Item: RingCentral Events
Rating: 10
Author: Brian Burge

Overall Satisfaction with Hopin

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We used Hopin this year to hold our very first virtual conference. We typically hold a live/in-person conference every year in Las Vegas and due to the pandemic, we had to cancel our conference. This was bad news for us as that's where 50% of our revenue comes from. Instead of giving up and canceling our conference, we did some research and found Hopin and after seeing all the great features it offered we decided we would hold our conference virtually. Rather than holding a basic Zoom type event, Hopin allowed us to actually make our virtual conference very much like our in-person conference. Skip ahead, we received rave reviews about our event and our attendees love the Hopin platform and all of its abilities, especially the networking feature. Hopin solved all our issues and we will be hopefully incorporating it into next year's in-person conference so we can reach both audiences.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Hopin was very simple to use from the start. If I had any questions, they had answers on their website and their support is great.
I like that we could make changes on a regular basis even during the live event.
I like that it incorporates a lot of what you find at a in-person event and it translates well virtually.

Cons

Would love to see a virtual store. Us as well as many of our speakers have products and services to sell. It would be nice to have a dedicated store to promote these things. Products and details could be added and just link out to wherever the products are sold.
An are for the days announcements would be nice rather than pinning comments. Kind of like an event bulletin board.
Allow more people to come on camera in a session.
Record sessions that have more than 9 people on camera.
I wish there was a way to register our presenters without them having to register like an attendee via tickets.

Return on Investment

While we couldn't justify charging as much as our in-person conference, Hopin allowed us to still reach our audience virtually which helped us keep are business going during these unusual times.
We can now reach more people around the world who normally wouldn't be able to attend out live events.
We can now add more attendance options for future events.

Alternatives Considered

Zoom

We have used tools like zoom for smaller meeting type things but Zoom just doesn't have the conference-like capabilities that Hopin offers. Hopin is hands-down better for conference-style events and offers more features for virtual events. It's really great for multiday events.

Usability

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.

Support Rating

For the most part, I was able to find what I needed on Hopin's site but when I couldn't find what I needed, their support was there to answer any questions we had in a very timely manner.

Key Insights

Do you think RingCentral Events delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with RingCentral Events's feature set?

Yes

Did RingCentral Events live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of RingCentral Events go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy RingCentral Events again?

Yes

Other Software Used

WebinarJam, Zoom

Likelihood to Recommend

I think Hopin is great for most scenarios. We held a conference for 420 people and it was pretty much perfect for a large conference-style event. I could see it being used for smaller paid webinars, virtual corporate events to bring teams or employees together, lunch and learns, and more. If you're creative enough, the possibilities are endless.

Comments

Please log in to join the conversation

It's time to Hopout of the old and Hopin with the new!