Event Espresso vs. Eventbrite vs. RingCentral Events

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.

Incentivized

We're a nonprofit organization so we have a very lean time, labor, and money so the super easy self-explanatory nature makes it easy for our team to admin an event. The simple UI [of Eventbrite] keeps our focus on the event and avoids any headache-inducing tech hurdles. There're just enough user roles to handle multi-staffer admin. A less appropriate situation is an event that is huge in complexity with a custom workflow and processing which Eventbrite's not built to handle in-house such as multi-step registration, multiple item and category all-select options during registration, multi-event type (not just physical or ticket but virtual goods tracking), more HootSuite-like social media refinery, etc.

Incentivized

Hopin is very suitable for large events involving 100+ people where there are only a couple of people speaking. You can have a bunch of features such as networking and all in all, is quite a professional experience to use. For smaller groups, It takes too much effort to set up and isn't worth using over Google Meet or Zoom.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Event management--providing a detailed description of the event (date, time, place) plus details of the event (speakers, topic, sponsors, etc.)
• Registrations--provides enough details about people who register, and tools to manage those registrations (add people manually who didn't pre-register, cancel orders, check-in of attendees)
• Event promotion--events created using Eventbrite can be found by searching Eventbrite for local events

Incentivized

• Awesome for managing several sets of panelists
• Very easy to manage event attendees
• Love the chat functionality during the events, enabling the audience to connect with each other
• Hugely simple for anyone with little tech knowledge to design and run an event
• Cost effective for the volume of events we run, where we need scale and quality
• Live streaming an event is also very well catered for
• Branding across the platform is simple to implement

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• I'd like to see Eventbrite add more customization to the event page layout. It would be nice to be able to differentiate our event through more specific design.
• I've had occasional problems with email formatting in the Eventbrite email builder. It would be nice to have a slightly more trustworthy builder.
• Other than those two things, I think Eventbrite does exactly what it needs to do.

Incentivized

• The biggest hangup we've encountered is from guest speakers who need to join us on either tablets or smartphones. Hopin doesn't play well with mobile devices for onscreen guests.
• I'd like to see the broadcasts in vendor booths be recordable in the way broadcasts in the sessions or on the stage are.

Incentivized

Excellent platform and easy to use to create events. Eventbrite sets the standard for simple, effective and safe ticketing platforms. Our customers trust Eventbrite and we've always done well when we use this platform for ticketing. They have recently updated some of the virtual connectivity tools which make it even easier to set up and promote virtual events.

Incentivized

We most likely will, but with such a high annual renewal rate, we are forced to look at alternative solutions yearly when that license fee comes due

Incentivized

Great platform with so many incredible features. It streamlines workflow, communication, messaging, and analyzing data. I know of no other platform that can do what Eventbrite can do for the price or user-friendliness. They also offer great support for new users and integrate well with other platforms (i.e., social media and Sched).

Incentivized

I'm a pretty tech-savvy person but I still feel that Hopin was pretty user-friendly even for those of you who are less tech-savvy. Great thing is, you can play around and test the platform with the free version which allows you to get familiar with it before committing to the paid. I learned most of it on the free version which then made me more confident when deciding to use the paid version. Not only did it help me on the setup side, but it also proved to me that this was what we needed to do what we needed to do.

Incentivized

I haven't yet needed to contact customer support, but the information provided next to the various features has been exceptionally helpful. This info is located just to the right of most options, and it provides answers to frequently asked questions. At this point, that information has been enough to keep me from having to contact anyone.

Incentivized

For the most part you're able to get a response from a support person within a few minutes, but there was a stretch when Hopin was reshuffling its staff that it sometimes took 24-48 hours, which is too long. However, as long as the staff remains stable - which seems likely - then its Support team is usually quite responsive.

Incentivized

Just jump in, don't over thinking it, doing it will net the very few basic questions you'll have. There's not much complexity so one doesn't need to plan as if moving a canal. It's as simple as can be.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

My "go to" for event registration has always been Constant Contact because they don't charge additional processing fees above the standard transaction. If it's a more basic event where I just need to capture name, email, and payment, I'll continue to use Constant Contact over Eventbrite. However, if it's more complex and requires marketing, I would choose Eventbrite.

Incentivized

We were with a company before Hopin - we explored elsewhere due to cost. Pros were design and custom look. We moved to Hopin, it was innovative at the time, although the design wasn't strong the features were. The majority now have the same features. So we did leave Hopin for another platform again because we wanted a custom look, and we were preparing for hybrid. Hopin wasn't ready. We soon realised other platforms we came across are complex, difficult to use. We left and came back to Hopin.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• A dedicated URL for each event has been easy to use for tying events to editorial content, promotion and marketing.
• For ticketed events, it has been an easy -to-use system without requiring a lot of training on a complicated technology. It is also competitively priced for transaction management.
• Whether we have discovered any Eventbrite users via the Eventbrite site promotion, we appreciate it as a recommendation of our event for like-minded event attendees.

Incentivized

• Without Hopin, it would have been impossible to host an event at the scale and user interface that we did, with the staff limitations we have. Hopin enabled us to execute a very high standard with limited resources. For example, before Hopin, we could only attract about 100-200 attendees. With Hopin, we 3x our registrations and attendees.
• The data collected from their system on attendees allows us to more accurately speak to our target market based on their tracked habits during the event.

Incentivized