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 WebEx Events is a great tool for hosting both an event website and an onsite event app. If you are looking to integrate an on onsite and online event, they have this capability, as well. The staff is always very helpful and I am able to get answers to my questions in a timely manner
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 It has quite a few optional and customizable features that can be utilized. It's easy to integrate your existing tools like Zoom, YouTube, Vimeo, and streaming services. It's flexible in the way that you upload content in that you can enter things one at a time on the website, or use a spreadsheet to upload a larger amount of content. 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 Sometimes I feel like it uses too many resources and makes my computer go slower Chats of the webinar dissappear by default, but sometimes important info is shared and could be nice to have the option to save it The quality of the video gets chosen by webex by default, sometimes maybe it would be nice to get the option to fix manually what's the minimum quality you want. Just to not talk with pixels Read full review Likelihood to Renew Of course something could happen to our orgs ability to put on a conference or Socio could fundamentally change their product or their customer service - but barring any magor shift there is nothing that is even close to competing for our attention here.
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 Socio (now WebexEvents) is one of two products I use that gets customer service right. Not only can you get an answer from an actual person quickly during business hours - but if you are asking after hours, you know the response will be waiting for you in the morning. Not only are they fast, but they are also smart about their products and customers. There is very little back and forth trying to explain the problem I am having, or the new way I am trying to use their product, that may even be novel for them.
Read full review Alternatives Considered We have used multiple virtual event platforms in the past, as well as trialed several. We ultimately decided on Webex due to the aesthetics of the website, the incredibly easy build-out process, the 24/5 support, the user-friendly front-end interface, the multiple ways to monetize sponsorships, and ultimately... the price. The value for what you get is incredible compared to other platforms.
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 User retention has increased by 25% with the help of Webex Events Lead retrieval at events is made very simple, thereby saving a lot of time for us Session tracking gives us a lot of valuable insights, helping us understand our users better Lead location tracking is present which helps us segment our audience better Read full review ScreenShots Webex Events (formerly Socio) Screenshots