Likelihood to Recommend I can't provide a scenario where Dryfta could be well suited. I guess it's a matter of delivering what has been promised on time, and without having to invest thousands of hours in extra work, as it was in our case. If it worked properly it could be a good tool for any conference.
Read full review I have recommended the software to several clients that are interested in running events. Overall if you are needing to run an event, be it paid or otherwise, this tool does enable you to keep track of all that is happening and to send event reminders. The fees charged are also very reasonable and those can be passed on to the attendees if needed
Read full review Pros It has a lot of functionalities (website and administration) all included in the same platform. If it worked properly, it allows you to organise a conference paper-free. Help desk responds quite quickly They consider making improvements when asked for. It’s not too expensive. Read full review Intuitive layout of the site. They have done a nice job of making the platform easy to navigate for any user using their services. Very responsive online service support. Whenever we have had questions in the past, some from the Picatic team was responded immediately, and were personable and professional. The site is versatile in that you can embed not only images but video as well which can really make a dynamic presentation for the viewer or intended audience. Read full review Cons Multilingual issues. Although it is advertised as multilingual, it didn’t really work as such. The many issues that popped up throughout the conference preparation were fixed little by little at a cost in time, from help desk emails and to struggles with the unfriendly UX. Admin pages reloaded every time you clicked on a button (their developers seem to ignore Ajax technologies). It was time-consuming and required constant page searches. Inflexibility in many of the supposed functionalities it offers. Certificates were not modifiable nor custom when we had to send them (it was solved months after the conference finished when we were surprisingly contacted by the help desk). Problems with the size of images to be displayed on the site, very small fonts and limited options to display content. We had to hire a professional developer in order to get a graphically consistent and presentable website. Very poor mobile version. Too big margins, unreadable text, endless text blocks and lists, distorted pictures, etc. Issues with the ordering of the authors’ names for different proposals (authorship being so important in research). Fixed, inflexible fields in the contact sheets, speakers info, and so on. Special character issues (due to Latin characters and other types used in linguistic research). Not being able to include links in the HTML editor due to Dryfta's inadvertent decisions to block them. Only one Superadmin user allowed to access the full functionalities of the platform, so we had to share it (consequently not knowing who did each action). Problems with the generation of reports and the high complexity of their interface. Some issues on the mandatory anonymity. The double-blind review process not fully respected due to unclear user info and options, with other issues coming up on the go such as unwanted info in automated notifications and messages in the Welcome dashboard. Not being able to use the other payment methods on the platform because they were incompatible with the conference country. Missing information and time wasted when creating events for sessions with info that already existed in the server that randomly failed to be selected. These issues were reported even with video proofs (help desk didn’t believe us), and were never solved. We had to repeat the same processes again and again, never knowing what was going on Read full review Read full review Support Rating It was quick, that's all we can say. Quite a few times they sorted out the problems and issues. But, sadly, sometimes their answers were useless and irritating (not addressing the problem or simply ignoring it, "passing the buck"). In some cases, they pretended the problem didn't exist and we had to send them videos as proof. No response to that.
Read full review Alternatives Considered Picatics site is clean, modern, and easy to navigate. There are many features and many ways to customize your event to make sure that it is exactly what we want. If your having any issues the technical teams is always ready and available to help with any questions. Picatic has been perfect for us
Read full review Return on Investment The overall performance was okay in the end, but it was due to our team's commitment and effort. Without that extra work, the results would have been awful. Read full review It had a positive impact when charging for events because the money showed up before the event which helped with cash flow for food and beverages and rental space. Time to set up and launch a landing page for creating events reduced from 8 hours to 3 hours once I made the switch. It was also a time saver to have the reminder emails function directly on the page as well. Read full review ScreenShots