Item: Bizzabo
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Bizzabo

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Bizzabo to handle both our in-person and virtual events and webinars. We run on average about 3-4 events per month on Bizzabo. The main problems that Bizzabo has solved for us is having a unified platform to support events that allow for both in-person and virtual, as well as included app support, and lastly physical hardware to support check-ins.

Pros and Cons

Pros

On-boarding
Customer success
Ease of event set up
Speaker experience
Ease of getting users into the platform

Cons

HubSpot integration
Parity across registration options
Data exports

Return on Investment

Sign up rate has increased
Attrition rate has decreased
User engagement has increased

Usability

While there are some minor UX things, Bizzabo has a really solid interface that gets you to editing your event really quickly. Their inclusion of templates greatly enhanced our workflow within the tool and minimized our upfront set up time significantly.

Alternatives Considered

Aventri, Hopin and Eventbrite

The biggest differentiator for Bizzabo is that it could handle all of our use cases, where the competitors that we talked to all seemed to be missing one key piece or more - whether that was an integrated mobile app, physical solutions for in-person events, or support for hybrid. Bizzabo met all of those requirements, the others didn't.

Key Insights

Do you think Bizzabo delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Bizzabo's feature set?

Yes

Did Bizzabo live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Bizzabo go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Bizzabo again?

Yes

Other Software Used

HubSpot CRM, AddSearch, Auth0

Likelihood to Recommend

To date, we have yet to find a situation where Bizzabo is not a good fit for our event needs. There have been situations that for budget reasons we have decided not to use Bizzabo to ensure we stay within our purchased registrations.

Bizzabo Feature Ratings

Using Bizzabo

Users and Roles

10 - There are three main groups that use Bizzabo:
- the events team who run the planning and logistics of each event
- the marketing team that works to get people to the event
- the product team who supports the platform, ensuring the events are configured correctly

Support Headcount Required

3 - The product team is generally the ones to maintain Bizzabo. We very rarely need to make use of their support team as the product is rock solid. You do not need to be an engineer or having coding skills to maintain Bizzabo. It's certainly useful to understand HTML for setting up emails, but not necessary.

Business Processes Supported

Annual conferences
Sponsored Webinars
In-person events

Innovative Uses

During one annual conference that we have a booth at, we also support shared workspace and used Bizzabo for registration to that, even though it's not a traditional event.

Future Planned Uses

At the moment, our main future planning for Bizzabo is growing our existing event offerings

Likelihood to Renew

Bizzabo has become integral to our ability to support and run events, so we will continue to renew as long as Bizzabo continues to run a great product.

Evaluating Bizzabo and Competitors

Products Replaced

Yes - We'd prefer not identify the vendor that was replaced, but they were a significant player in the event space.

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Scalability
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

The most important factor was ease of use for our end users, otherwise, the events would be playing to no one. We needed to make sure that the process of registering and attending events - virtually or in-person - were as easy and frictionless as possible.

Evaluation Lessons Learned

I don't believe we were. We're extremely happy with Bizzabo and haven't had any reason to reconsider it as our selected platform. If anything, the selection has made us even more confident in the process we followed in choosing a vendor.

Bizzabo Implementation

Implementation Rating

I say this to everyone I talk about Bizzabo with - it was the best platform onboarding experience I've had with a vendor in 25 years in the industry. They were extremely thorough in the onboarding, ensuring that we were successful throughout the process. They had a frequent meeting cadence and the customer success manager was extremely prompt in answering any questions we had, jumping on calls when necessary.

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

Change Management Lessons

Change management was minimal - Change management should have been a bigger part of our consideration for our team. There were no issues with the Bizzabo team. Our main issue can in supporting data syncing to centralized data platforms, specifically around the naming conventions and categorization of events and registration fields. We ultimately resolved these issues, but in hindsight would do it differently up front.

Implementation Issues

data synchronization with HubSpot
they originally had two different registration models, though this has since been unified

Bizzabo Training

Training Types Used

No Training

In-Person Training

Online Training

Ease of Bizzabo Training

I should note that while it wasn't a specific training program we did, the customer success team worked with us closely for the first month or so to ensure we were trained on the platform and understood how to configure and use the platform for day-to-day uses. we found this type of "training" to be much more useful than your typical online training that you would get access to.

