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 Whova was appropriate for the purpose of a health conference. I would recommend the platform to other NGOs considering platforms for their conferences, particularly if engagement is a critical process and outcome of the conference. As a health conference that involved people with living experience of the health topics at the conference, i.e. peer workers, peers in professional roles, people from affected communities, engagement was important.
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 Speakers, exhibitors, and sponsor management (they can enter their own information/profiles!) Webpages get generated automatically for agenda, speakers, exhibitors, and sponsor information entered within Whova! Then, we can drop this information into our website and it gets automatically when something gets updated within Whova (for example, a speaker updates their title Or credentials) 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 Literature and pictures uploaded but no easy way to download the collection. No easy way to access information after the period after the conference ended. No easy way to access the list of participants and contact information - could be pdf'd. There was a little connectivity issues but not much. Some of the meetings were scheduled while we slept. The cost of using Whova for small meetings. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We already registered with Whova for our 2024 event and we will continue to use Whova for the foreseeable future as long as the price doesn't rise too high. It was a bit of a shock to see the difference between last year's price and this year's price - nearly 2k increase! We were able to negotiate, thankfully, to lower the price.
Read full review Usability Most of Whova's functions are intuitive and you can self-teach about 80% of it with ease. I really was impressive with the messaging, follow up meet-up capabilities and sharing of contact information. My only few concerns were about the lack of an archive or back up, [perhaps cloud-based?] of the meeting room and round-table's presentations
Read full review Reliability and Availability We had no availability issues!
Read full review Performance We had no performance issues with our event delivery. We did have some meet-ups that had some glitches for some attendees, but I believe they were quickly resolved and were more on the part of user error than anything. Once they got the hang of it, their meet-ups went more smoothly.
Read full review Support Rating I only had a single issue regarding a photograph that was handled immediately and a colleague somehow ended up with two profiles which was also handled right away. Those two instances are all I have to go by. Other than that it was smooth but I did have ample information regarding who to contact if I experienced an issue
Read full review Implementation Rating I found Whova to be similar to many social media apps that I already use. It was easy to navigate. This was my second experience using Whova in my presenter role. I liked the icebreaker section to connect with other participants before the event started. I look forward to next year’s event.
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 We selected Whova for price, and ease of use. We would have chosen GoToWebinar but they did not have as many options for sponsor recognition. We will most likely use Event Rebels in the future for our needs. Tracking time and sessions viewed is a must for our industry as attendees rely on us to earn CEs to renew their licensing.
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model I especially liked the ease of communication, the ability to ask hard questions easily, and afterward the ability to survey all participants to see what we (and/or Whova) could do better going forward.
Read full review Scalability Everyone on our team had their assigned tasks to complete in Whova on a weekly basis and did so with ease and confidence.
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 I didn't pay to use the technology; was a recipient as a result of attending a conference. HIGH ROI for me as a made a number of new contacts even though I spent the first full day listening to presentations. Having the app allowed me to do the networking I came to do without having to be seated next to the person I wanted to meet. Read full review ScreenShots