Jing
Forum Replies Created
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Anna, I saw that your first post was 2 weeks ago. It took EM more than 1 week to give you a two line response. Is that common for EM?
In addition, Cloudways documentation is the most thorough I have ever seen. They even tell you how to resolve some rare issues caused by WP Rocket, CloudFlare or W3Total Cache with very detailed steps and carefully edited screenshots.
If one day Events Manager could update its online documentation to be as good as Cloudways, I would not be surprised to see its active installation base double.
We ran into some very rare issues. What saved us was the Cloudways team working closely with WPMU support desk. They staid late, and totally resolved our issue via online chat. My cost to obtain such service is a monthly $49 subscription to WPMU and a monthly $20 charge I pay to lease a Digital Ocean server managed by Cloudways. I now feel like having a full function server team on my staff. The ease of mind has never been greater.
And yes, they are 24/7. Everything is done via live chat. Blue Host? Open a ticket. You will be lucky if they somehow look into it in 4-8 hours. Siteground? They promise someone will look into it for you. But don’t count on that promise to be serious.
With Cloudways, we are able to get the same performance and support with a 2GB server from Digital Ocean that runs our new site faster than the 8GB server InmotionHosting provided. The secret is Varnish Cache. We only pay $20 / month. Whenever there are issues, Cloudways team is online to answer 24/7. They auto back up for us everyday.
Yes, I only need to pay $20/ month. If I switch to AWS, my cost would rise to a “whopping” $22. And the entire change could happen in Cloudways within about 15 minutes. A complete layman like me could complete such a migration and make it seamless to my users without any glitch.
Hostiso always troubleshoot for us without any charge. So does InmotionHosting and Cloudways.
Blue Host model is really outdated.
Siteground brags about its Cache solution. But we found Cloudways offer so much more by charging so much less.
We tried many hosts including Blue Host.
I strongly recommend exploring other hosting solutions. 2 hosters I strongly recommend:
1) Cloudways. That is someone we use now. They do not do advertising. They allow you to choose servers fro AWS, Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, Vulture and Linode. They at the same time provide 24/7 management service. Whenever you have issues, they are online to help you out.
2) Hostiso. They do not advertise either. This is a team that understands WordPress and anything involving PHP inside out. We tried to move away to Siteground and Bluehost when using Siteground. Within days we begged to return. Each time, they helped us migrate back without any charge. We finally moved to Cloudways because it is even better and cheaper.
We also tried InmotionHosting which is not bad at all.
In comparison, Bluehost is not good at all in customer service. Nor is Siteground. Inmostionhosting and Hostiso will answer any of your tickets within 2 hours. Cloudways is a service in its own league. I would explore moving away instead of wasting time talking to Bluehost.
I have submitted a request to Wisdom Labs to get a quote for their customization work.
They charge a minimum $1000 to custom Events Manager.
I am sure Events Manager could do it far cheaper and better. I just do not have a place to submit such request. Our question is still not answered after 3 days.
Jing
Yes.
So Patrick, to clarify, in your test machine, you see something similar: The search box did not do anything for you?
I had done it without the [event_list] shortcode (my second one), the search box is not doing anything in that scenario too.
This is very mind boggling in that search box should come out function well out of box. I checked their demo site, the search box is clearly working there.
Jing
Patrick,
We tried the following:
1) In the setting, choose Include Search in the event page – that did not work.
2) only use a search box – That did not work.
3) use 2 short codes – still did not work.
We are wondering what else we should try.
Jing
Patrick,
Understood.
What we want and love is the same. We love EM being so easy for developers to work with. It has far superior integration with many very popular WordPress modules including BuddyPress and the Newsletter plugin.
And we want EM to become even more successful, which is the best long term insurance policy for our investment.
Thank you for the offer. I take it. That is so kind of you!
The out of box feature we need is simple: how to make the search box work. This is our screenplay:
After adding a search box with the short code, it does not seem to do anything except for redirecting pages. We believe the search box should work out of box. We must have done something wrong with out settings, but we do not know which part:
Jing
Patrick, points taken.
It does not change the fact that the wait we are experiencing is much longer than we are used to with WordPress premium plugins.
What we need is a short answer to make what should be an out of box feature work. You should also see that the answer did not provide specifics on where and how we can start.
EM is short changing itself. In my opinion, this is a product that has a unique edge over Events Calendar. Its killing feature is out of box integration with BuddyPress and Multisite. A user can do RSVP right at the BuddyPress Group Event Tab. EC design is a lot more clumsy.
One EC module costs more than the entire EM Pro. Yet, that gives EC money to invest in its customer support. We never had to wait long for EC to come back to us with any questions.
Stephen, you are absolutely right.
We bought the pro version. We then invested in Events Calendar. We bought 5 premium modules of the Events Calendar. Events Calendar is an amazing product with outstanding support. Yet 4 months after that, we have decided to switch back to EM because EC does not have some of the critical features.
Yet, we now have a very small technical confusion. I am posting like crazy every place I could find. 2 days ago I received some very terse answer from EM saying the feature is not available. I know that. We have developer who can code around it. Then I asked what we could do. Since then, not a single line of reply from EM.
For each EC module, I paid 89 dollars – 147 dollars. It was killing us. Yet the 75 dollar EM should be able to do more than the 5 EC modules combined and the integration should be far superior.
Yet, EM’s support model is not only killing us customers but also itself. It is not only leaving money on the table but pushing money to its competitors.
Patrick, to be honest, Events Manager can be much more successful if they raise the price and invest the extra revenue to beef up its support.
The issue we asked about should be something very basic. The searchbox should work out of box. We must have done some setting not correctly. Such an issue should be resolved in 3 hours.
We have been scrambling to post everywhere for advice. The documentation is not clear and confusing. Events Manager is pushing many of its customers to its competitors like Events Calendar. Events Calendar is far more expensive. Although Events Calendar lacks integration with BuddyPress, its support model runs circles around Events Manager.
Patrick, That is exactly the confusion we have.
We added the shortcode which displayed a search box that is doing nothing for us.
See the screenplay.
Patrick, I did. I am a pro version user. I have posted my questions on the pro forum. The response is slow compared to what other wordpress plugins forums. That is why I am posting everywhere.
Events Manager has a great functional design. Yet, its support model has rooms for improvement.