Dryfta vs. Splash Event Marketing Platform

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.

Compared to platforms like Eventbrite, I have a hard time recommending Splash to anyone and think if we weren't forced into using it because of our involvement with Hubspot User Groups, we would not be using it. I think if the usability and other bugs could be improved along with support, then Splash could be great for small to mid-sized businesses that occasionally run events that they need 1) hosted all in one place and 2) consistent, custom branding. Or if you're running small events where you simply need a custom designed sign-up page, a reminder email and a check-in app, Splash could work for you. While they're not transparent about their business pricing, I'd have to see that before deciding whether it is truly worth it for this purpose.

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.

• Branded Templates: With the Pro account, Splash takes your brand guidelines, fonts, logos, colors and creates customized event templates for your most frequent types of events making it easy to create new events that align with the experience of your brand.
• Customer Service: Any time I have a problem, my Account Manager (Matt!) always has a solution. Whether it be a glitch in the page, an integration problem, or suggesting new ways to use the system. I'm never left stranded, which when you work in eight time zones, matters.
• Ease of Backend Use: I've used other start-up event management softwares which are painful to use on the back end, buggy, and not intuitive for a non-coder. Splash is extremely easy to use and customize, which makes working with the system enjoyable.
• Low Ticketing Fees: One of the main reasons we decided to upgrade to the Pro account is because we were hosting more ticketed events. As a non-profit, ticketing fees make a difference to our donations. Not only did Splash provide the other benefits mentioned above, they were the most competitive on credit card fees and integrated into our donation software system.

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

• When designing a landing page for an event, the functionality of the layout page is quite finicky. I would love to see the ability to add features to certain text boxes become more fluid.
• The formatting across the layout page is not always consistent, specifically text sizing.
• I had an issue with an account, and the support team took an extremely long time (2+ months) to produce a remedy for the issue I was experiencing.

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.

We love working with our account manager and priority support to answer questions efficiently and speedily. Our account manager works with us on larger and bigger picture initiatives for our instance, where the priority support is always there when you're stuck with a feature or setup, it's been great to share this resource with our global network of hosts internal and external to the company.

[We selected Splash based on] Looks and functionality. It's the best of both worlds. Every other tool we found was good at one but not the other. I hope Splash stays on the path it's on as it really makes all the right improvements to be such a powerhouse tool.

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.

• It helps me manage a number of events that I would not otherwise be able to make invitations for, manage rsvps, and do check ins. We used a more expensive product previously but it had fewer features so this is definitely an upgrade.
• Using Splash saves me time from needing to follow up with guests. I also love the "send later" feature for email.
• The support staff make this product super valuable as I am able to accomplish more with their help.

Incentivized