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.
$79.95
per year
Splash
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Splash aims to get event programs in front of the right people by helping users create engaging, branded experiences and optimize conversions at each stage of the event lifecycle. Leverage accurate, visible data for seamless follow-ups and reporting. Empower teams to execute events that bring in more leads, shorten the sales cycle, drive new business, and strengthen customer relationships.
Splash is an event marketing platform that helps teams do all of this by building and hosting…
$0
Pricing
Event Espresso
Splash Event Marketing Platform
Editions & Modules
Personal Support License
$79.95
per year
Everything Support License
$299.95
per year
Free: For Personal Use and Occasional Small Business Events
$0.00
Basic: For Individuals and Small Teams
$12,500.00
per year
Pro: For More Design and Access Control
$19,500.00
per year
Enterprise: For Solutions and Workflows at Scale
Let's Talk
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Event Espresso
Splash
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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To understand more about what features are included in each Splash plan, head over to our website for a full breakdown.
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.
Compared to platforms like Eventbrite, I have a hard time recommending Splash to anyone and think if we weren't forced into using it because of our involvement with Hubspot User Groups, we would not be using it. I think if the usability and other bugs could be improved along with support, then Splash could be great for small to mid-sized businesses that occasionally run events that they need 1) hosted all in one place and 2) consistent, custom branding. Or if you're running small events where you simply need a custom designed sign-up page, a reminder email and a check-in app, Splash could work for you. While they're not transparent about their business pricing, I'd have to see that before deciding whether it is truly worth it for this purpose.
Branded Templates: With the Pro account, Splash takes your brand guidelines, fonts, logos, colors and creates customized event templates for your most frequent types of events making it easy to create new events that align with the experience of your brand.
Customer Service: Any time I have a problem, my Account Manager (Matt!) always has a solution. Whether it be a glitch in the page, an integration problem, or suggesting new ways to use the system. I'm never left stranded, which when you work in eight time zones, matters.
Ease of Backend Use: I've used other start-up event management softwares which are painful to use on the back end, buggy, and not intuitive for a non-coder. Splash is extremely easy to use and customize, which makes working with the system enjoyable.
Low Ticketing Fees: One of the main reasons we decided to upgrade to the Pro account is because we were hosting more ticketed events. As a non-profit, ticketing fees make a difference to our donations. Not only did Splash provide the other benefits mentioned above, they were the most competitive on credit card fees and integrated into our donation software system.
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.
When designing a landing page for an event, the functionality of the layout page is quite finicky. I would love to see the ability to add features to certain text boxes become more fluid.
The formatting across the layout page is not always consistent, specifically text sizing.
I had an issue with an account, and the support team took an extremely long time (2+ months) to produce a remedy for the issue I was experiencing.
We love working with our account manager and priority support to answer questions efficiently and speedily. Our account manager works with us on larger and bigger picture initiatives for our instance, where the priority support is always there when you're stuck with a feature or setup, it's been great to share this resource with our global network of hosts internal and external to the company.
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.
[We selected Splash based on] Looks and functionality. It's the best of both worlds. Every other tool we found was good at one but not the other. I hope Splash stays on the path it's on as it really makes all the right improvements to be such a powerhouse tool.
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.
It helps me manage a number of events that I would not otherwise be able to make invitations for, manage rsvps, and do check ins. We used a more expensive product previously but it had fewer features so this is definitely an upgrade.
Using Splash saves me time from needing to follow up with guests. I also love the "send later" feature for email.
The support staff make this product super valuable as I am able to accomplish more with their help.
