Hopin is a solid platform for hosting virtual conferences
December 31, 2020
Hopin is a solid platform for hosting virtual conferences
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Hopin
Our company bought a one-year subscription to Hopin to use as our platform for hosting several annual, multi-day conferences. (Typically these are in-person conferences, but due to COVID, we've had to pivot to hosting the conferences virtually.) We have used Hopin for one of those conferences so far, very successfully. We plan to use it again for at least two more conferences before our one-year subscription term is over. Many members of our team, across several departments, participate in putting on these conferences; the one we just hosted had 400 attendees--mainly our clients, partners, prospects and our own team members. Twenty members of our team and I used the Hopin tools directly, to put on the conference.
- A fairly intuitive interface, including side-by-side video and chat windows, with a "main event" video window for plenary sessions (e.g., keynotes) as well as separate breakout rooms (with running chat) for post-session, interactive Q&As with attendees, plus a separate area for virtual "exhibit booths."
- Responsive customer service, including a Hopin staffer who was on call during our event to troubleshoot if needed
- Regular updates to continuously improve the platform
- Good training resources (e.g., orientation videos) for software users and conference attendees unfamiliar with using Hopin.
- Other built-in features that we did not use, but appreciated that they were available were a speaker's lounge (greenroom for speakers who were on deck to speak next) and a sort of private channel (similar to Slack) for the conference hosts to use for behind-the-scenes coordination (we just used our own Slack channel for this).
- Hopin should allow customers to upload pre-recorded videos to the platform (hosted by Hopin), for use during the conference. As it stands now, customers must provide their own external video hosting solution (we used Vimeo).
- Hopin should have some customer support staff based in the USA or Canada, too--not just in the UK.
- In view of the substantial cost of subscribing to Hopin, it seems as if the number of registrants allowed under the subscription without incurring overage fees should be somewhat higher than 1,000 registrants. (We anticipate going over that limit before our yearly subscription term is over.)
- Our annual conferences are vital to our business, especially because our clients and partners get a lot of value out of them. This contributes greatly to client retention and good partner relations. So we consider there to be a very strong ROI to our use of Hopin (despite its relatively high price). It's hard to quantify this ROI precisely.
We selected Hopin after shopping around for similar tools (it seemed like a fairly short list at the time). Hopin seemed to have the best reviews from people who had used the platform.
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?
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