Bizly vs. Whova

1. Bizly is well suited if you're short on headcount resources and are looking for a platform that can assist with the lift of sourcing venues and managing logistics of a venue.
2. Bizly is also well suited when there are pre-defined agreements your organization requires a venue to sign/adhere to. I really appreciated being able to upload those agreements and attach them with any sourcing requests.
3. Bizly is an excellent source of unique ideas and a database to get a sense of properties prior to booking.

The teams functions of Bizly could have been better. Setting up people with different payment options or granting other users permission to utilize the tool was very much a growing pain when we were piloting the program. I'm not sure if those have been addressed since. Their database could be much bigger and would love to see this in international space (at least Canada and the UK for sure).

Incentivized

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.

• Sourcing unique location ideas for events
• Managing numerous bookings on one platform

Incentivized

• 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)

Incentivized

• Slow response rate at times (concierge service)
• No international presence at the time of use

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

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.

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

We had no availability issues!

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.

The Bizly team bent over backward to make sure we were taken care of. As we were one of their larger clients at the time, they listened to product feedback and implemented many of the changes we were hoping to see. They were also quick to respond when I reached out directly.

Incentivized

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

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.

Bizly's concierge service was the differentiator here. The ability to simply send a message to the concierge team with a date, area, headcount, etc. and have them respond with several options was a godsend on numerous occasions

Incentivized

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.

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.

Everyone on our team had their assigned tasks to complete in Whova on a weekly basis and did so with ease and confidence.

• Reduced sourcing time
• Saved research time in looking for locations

Incentivized

• 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.