ahead of time the limitations we could have planned better.
The top reason I prefer Cvent Event Management over NetForum is the customer support. Our Account Manager and Customer Support Staff are in constant communication with us. They anticipate our needs and help us find the solutions. If we don't feel confident in a product, they loop in a specialist to provide training.
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.
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.
