RegOnline is part of the Cvent Event Cloud, a comprehensive software platform to help you plan, promote, manage and measure your meetings and events. It will be retired December 2019 and from April 2019 new customers will be onboarded to Cvent Event Management.
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Whova
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Whova, headquartered in San Diego, provides what they describe as Intelligent Event Technology Solutions by creating authentic audience participation and engagement and simplifying the entire event process from planning to registration, networking, and follow-up. Whova's mobile engagement apps support both on-location events and virtual events.
RegOnline is a great tool for multi-track events. It is very user friendly and the software makes it easy to set up multiple tracks. It's even easy to check the progress of your event and make changes without impacting the registration process. The ability to collect data that can be taken back to the C-suite is also nice.
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.
RegOnline is able to handle credit card payments, cashing out once per month by sending a check to me (paid to the university) via mail. This was the main reason that we needed the site, and it is it's best feature.
Customizable options were added this year, and though a little confusing at first they have been great at adding additional details in headers on pages (on pages that I formerly was unable to provide additional instructions).
The registration system itself has been useful for managing registrants, and being able to easily update those who still chose to pay 'offline' via check or wire transfer (allowing me to still easily see all paid participants).
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
You can't easily access a registration unless you click on the edit pencil. It appears that the title of the event is linked but if you click on it you always get an error message. This appearance of being linked should be removed because it causes frustration. Same with the event number. It appears to be a link that can be opened but it goes to the same error message.
RegOnline did a big change about 18 months ago which wreaked havoc with registrations. A lot of functionality was lost and it took about a year for them to recover from that. At that time, our education and conferences department got so frustrated, we starting using another registration platform which was not a good experience either and then in early 2018 switched to Cvent.
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 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.
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.
The Department also uses RegFox for training events as well as conferences. One of the main reasons they use RegFox is because of the price, it only charges $0.99 per registration whereas RegOnline charges $3.55 per registration. Because we are a state agency, that can make a big difference to our budget. That being said it is easier to build multi-track events in RegOnline.
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 has been incredibly happy being able to pay on credit card! Prior to RegOnline, our only payment options were by check, money order, or wire transfer. I personally had to deposit many, many more personal checks to the university on behalf of participants. So participants have been happy with the credit card option (it was requested by many every year until the switch to RegOnline), but it also has been very helpful at saving me time as well.
The negative impact has been that we had a free registration page set up prior to RegOnline, that we dropped fully. So while some participants still pay by check or wire transfer, we still must pay the 'per participant' fee even for participants not paying through RegOnline.
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.
