Experience started off well then just got worse and worse

I used this plugin as the booking system on a Woocommerce website whilst using Woocommerce for the checkout functionality. I needed to do this because I’m using GoCardless for direct debit customers. Initially the plugin looked good and the ui is slick but unless you stick rigidly to Amelia’s functionality and behaviour things start becoming difficult very quickly.

A real issue for me was wanting to extract and output specifically selected events in my own ui, like a slider pattern for example. The plugin doesn’t use WordPress custom post types and generates all it’s own database tables so you can’t leverage any WordPress post query functions. This is a massive drawback as you are then let with conjuring complex SQL queries to consult the database directly in order to get anything out.

Another major issue is the integration with Woocommerce. The plugin send booking notifications to customers regardless of the order status. I’ve read several Amelia support advisors saying this is just down to the status rules that can be set in Amelia – as of writing this review THIS IS NOT TRUE. Changing these rules does not affect when booking notifications are sent. The plugin sends booking notifications to customers even if you don’t enter any payment details because the notification is only tied to when someone clicks the ‘place order’ button NOT if payment is received. This has caused huge problems with customers receiving booking confirmations but the website then doesn’t receive payment.

Reporting these issues to support has so far proved pointless. It takes support agents days to respond to messages and the responses are ‘minimal’ in nature to say the least.

Then there are other features which seem quite basic but aren’t available: recurring event dates have to have an end date – you can’t just set them to recur continuously, custom fields can’t be set conditionally, multiple attendees can’t have their own set of custom fields so users have book multiple times for the same course for multiple people, attendance lists can’t be linked to recurring events. The more you use the plugin the more issues you find.

I think the plugin is okay for basic use but if you’re looking to do anything vaguely custom I would strongly avoid this plugin. The poor rating is because I’m so frustrated that the support has been so unhelpful and this plugin has caused me hours of delay and cost.

**** UPDATE ****

It’s now been a month since I posted my review and none of the problems I’ve raised have been fixed despite continual messages to support. They’ve acknowledged the problems I’ve raised and confirmed they are bugs – they’ve yet to do anything about them. It takes anywhere between 2 – 6 days to receive a reply to messages because support don’t work at weekends. So if you send a message on a Thursday you can pretty much guarantee you won’t hear anything until the following Tuesday. Choosing Amelia for my website has been pretty much the worst decision I have made as a developer and a strongly encourage people to avoid this plugin.

• This topic was modified 2 weeks, 3 days ago by kimruddock.