EventMobi

Vantagens

*We were able to go paperless - no more bulky printed conference guides. We are able to provide attendees with a schedule, speaker listings, vendors, maps, and more.
*The EventMobi template app has enough options that we can customize it to our needs, but is specific for conferences so we are not drowning in options.
*The app notification systems is a lifesaver for sending instant announcements to attendees during the conference.
*Before we used printed guides and decisions had to be made weeks prior to the conference for printing. Now, with EventMobi, we can make changes during the event and everyone is automatically updated. (Room changes etc).
*Tech Support helped us copy over last years app so we didn't have to start from scratch this year, each year it gets easier to set-up. We save lots of time using an app vs. paper guides.
*Add on features allow us to customize our app to what we need.
* Ask a Question allows the audience to participate in a panel discussion by submitting their question on the app, and a moderator could display the question for the audience to see. Allowed us to get to the real questions from attendees.

Desvantagens

*It does rely on users downloading the app and having access to wifi or wireless data. Some conference centers have poor cell reception. We had issues with some participants receiving notifications if they were in areas with poor cell reception.
*Sometimes people with poor tech skills struggle with the app. They have a hard time seeing how the data is interconnected. They want to see an easy "at a glance" schedule, rather than one with all the details (rooms, speakers, etc).
*Our event is for teens, and not all teens have smartphones - it does require the use of a smartphone to work.

Vantagens

Eventmobi is a software platform for doing event management. It is app based so users can log in on their phone, tablet or computer. So it is a great way to go "green" for a meeting or event (reduce printing costs too). However, this is just the beginning. You have digital event planning and can push email blasts, programs, alerts, attendee info. Plus, you can automate the collection of survey data, live polling and audience participation. The platform is quite easy to use and for a small meeting/conference easily handled by one person rather than an event management company. For a very large meeting you may need more people depending on your timelines.

Eventmobi has integrated registration and payment processing (with Stripe) and makes this part of the meeting simple to organize. You know in real time how many people are coming, how much money you are making from ticket sales etc.

In addition, you can push requests from Eventmobi to ask speakers or participants for their bios, asks sponsoring companies for logos, descriptions and website links all with the click of a button. Many of our vendors really like have the additional contact with attendees thru the app.

At the end of your event you can generate a lot of analytics about how people used the app and interacted with vendor pages. You can collate survey data on speakers and sessions into very nice pdf reports or excel tables.

Customer service is fast and excellent.

Desvantagens

There were some areas in the registration system that were a bit cumbersome or required contacting customer support to fix (e.g. if somebody wanted to cancel their registration). However, there is a new build of the software this year (2018) and a lot of these issues have apparently been fixed.

Vantagens

As this was our first year we did not get complete "buy in" by attendees but the ones that did use liked the ability to evaluate the workshops online, have their personal schedule with locations and maps at their fingertips and be able to follow along with the presenters as the ppt presentations were also available on the APP. Live Polls was also a big hit especially during our plenary presentations - once people got the hang of it - it almost became a game to vote for the questions! Overall the APP was very user friendly, well organized with lots of information available to the attendees. Love that at the end of the day I could easily create a report to review evaluations - no need to hire someone to input all the eval data from hundreds of paper evals!!!! I did not use all the features this year but plan to use more in 2019.

Desvantagens

It was very labour intensive to input all the attendee schedule information as we did not link our registration with the APP - I have since talked to Eventmobi and I will do things a little different next year to make it easier on me. Also, each time I imported the agenda spreadsheet attendees profiles were lost - Eventmobi has since fixed this issue. Impressed that they take feedback seriously and strive for Continuous Quality Improvement.

Vantagens

Easy to use for both us and our attendees, easy to customize it to make it "our app".
Love the gamification - gets everyone engaged. Ability to include all the information and reduce our costs on printing and shipping. Instant updates and messages can be sent.

I love that you can make changes instantly - whether on your own, or with assistance from customer support. The follow up is always excellence, whenever I have had questions.

Desvantagens

Would love the ability to have bilingual sites -so that all info from both french and english apps can be downloaded together.
Also would like the ability to share more than 1 photo at a time - some sort of area or link that we can give attendees so they could post their pictures.

Vantagens

The template format made it easy to plug n'play from our old paper conference guide to the app. The preparation is now super easy. The push notifications keep people up to date with on-site announcements (this is our favorite part about it).

Desvantagens

We are a non-profit and our conference isn't designed to be a money maker. We no longer need customer service for the set-up, so the price seems like a lot for something that is a template that is just copied each year of our conference. The rationale is that we would get sponsors to pay for the app through advertising, but we don't do that. It probably isn't a bad price compared to competitors, it's that the whole industry seems to have a higher price tag that I think it is worth. Websites are no mobile friendly.