Likelihood to Recommend 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 When preparing for an event, having online registration is vital to planning. The online registration allows participants to learn about the event, determine their schedule and inform the host of their needs. For planning purposes, there are several helpful reports available through the Eventleaf Online app. This is a great tool if your organization will collect registrations for >50.
Read full review Pros 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 Easy to use: I was a first time user and signing up was super easy. Intuitive: The progam flowed naturally; the order of the tabs and their contents made sense and led me through the process with ease. Comprehensive: While I only used the program to register folks for a fundraiser, it has other options which I will totally use down the road. Read full review Cons 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 Although the registration component is fully customizable, the website itself could be more customizable. It is pretty restrictive on what you can put where. The registration takes a little while to set up depending on how much information you need. It also doesn't allow for repeat fields which makes bringing multiple guests challenging. Read full review Support Rating Great customer service. My colleague reached out for support midway through planning our event and they replied quickly with a thorough solution to our problem
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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 The EventLeaf website made me feel that their product/service was more about my event needs and less about hyping themselves. I found the timely and helpful support from EventLeaf wonderful. The team that presented the live demo were very helpful, answered what might have seemed like dumb questions from me (being new at this) with respect and helpfulness. The ability to customize pricing to the scope and needs of the event we were planning was great
Read full review Return on Investment 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 Eventleaf cut the cost of event management software by nearly $2.5 It has saved us countless hours on the phone with customer care--we spent 10 years with a big-brand event management company which equated to 100s of hours on the phone with customer service. I haven't had to contact customer service yet. Read full review ScreenShots