Certain Event Automation Software vs. Xola

Certain is great for easy-to-use registration sites. It collects all information and user can upload reports easily. It's great to copy the event if you are doing an annual one where the information doesn't drastically change. I love being able to create the link in under an hour and send it out to all attendees. I can also send one large email out to all participants

Incentivized

Xola is suited for small, medium, and large businesses that handle internet bookings, direct telephone bookings, and concierge/affiliate bookings. It tracks scheduling, payments, affiliate billing, can message customers through SMS or email, can hold notes on clients as any good CRM should, can be automated to do many features through the integration of apps.

Incentivized

• Easy to use and create
• Easy to pull reports once event has been sent to attendees
• Great way to gather a lot of information

Incentivized

• CRM data base.
• Automated texts and emails for reviews.
• Tracks billing.
• Keeps schedule.
• Tracks guides and their availability to be scheduled.
• Quickly adjusts seating and pricing.

Incentivized

• Dashboards: It's quite important for leadership to get a visual of what their event registrants look like (with graphs, for example). Now, Certain does not present a feature to create dashboards, so we have to export their reports and create our dashboards ourselves.
• UX when setting up an event: Now this can be quite complex, as it's not as easy to use or intuitive. Many different tabs with many different sub-items can present a confusing experience for newcomers when building an event.

Incentivized

• Integrating the Viator / Trip Advisor API so that the encrypted customer emails can show up in Xola and the client may be emailed from inside Xola. Viator says that other platforms allow this but Xola is still lagging on this one.
• Some minor tweaks allow the integrated tipping app to append a more customized message.
• Really trying hard to find something else to say because Xola does everything really well.

Incentivized

Sympla or Eventbrite are great for smaller events that don't require a lot of information from your audience or extensive communication from your event owner. They are better suited for those events, since they are easy and quick to set up. Certain comes in for your tradeshows or recurring events, since it presents a calendar view of your field marketing events, as well as full form customization, automation of email sequences, reporting, etc. It's more complex to use, so you might as well hand it over to people who are well used to setting up events.

Incentivized

Xola has many similar features but in the end, the friendly fast 24/7 free always on and always ready to help customer support blows everyone else away. Many times I have found Xola to be able to expedite a customer issue or confusion with software integration or support for their software in a way that saves $$$ because my reservationists can resolve the issue or their confusion and quickly get back to work.

Incentivized

• Certain helps to deliver a great customer experience, since it facilitates automatic email delivery and your company can keep them connected well before or well after an event.
• Certain presents a wide variety of reports, which perfectly addresses any request for visibility coming from your organization.
• Certain's configuration settings are quite complex, so our newcomers are not comfortable using the software at first.
• In case you need a more visual representation of your audience, Certain, unfortunately, does not generate dashboards.

Incentivized

• Increased ROI because of increased efficiencies.
• Increased ROI because helpful and quick 24/7 support via phone or chat when new hires forget their training.
• Increased ROI because billing can be cross checked.

Incentivized