Event Essentials is great for small businesses

I have really enjoyed working with Event Essentials. They have taken the time to get to know our needs and modified their based products to develop a custom solution that meets our needs. They are

Pros

The main thing I love about this product is how it can be, and has been, customized to meet our needs. I love the ability to automatically have vendor bios (business name, contact information, description of services and products, and a photo) to be automatically posted to a web page once we approve the vendor. I really like the easy to use interface to view and manage vendors. I can quickly find vendors, view their status, make changes and approve or reject them. Our vendors love the "Returning Exhibitor" feature that allows the vendor to submit an application using most of the data they entered on their prior application. This saves them a lot of time.

Cons

The system does not (currently) allow vendors to make changes to content. This requires us to make changes on their behalf. Fortunately, this is not difficult to do.

Event Essentials is THE multi-purpose tool you never knew you needed to have in your event arsenal!

EE is extremely user friendly and intuitive. Without any training whatsoever, I got thrown into EE and surprisingly, navigation was easy and adding information, exporting data, reports, etc. was straightforward and uncomplicated. Considering the sheer size of data over a multitude of areas, it is amazing how simple their program is to use. Besides all that EE has to offer and how they truly work with clients as a team, I have been impressed with their ability to pivot during Covid-19. In the event industry, social distancing is an obvious issue (among many) so we have been continually changing policies, adding new information, etc. and EE has not only responded swiftly in implementing our changes but were crucial in our decision making as well. They were also able to offer extremely helpful advice as well as create new opportunities when the world went on lock down. Overall, EE has been a game changer by creating our different types of computer programs designed to perform specific tasks in a variety of areas. Each with different principle goals that we required our programs to achieve. We are continually impressed with EE’s quality and professionalism and are very happy with their product and customer service. Give them a try and add them as a supplement to your team. You’ll be surprised how much your efficiency will soar while reducing stress. And you will not be disappointed.

Pros

We use EE as our platform for our festival (two-day event w/200,000 + attendees) and it manages three important yet completely different areas for us: volunteers, vendors and our parade. With over 564 shifts in 120 different positions, we rely on EE to manage the 350+ volunteers for our event with additional management of other smaller events associated with our festival offsite and/or before the festival (i.e. Golf Tournament, stages, etc.). In our vendor program, we handle roughly 577 vendors of various types such as Arts & Crafts, food, sponsors, non-profits, etc. EE works with us in creating and implementing all 7 of our vendor applications as well as manages all the information as a result. As for our parade, we average around 75 different entrants ranging from bands and floats to horses and VIPs. It is a varied yet entertaining parade and having EE keep track of each participant is effortless.

Cons

As is the case with anything, sometimes things come up and there isn't a feature or option to capture it on EE. That said, whenever it has happened to us, we let EE know and they immediately come up with a solution(s) and tweak our program. I don't consider this a complete con, though, since events are fluid and as such, the software must be as well and EE definitely works well for this.

The platform is easy to use. It has a lot more features than one at first realizes.

Pros

the customer service is very professional and kind; Customer rep was super helpful at a moment of crisis in our organization. the customizable forms are great. The interface the public sees resembles our website graphics.

Cons

have to wait for centralized staff to do changes --takes more days sometimes than we needed once you are in a doc reviewing an application there is no easy way to proceed to the next one -have to go back to the full menu

It has been a pleasure to work with Event Essentials. They've made our festival management so easy!

It's very easy to use and it integrates well into our current website. Managing festivals used to be a pain. Now, it's a breeze. No more trying to keep track of a bunch of data in different spreadsheets. The Event Essentials dashboard makes it easy to get a quick view of approved vendors, ticket sales and sponsors. And, everything is very automated. When we approve a vendor they are automatically sent an email that provides them with the link to submit a payment. I did my homework before selecting Event Essentials and it paid off! I truly think they are the best value when it comes to event management software!

Pros

It was very easy to get this product customized and integrated into our current website! The Event Essentials team was very responsive any time we had and requested changes that they needed to make. I am very pleased at how much easier it has become to manage our festivals, including reviewing and approving exhibitors, receive payments and selling ticket online. I also love their exhibitor profile feature that allows each exhibitor to have their own bio page. Best of all, their prices were very competitive.

Cons

The only downside that comes to mind is that they are located on the West Coast and we are on the East Coast. Regardless, they have been very responsive and I am amazes at how quickly they respond to any change requests.

Wish we discovered EE sooner!

Tucson Meet Yourself is a Multi Cultural festival that attacks over 120,000 people over the span on 3 days. We host over 60 different food vendors, 160 performers, & 700 volunteers. Event Essentials fits our needs and allows us to use 1 software for multiple components of our sign up/managing needs.Rep is wonderful to work with! I would highly suggest Event Essentials.

Pros

We love how Event Essentials has created a software that is customizable to our specific needs. They are prompt to address the issues that may arise or adjust things that we need changed.

Cons

I can hardly think of any cons. Hopefully this business can grow and expand. I think it would be wonderful for a representative to visit/physically interact each organizations within Event Essentials to completely understand and have a good grasp of what we do.