Dryfta vs. RingCentral Events

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.

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

• 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.

• Hopin constantly is iterating to create a really user-friendly back-end system. As a company, it recognizes that event managers are being faced with the challenge of becoming virtual production technicians and mak[ing] that change easier to manage.
• Hopin's back-end studio broadcast system makes it easy to create a seamless stream between pre-recorded and live presentations, with additional branding assets to make the overall stream look more professional and put together.
• Hopin's networking and polling functionalities create great engagement within the platform that is measurable.
• Hopin's ability to integrate with Salesforce and Marketo makes the lead flow process automatic and saves Event Managers from having to transfer that data manually.

Incentivized

• 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

• The customizing capability of their landing pages and event is extensive but difficult to do without a background in design. Although designed to be user-friendly, it still takes a large investment of time and learning to do well.
• The registrant join flow for their embedded registration form is lengthy and clunky. Thankfully if you utilize one of their many automation integrations, this isn't a necessary function.

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

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

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.

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

Hopin has always topped our evaluations as the best platform providing the most complete range of desired features for the price they offer. For us, they lead the way in events platforms, and unless the group of people is small, we will use them as our first option for events at scale.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Hopin has allowed us to extend our reach and become a go-to option for event organizers in the genre fiction space.
• We are able to host multiple events per month, some of which would require a mix of paid staff and volunteers with 10 times (or more! I've been on those teams in the past!) the number of people we need using the tools and automation in Hopin.
• The immersive experience converts 87% of attendees--either future event registrations or other products and services from us/our event partners.

Incentivized