Configuring Bizzabo

Product Configurability

For the most part, Bizzabo is the right level of configurable. It gives you a lot of control over the content and messaging, but not so much that you have to spend a year learning the platform. Having said that, I do wish their website for virtual event access had better configuration options, but ultimately it accomplishes the goal.

Configuration Lessons

When we started on Bizzabo, it didn't support the template functionality, but since it was implemented we've found this to be an important best practice for us to ensure that each event is configured in the expected manner. With multiple team members setting up events, it can get messy if you're not using templates, especially if you have customized registration forms.

UI Customization

Some - we have done small customizations to the interface - The admin user interface is not configurable, which is actually best for us. We do customize the virtual event access site with the limited options they give you. Ideally you'd have more control over it, but again, this isn't actually a big deal. But the ability to control the ticket options, registration form, and email templates is the real key for us and works great.

Extensibility and Customization

No - we have not done any custom code

Additional Customization Considerations

Nothing beyond what was already mentioned earlier in this section.

Bizzabo Support

Support Rating

Having a customer success manager is key and can answer a lot of the basic issues. The support team is responsive, though there are sometimes delays as they kick a ticket from one tier of support to another (though that is pretty standard for larger vendors). I'll also note that we generally don't need to use the support staff often as the platform is quite stable.

Bizzabo Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Quick Resolution Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Immediate help available Support understands my problem Support cares about my success Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

We have a basic level of support and it is more than sufficient for our needs. I can't think of an instance where our level of support negatively impacted a resolution. Our customer success manager is also very supportive and mitigates a lot of need for working with the support team.

Bug Resolution

Yes - Yes, and bugs that we've reported have always been handled quickly. Often times it is more of an issue with the configuration that may have impacted an event, but they are very helpful in figuring that out.

Exceptional Examples of Bizzabo Support

There was an issue with a new approach to registration forms and a particular field showing up. The Bizzabo support team spent a good amount of effort tracking this down. They determined that it was an issue with older events using the new form and resolved immediately. Their approach resolved the issue.

Using Bizzabo

Usability Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using	None

Easy Tasks

creating templates
setting up emails for communication
creating tickets
embedding registration forms

Difficult Tasks

editing templates
searching contacts

Mobile Interface Availability and Impressions

Yes - The mobile interface for the admin tool is certainly a bit more cumbersome as compared to the desktop, but that's to be expected given the scope of what needs done in the admin. However, the mobile interface for end users is great, especially the app for the event experience. This was actually a key reason that we went with Bizzabo was having an app that users could augment their experience with - and it does that.

Bizzabo Reliability

Scalability

We have not had any issues with the scale of our events. However, our events are meant for sub-1000 attendees, so our use case isn't ideal for determining the limits of their scalability.

Reliability and Availability

We have always gotten prompt responses from the Bizzabo team when reaching out. Additionally, in the 2 years we've been working with them, we've never had any kind of platform outage that impacted us.

Performance

We've never had any complaints from users about access to the platform or load times. From and admin portal perspective, no issues there either.

Integrating Bizzabo

Ease of Integration

They have a number of options for integration with other platforms. And for platforms that aren't supported, they have webhook and Zapier integrations. We've found the integrations to be pretty easy to set up from and admin perspective.

Systems Integrated With

HubSpot
Zapier

we have done a couple of integrations with Bizzabo. Turning them on is extremely easy. However, with the HubSpot integration in particular, we weren't happy with the implementation of it and went with a different method. It should be noted that their implementation will most likely work for others, but didn't for our use case.

Future Integration Plans

Snowflake

We are currently using FiveTran to pull Bizzabo data in to Snowflake, but would love a direct connection or even a data share within Snowflake

Types of Integration

API (e.g. SOAP or REST)
Javascript widgets

We use the API to pull and sync data to HubSpot and JS widgets for embedding registrations forms and content on our own site.

Integration Lessons Learned

My advice for integrations with Bizzabo is to plan your data ahead of time. Know what field names you're going to be using and ensure that they are correct in your templates. If someone goes off creating their own field names, it will impact your data flows. Planning will mitigate that.

Upgrading Bizzabo

Upgrade Process

Upgrade Benefits

The unified registration model between paid and free events was the biggest change for us. It required some changes to our embeds on our end, but has made maintenance a lot smoother.