Always Improving, But Pretty Great As Is
Updated March 01, 2022
Always Improving, But Pretty Great As Is
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Hopin
We use Hopin to stream some of our larger virtual events where we may have multiple speakers in multiple rooms at the same time. We like this platform over using YouTube or Facebook to stream because we have more control and more transparency into who our attendees are. Other features we enjoy are the expo areas and networking areas of the platform.
- The interface is very clean and customizable. Some of the other solutions I've looked into are not as easy to customize or have a "clunky" interface.
- Hopin is always improving. Several sticking points for us that existed 3 months ago have been updated and improved so they are no longer issues for us.
- Hopin has acquired the platform StreamYard, which is a very powerful and simple live studio solution, and they have actively integrated StreamYard into the Hopin platform.
- Hopin charges based on number of "registrants" rather than number of "attendees." This has forced us to use a workaround method and not allowed us to use all of the tools available because, especially if we're holding a free event, we don't want to pay for a lot of registrants when only a percentage of them will actually attend the event.
- The streaming quality is great, but it doesn't perform as well as YouTube or Facebook with weaker viewer connections. We receive many more complaints about the video feed stopping and starting than when we broadcast through YouTube or Facebook. Hopin does give us the ability to use YouTube as the source of the video stream, but that comes with its own set of problems, where users may click on the YouTube branding and be directed to watch on YouTube, outside of the Hopin platform.
- Some additional options would be nice, such as being able to disable anonymous viewer comments/questions would be helpful.
- The software is very expensive. It comes with a 5-figure yearly license fee plus cost per registrant fee referenced above.
- This one is hard to say. We had a solution before, which was virtually free to use and worked okay for us. I can't really tell if using a high-priced platform like Hopin has increased the revenue brought in over the free solution. We would have to do a true split test where we sent half of our attendees to one platform and the other half to Hopin, and see if the additional spend is worth it. As far as true ROI, it's hard to compete with an infinite ROI since the other solution was free. But using Hopin may result in additional profit, meaning we may have made at least our investment more and then some over what we would have made using the free solution.
- It is a better solution than our former solution for restricting access only to specific people. When we streamed to a private Facebook group, for example, we had to deal with the built-in distractions of Facebook, and everyone had to have a Facebook account. I feel we may have made it easier for some to attend by streaming these types of events through Hopin rather than Facebook, and therefore increased our reach.
- Hopin feels like a higher value platform than Facebook to people who paid to attend this event.
Do you think RingCentral Events delivers good value for the price?
No
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?
No
Would you buy RingCentral Events again?
Yes
Airmeet was the most comparable to Hopin. It had a very similar interface. The networking feature was a little better in my opinion because it offered "round tables" where you could see the table and see how many were already seated at the table and join the table if you wish. Airmeet didn't make the cut, though, because there was a large delay on the live feed (nearly 60 seconds, which doesn't work well for us because we have a lot of live interaction and can't wait for the delay. ON24 has a much more customizable user interface, but is very difficult to use and has issues with streaming speed. Webinato/omNovia has been our solution for the last 11 years, and does an excellent job. But when Adobe Flash was phased out in 2020, we couldn't use this platform any longer. They did release a new platform call Flow (flowapp.com), and this is a nice solution, but doesn't have enough customization for our purposes. It's very clean and easy to use, though.
YouTube Live and Facebook Love are great for steaming and taking comments only. They do not offer other features you’d expect a virtual event platform to offer.
YouTube Live and Facebook Love are great for steaming and taking comments only. They do not offer other features you’d expect a virtual event platform to offer.
Using Hopin
4 - When holding a live event, many are involved in some form of using the software.
Primarily, I, head of the marketing department, and a coworker, head of the IT department setup and run the event.
Our speaker/trainer, of course uses the software in the capacity of being on camera.
Our sales department monitors the chat and responds to sales opportunities.
Our customer service department monitors the chat and has a booth setup to help with customer service issues during the event.
2 - Advanced technical skills are required to fully use and customize Hopin.
The two people that primarily support Hopin have strong IT and programming backgrounds.
- Holding Live, Paid, Virtual Events
- Simulcasting Live, Paid, In-Person Events
- Holding Live, Free, Virtual Events where multiple, simultaneous speakers are required to be speaking in different rooms.
- We’ve used the software pretty much as intended.
- I see us continuing to use it for virtual events. We may consider hybrid events in the future and utilizing some of Hopin’s feature for in-person attendees as well.
Evaluating Hopin and Competitors
Yes - This replaced a platform called Webinato (formerly omNovia). OmNovia was a Len ideal solution for simulcasting live, in-person events, and also worked well for completely virtual events, although we didn’t do many of those prior to COVID.
We may still be using omNovia to this day if it didn’t run solely on Adobe Flash, which has been phased out over the past several years and finally support was ended by most modern browsers in 2020.
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
Single most important feature for our specific use case was multiple stages, that is, having multiple speakers speaking on different topics at the same time in different areas of the event.
Next most important was ability to stream without lagging and accommodating weaker internet connections for some of our viewers.
Then having our most desired features for a price we could afford was, of course, very important as well.
If I had to do it again, I’d probably focus more on the features we’ve learned from using Hopin and make sure the solution we select has all of those important features.