GlobalMeet Webcast vs. RingCentral Events vs. Whova

Their team was very hands-on and helpful in the set-up and execution of our meeting. I would recommend them, especially for first-time virtual meeting planners. They were thorough and thoughtful in the planning process, which made the execution smoother.

Incentivized

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

I think it works really well as a way to organize yourself while at a conference. As well, to network with said attendees I found it very valuable to remember names. Having an automatic rolodex with everyone I met and ensure I had their info to connect later

• It's very helpful to have a point of contact to manage communication and the event. We've worked with a few event managers over the years and they have all been great.
• We've also had great experience during the production (e.g., pre-recording sessions for simlive events). All the production team members we've worked with have been professional and efficient.
• Our main account contact has been an absolute pleasure to work with. He is detail oriented and responsive. And we particularly appreciate his thoughtful follow-ups after the events to confirm everything met our expectations.

Incentivized

• Awesome for managing several sets of panelists
• Very easy to manage event attendees
• Love the chat functionality during the events, enabling the audience to connect with each other
• Hugely simple for anyone with little tech knowledge to design and run an event
• Cost effective for the volume of events we run, where we need scale and quality
• Live streaming an event is also very well catered for
• Branding across the platform is simple to implement

Incentivized

• facilitated the sharing of research, perspectives, and resources on topics of interest
• enabled easier connection to new and existing relationships with conference delegates and speakers
• allowed me to catch up on content I missed due to time conflicts for concurrent sessions

• Although I love the polling feature, there are a few kinks that could be worked out, as the dialogue box at times interferes with the presentation.
• Have the "guest" and "host" bubbles bigger when logging in, sometimes guests get confused and log in as a host accidentally thinking they need a password to join.
• A kink I've noticed lately, is not being able to upload presentations forcing me to use screenshare. I'm not sure if it's a naming convention or why this error occurs.
• I have limited use in the webcam feature as when using it in the past there was a serious lag time making it difficult to communicate, but, it could've been my internet speed as well... I'll have to give it another shot.

Incentivized

• The biggest hangup we've encountered is from guest speakers who need to join us on either tablets or smartphones. Hopin doesn't play well with mobile devices for onscreen guests.
• I'd like to see the broadcasts in vendor booths be recordable in the way broadcasts in the sessions or on the stage are.

Incentivized

• Literature and pictures uploaded but no easy way to download the collection.
• No easy way to access information after the period after the conference ended.
• No easy way to access the list of participants and contact information - could be pdf'd.
• There was a little connectivity issues but not much.
• Some of the meetings were scheduled while we slept.
• The cost of using Whova for small meetings.

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

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.

Generally, I find it relatively easy to use, but I'm a techie, so I understand that a certain amount of training is required for most other business users. The counterpoint here is, of course, that GM provides excellent knowledge articles and training material. The barrier of entry is a bit high due to customer hesitation to "just try it". Training is necessary, but well done and available. Knowledge is a Self-Service after all.

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

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 availability issues!

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.

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

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.

GlobalMeet is much superior in service and attention to detail for their client's events. Repeat business is a gauge of success and they have much repeat business.

Incentivized

We were with a company before Hopin - we explored elsewhere due to cost. Pros were design and custom look. We moved to Hopin, it was innovative at the time, although the design wasn't strong the features were. The majority now have the same features. So we did leave Hopin for another platform again because we wanted a custom look, and we were preparing for hybrid. Hopin wasn't ready. We soon realised other platforms we came across are complex, difficult to use. We left and came back to Hopin.

Incentivized

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 on our team had their assigned tasks to complete in Whova on a weekly basis and did so with ease and confidence.

• GlobalMeet Webcast has allowed us to provide our training to a large audience at a price point suited for a non-profit

Incentivized

• Without Hopin, it would have been impossible to host an event at the scale and user interface that we did, with the staff limitations we have. Hopin enabled us to execute a very high standard with limited resources. For example, before Hopin, we could only attract about 100-200 attendees. With Hopin, we 3x our registrations and attendees.
• The data collected from their system on attendees allows us to more accurately speak to our target market based on their tracked habits during the event.

Incentivized

• Whova made our virtual and hybrid events possible! Our virtual attendees loved the ability to interact and engage with each other, the exhibitors, the speakers and organizers of the event. It also allowed our in-person attendees to do the same, and navigate the conference on-site.
• Whova made organizing the conference possible for our small staffed organization! We only have 1.25 FTEs and were able to pull off a hybrid conference in 2022. It wouldn’t have been possible without Whova!

Incentivized