Whova

Vorteile

The functionality of uploading the event was easy to use, and from the user side, the app was easy to navigate to move between the schedule, information about specific programs, and more details about speakers.

Nachteile

The app came with built-in conversation starters that, as conference organizers, we had to delete. Other than that, the software was good.

Vorteile

Lots of features are available. But the cons far outweigh the features.

Nachteile

Sponsor logo size is way too small to be viewed as a benefit to anyone considering a paid sponsorship.

Registrants who want to pay by PO/check have to be entered into the platform manually as “order.” BUT, when done that way they show up as FREE tickets, completely destroying the integrity of the reporting system. Also, when I manually entered a team of 16 people from one organization, I had to enter all the company info 16 times.

The method for adding people is beyond cumbersome. We have people who are speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors. Rather than just having a PEOPLE category, where those roles are selected, the person has to be entered three times in three categories. And they can’t access their collective profile — they have to update in three categories… Are you kidding me?? (when setting up an exhibitor, can check “sponsor” but it does nothing, as they still have to be entered as such manually.)

Updating speaker at session level doesn’t allow for the addition of their email address, which has to be done at the speaker level later.

When creating a new speaker, there is a button to add a session, but when you click it, it says to save the speaker first. When you do that, the window closes, so what’s the point of that useless button?

Our account manager wasn’t identified WELL into the event building process , nor did they actively participate in the creating of our event.

MANY attendees and speakers/exhibitors report not receiving emails send from the platform

Vorteile

Nice features, admin interface relatively user-friendly, user-interface very user-friendly.

Nachteile

I used it for a large virtual conference (1000+ attendees, up to 10+ parallel sessions), and it was down for >1.5 hours. Extremely embarrassing and impossible to recover from it.

Medium impact weakness is that the interface is not very responsive (i.e. slow).

Minor impact (but nonetheless frustrating) weakness is that the admin interface is buggy (or has 'quirks' like they call it themselves).

From lots of things we could notice this is not a company built on solid software engineering (e.g. they use "FirstName LastName" as the 'key' to identify attendees, and some of the admin features behave in a very illogical and unexpected manner).

Vorteile

Expansive features, front end support was outstanding

Nachteile

They are West Coast and we are located on the East coast. Their tech support opens when the rest of the company opens 4 hours after we start on the East Coast.
Every problem we encountered was our fault. We change a setting, we didn’t sign in right, the excuses went on and on. They instituted two upgrades one the night before our conference and one the night of our first day. Both updates threw our who backend of the app into complete disarray.
They reply? Sorry.
I’m going back to conference Tracker and would not recommend this app if you are doing a virtual event.

Vorteile

Ability to load the recorded sessions back to the app.

Nachteile

At least 90% of my attendees could not get into the live Zoom meetings. It was a true disaster from a live event point of view. Attendees were messaging me from the first five minutes of our first session of the two-day, overnight global conference that included 15 countries, telling me that they could not get into the Zoom sessions. Whova technical support was asking for screen shots to trouble shoot the issue. I ended up refunding over 50% of gross receipts to dissatisfied customers.