CrowdCompass vs. RingCentral Events vs. Whova

CrowdCompass was the best part of Cvent each time I used it, from the ease of use to the customer service and handholding. I would recommend it for anyone using Cvent Event Management for an in-person event. I know Cvent just rolled out their virtual event hub though, so for virtual and hybrid events that are employing the Cvent family of tools, I would probably say CrowdCompass is unnecessary.

Incentivized

Hopin is very suitable for large events involving 100+ people where there are only a couple of people speaking. You can have a bunch of features such as networking and all in all, is quite a professional experience to use. For smaller groups, It takes too much effort to set up and isn't worth using over Google Meet or Zoom.

Incentivized

I think it works really well as a way to organize yourself while at a conference. As well, to network with said attendees I found it very valuable to remember names. Having an automatic rolodex with everyone I met and ensure I had their info to connect later

• Provides attendees with their personalized schedules at their fingertips.
• Facilitates networking through the ability to set appointments and send messages with other attendees, and inspires competition with The Game and Click challenges.
• Gives attendees the ability to view handouts, take notes and download the information to their personal computers when they get back to their offices.

Incentivized

• Awesome for managing several sets of panelists
• Very easy to manage event attendees
• Love the chat functionality during the events, enabling the audience to connect with each other
• Hugely simple for anyone with little tech knowledge to design and run an event
• Cost effective for the volume of events we run, where we need scale and quality
• Live streaming an event is also very well catered for
• Branding across the platform is simple to implement

Incentivized

• facilitated the sharing of research, perspectives, and resources on topics of interest
• enabled easier connection to new and existing relationships with conference delegates and speakers
• allowed me to catch up on content I missed due to time conflicts for concurrent sessions

• Last year, the gamification did not allow much customization, which was a shame. I hope that by the time I am ready to build my 2020 app, this function has been expanded
• The app to upload/edit push notifications was only available on iPhone so I had to have another team member handle that seems I have an android phone.
• Emails (invites, etc.) often go to junk.

Incentivized

• The biggest hangup we've encountered is from guest speakers who need to join us on either tablets or smartphones. Hopin doesn't play well with mobile devices for onscreen guests.
• I'd like to see the broadcasts in vendor booths be recordable in the way broadcasts in the sessions or on the stage are.

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 have been using CrowdCompass for 3 years and it has all of the capabilities and functionality that we need, it's easy to use, and Cvent is always implementing new features and enhancements to keep up with the latest trends and technology.

Incentivized

We most likely will, but with such a high annual renewal rate, we are forced to look at alternative solutions yearly when that license fee comes due

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.

It is very easy to use as everything is very intuitive. Configurating an app does not take too much time at the end, especially as soon as you already have done one as you can dupplicate the entire content. This is very practical when you use the app for annual events. Also few elements are not updatable once the app is published. Of course you can't change the entire design and the security settings which is a good thing anyway, but the entire content can be updated which allows you to publish your app quite early in advance to boost the engagement without having to wait to have everything in your hands (for instance the speakers bios or abstracts). Plus by adding more content regularly it encourage your audience to come back also regularly to check what is going on before the event.

Incentivized

I'm a pretty tech-savvy person but I still feel that Hopin was pretty user-friendly even for those of you who are less tech-savvy. Great thing is, you can play around and test the platform with the free version which allows you to get familiar with it before committing to the paid. I learned most of it on the free version which then made me more confident when deciding to use the paid version. Not only did it help me on the setup side, but it also proved to me that this was what we needed to do what we needed to do.

Incentivized

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

Have not had any issues with availability

Incentivized

We had no availability issues!

Have had no issues

Incentivized

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.

Once we paid for our apps, I felt like I was left to learn on my own. There are plenty of Help articles available, but no training sessions. I'm a visual learner and having to poke around and use trial and error to build the apps took way too much valuable time away from other parts of my job. It was frustrating and I brought it up with my CrowdCompass contact, but was told that they don't provide any training sessions and if I had questions I should refer to the Help articles or call support.

Incentivized

For the most part you're able to get a response from a support person within a few minutes, but there was a stretch when Hopin was reshuffling its staff that it sometimes took 24-48 hours, which is too long. However, as long as the staff remains stable - which seems likely - then its Support team is usually quite responsive.

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

Our training team walked us through the first set up which really helped me to learn where everything is located as well as all of the features available

Incentivized

Don't wait to register with Apple and Google. You can do a lot of prep work prior to setting up CrowdCompass for integration.

Incentivized

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.

Easier to use interface that directly links with our Cvent registration system. We switched due to this integration, the gamification improvements, the benefits for on-site check-in and session selections, and ease of design/use for our builder team. We have especially enjoyed the New Attendee experience over the look/interface of our previous apps

Incentivized

We were with a company before Hopin - we explored elsewhere due to cost. Pros were design and custom look. We moved to Hopin, it was innovative at the time, although the design wasn't strong the features were. The majority now have the same features. So we did leave Hopin for another platform again because we wanted a custom look, and we were preparing for hybrid. Hopin wasn't ready. We soon realised other platforms we came across are complex, difficult to use. We left and came back to Hopin.

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.

works great no matter what type of program or how many people attending

Incentivized

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

• Positive - CrowdCompass has allowed us to eliminate paper programs thus saving thousands of dollars in printing and labor
• Positive - the ability to send push notifications when there is a change to the schedule is something a paper program could never do
• Positive - adoption rates have been so high we are looking into using the program for more and more events

• Without Hopin, it would have been impossible to host an event at the scale and user interface that we did, with the staff limitations we have. Hopin enabled us to execute a very high standard with limited resources. For example, before Hopin, we could only attract about 100-200 attendees. With Hopin, we 3x our registrations and attendees.
• The data collected from their system on attendees allows us to more accurately speak to our target market based on their tracked habits during the event.

Incentivized

• Whova made our virtual and hybrid events possible! Our virtual attendees loved the ability to interact and engage with each other, the exhibitors, the speakers and organizers of the event. It also allowed our in-person attendees to do the same, and navigate the conference on-site.
• Whova made organizing the conference possible for our small staffed organization! We only have 1.25 FTEs and were able to pull off a hybrid conference in 2022. It wouldn’t have been possible without Whova!

Incentivized