Aventri
(formerly etouches) offers end-to-end event management and venue sourcing solutions. The open source platform aims to help streamline the
event process, providing real-time data and analytics on event performance,
customer engagement, and therefore increasing measurable event ROI. The company was founded in 2008 as
etouches and reintroduced in 2018 as Aventri. The product has assisted over 25,000
event professionals in planning, executing, and measuring their events.…
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Dryfta
Score 3.0 out of 10
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Dryfta is and event
platform that is comprised of a free suite of applications that are designed to
collect event data and measure event ROI, sell tickets, build event websites,
launch mobile apps, engage and network attendees, retrieve and manage leads for
exhibitors with a unified CRM, segment attendees and create email campaigns,
create shareable real-time custom reports and more.
I believe Aventri has a big learning curve, so if you are short on time, I would recommend hiring someone who already has experience. We had a few months, but making changes took a while because only two staff members had time to figure out and learn the system. I don't think the website is very user-friendly, but I don't think it's so hard that the average worker cannot learn it. We happened to be short on time so learning the system was an added stress that would not normally be there.
I can't provide a scenario where Dryfta could be well suited. I guess it's a matter of delivering what has been promised on time, and without having to invest thousands of hours in extra work, as it was in our case. If it worked properly it could be a good tool for any conference.
Provides information for hotel booking and transfers so that all this information is in one record.
Unlimited number of pages for the website is invaluable - we looked at other programs with only 4 pages for the website and that just isn't enough for our clients.
It has a lot of functionalities (website and administration) all included in the same platform. If it worked properly, it allows you to organise a conference paper-free.
Mobile app does not allow for video advertisements.
The day the event is scheduled to be over in Aventri it clears from your list and it makes getting reporting and analytics difficult after the event is over.
Multilingual issues. Although it is advertised as multilingual, it didn’t really work as such. The many issues that popped up throughout the conference preparation were fixed little by little at a cost in time, from help desk emails and to struggles with the unfriendly UX.
Admin pages reloaded every time you clicked on a button (their developers seem to ignore Ajax technologies). It was time-consuming and required constant page searches.
Inflexibility in many of the supposed functionalities it offers.
Certificates were not modifiable nor custom when we had to send them (it was solved months after the conference finished when we were surprisingly contacted by the help desk).
Problems with the size of images to be displayed on the site, very small fonts and limited options to display content. We had to hire a professional developer in order to get a graphically consistent and presentable website.
Very poor mobile version. Too big margins, unreadable text, endless text blocks and lists, distorted pictures, etc.
Issues with the ordering of the authors’ names for different proposals (authorship being so important in research).
Fixed, inflexible fields in the contact sheets, speakers info, and so on.
Special character issues (due to Latin characters and other types used in linguistic research).
Not being able to include links in the HTML editor due to Dryfta's inadvertent decisions to block them.
Only one Superadmin user allowed to access the full functionalities of the platform, so we had to share it (consequently not knowing who did each action).
Problems with the generation of reports and the high complexity of their interface.
Some issues on the mandatory anonymity. The double-blind review process not fully respected due to unclear user info and options, with other issues coming up on the go such as unwanted info in automated notifications and messages in the Welcome dashboard.
Not being able to use the other payment methods on the platform because they were incompatible with the conference country.
Missing information and time wasted when creating events for sessions with info that already existed in the server that randomly failed to be selected. These issues were reported even with video proofs (help desk didn’t believe us), and were never solved. We had to repeat the same processes again and again, never knowing what was going on
I had a few issues while onsite (over the weekend). The support information given to me was incorrect and I had a hard time tracking down how to get assistance while onsite (on a weekend). When you are onsite, issues are usually heightened and need an immediate response, and I didn't get that.
It was quick, that's all we can say. Quite a few times they sorted out the problems and issues. But, sadly, sometimes their answers were useless and irritating (not addressing the problem or simply ignoring it, "passing the buck"). In some cases, they pretended the problem didn't exist and we had to send them videos as proof. No response to that.
SignUp4 was our previous service and performed well. It wasn't until after it shuttered that we realized how much more could be provided. Cvent (which absorbed SignUp4) provided many of the old solutions but at a significantly higher price. In the end, it seemed more suited for very large events more so than the size we normally run. Thus we chose eTouches to supplant SignUp4.
The overall performance was okay in the end, but it was due to our team's commitment and effort. Without that extra work, the results would have been awful.
