Several pre-sale questions

[Quimbly]

I am comparing your products to Zap Calendar, a premium Joomla extension. I’m comfortable with both Joomla and WordPress. so my decision will come down to calendar features. Looking at the differences, it seems that Zap Calendar is a way better value, as it seems to have a lot of functionality that’s not present with your plugin suite, and at maybe a third of the cost! All that said, I would probably prefer to work in WordPress, so I’d like you to sell me on the features that your products have in comparison.

Below are some of the features I’m interested in. Please comment on whether or not there is a workable solution with WordPress and your products, or if there is a comparable feature in Events Calendar Pro or one of your plugins:

1. Event comments: I want my visitors to be able to leave comments about each individual event. Zap Calendar has a free plugin for this. Ideally, when leaving a comment, users could opt-in to receive email updates when someone else comments on the same event.

2. Social Media posting: Zap calendar doesn’t have a plugin for this specifically, but they describe a way to automatically post events to Facebook using the free Twitter Feed service. Could something similar be done with the Events Calendar? I believe Zap Calendar uses an RSS feed to accomplish this feature. Are RSS feeds generated for the Events Calendar?

3. Social Media “likes”: Zap Calendar has a plugin for adding social media “like” / share buttons on each event. Is there a way to include something similar on each event page using the Events Calendar?

4. RSVPs and Email reminders: Zap Calendar has plugins that allow users to RSVP for an event and also to send them email reminders close to the event date. Is there similar functionality for the Events Calendar?

5. Email subscriptions: If I understand it correctly, Zap Calendar has a plugin that allows visitors to subscribe to event categories and receive email updates when a new event is posted in that category. Do you offer a similar feature?

…And finally, some questions about your pricing and policies:

6. Do you offer a discount for purchasing multiple The Events Calendar Pro bundled with several plugins? I’m thinking I would need at least the following: Events Calendar Pro, Event Tickets plugin, Community Events plugin, ICAL Importer plugin, Facebook Events plugin, and Filter Bar plugin.

7. I’m getting a total cost of $365 for a personal license only. Zap Calendar is charging $119 total, with all plugins included for free. Tell my why it’s so much more!

8. How does your refund policy work?

Thank you!
– Quimbly

I love the Facebook events import plugin you have. That looks awesome That’s something I don’t see that in Zap Calendar.

Looking forward to the feedback, so please respond.

Thanks!

[Nico]

Hi Quimbly,

Thanks for reaching out to us, and for your interest in our products, I’ll try to answer all your questions so you can decide which plugins/platform works best for you.

1. Event comments: I want my visitors to be able to leave comments about each individual event. Zap Calendar has a free plugin for this. Ideally, when leaving a comment, users could opt-in to receive email updates when someone else comments on the same event.

You can enable WordPress native comments for events, just like you do so for other content types such as posts. You can also use some advanced comments plugin, that’s your choice.

2. Social Media posting: Zap calendar doesn’t have a plugin for this specifically, but they describe a way to automatically post events to Facebook using the free Twitter Feed service. Could something similar be done with the Events Calendar? I believe Zap Calendar uses an RSS feed to accomplish this feature. Are RSS feeds generated for the Events Calendar?

This is not built into the plugin but there’s a feature of JetPack called Publicize that does exactly what you describe with various services (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, etc). You can also find different WordPress plugins to do so.

3. Social Media “likes”: Zap Calendar has a plugin for adding social media “like” / share buttons on each event. Is there a way to include something similar on each event page using the Events Calendar?

Yeap, the answer is very similar to #3. This can be done by JetPack or other third-party plugins. Check this knowledge base article for more info on this: Adding social media sharing to events.

4. RSVPs and Email reminders: Zap Calendar has plugins that allow users to RSVP for an event and also to send them email reminders close to the event date. Is there similar functionality for the Events Calendar?

Partially, RSVP is a feature of Event Tickets (free as The Events Calendar), it doesn’t include a remider email but you can export the attendees list and and import it into an email marketing system like Campaign Monitor or MailChimp, where you can set reminders up for your ticketed events. You can also craft some custom code to achieve this.

5. Email subscriptions: If I understand it correctly, Zap Calendar has a plugin that allows visitors to subscribe to event categories and receive email updates when a new event is posted in that category. Do you offer a similar feature?

Yes, users can subscribe to the different RSS feeds and they’ll get noticed of new events by email, using a service like Blogtrottr, FeedBurner, etc.

…And finally, some questions about your pricing and policies:

6. Do you offer a discount for purchasing multiple The Events Calendar Pro bundled with several plugins? I’m thinking I would need at least the following: Events Calendar Pro, Event Tickets plugin, Community Events plugin, ICAL Importer plugin, Facebook Events plugin, and Filter Bar plugin.

We are developing bundle discounts for our website, but they are not still ready. If you ask for this via Twitter DM or email to support at this domain, you’ll surely be given a coupon 😉

7. I’m getting a total cost of $365 for a personal license only. Zap Calendar is charging $119 total, with all plugins included for free. Tell my why it’s so much more!

Regarding princing we’ve been putting a lot more development into the plugin over the past few months than we had in the months / years beforehand. We’re on a release cycle that has us pushing out code on a near-monthly basis, and are just released out a major release (version 4.0). As we’ve built a bigger team and started doing more intense development in faster release cycles, the operating costs associated with managing/supporting the plugin have admittedly become higher than where they were before. In order to continue to keep our existing plugins competitive, to deliver awesome support + to add new plugins to our suite, we’ve unfortunately found it necessary to increase license costs for customers. We try to offset this for existing users by offering them a discounted rate on renewal, and if anyone ever tells us that the license cost is truly a hardship for them to come by, we’re always able to find a way to get them the plugin regardless.

8. How does your refund policy work?

We have a 30-day full refund policy: if you don’t like our product or a feature doesn’t work as expected, you can requst a full refund within 30 days of purchase. You can read more about it in our terms & conditions page.

I think that’s all for now, please let me know if you have any follow-up questions or if you want me to extend a bit some of my answers,
Have a great weekend,
Nico

[Quimbly]

Awesome responses. Thank you!

[Nico]

Hey Quimbly,

You are welcome 🙂

As you marked this as resolved I’ll go ahead and close out this thread, but if you need help with anything else please don’t hesitate to create a new one and we will be happy to assist you.

Best,
Nico

[Author]

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