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 I use TryBooking for all three gala fundraising events. They are well suited to each of these events. My largest gala dinner is 1,600 women at Crown Palladium, which usually sells out in ten minutes. The TryBooking system can handle this onslaught and has streamlined the whole process of ticket purchasing and receipting. Confirmation emails, the creation of guest lists and the collection of data has also been made so much easier with the use of their system.
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 Great at Troubleshooting - can provide quick fix answers over the phone. Great Customer Service - they are always there to answer the phone. Easy to navigate website backend. 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 Would like TryBooking to re-introduce donating fees to NFPs who use their service. The language in the backend of the website is sometimes confusing. Would like more flexibility in the order of how purchasing and data collection happens. 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 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 ScreenShots