Dryfta vs. Webex Events (formerly Socio)

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.

I think it would work for:

• Workshops with many people.
• Quarterly's meetings with people all around the world.
• If you want to create a digital training with lots of participants...

I feel like it's not as needed in videocalls that can be fixed with webex teams because of the number of participants or at events that need a more personal approach where you need everyone constantly interacting.

Incentivized

• 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.
• Help desk responds quite quickly
• They consider making improvements when asked for.
• It’s not too expensive.

• It has quite a few optional and customizable features that can be utilized.
• It's easy to integrate your existing tools like Zoom, YouTube, Vimeo, and streaming services.
• It's flexible in the way that you upload content in that you can enter things one at a time on the website, or use a spreadsheet to upload a larger amount of content.

Incentivized

• 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

• The standard template to build out the community is pretty rigid. We had to adjust some of our styling and graphics to account for what Socio's template allowed.
• Inability for event admins to make account changes for users. Several times we had users change jobs, therefore, changing their emails. Each time, we had to go through Socio support to get them access to their account.
• Documentation and knowledgebase could be more substantive.

Of course something could happen to our orgs ability to put on a conference or Socio could fundamentally change their product or their customer service - but barring any magor shift there is nothing that is even close to competing for our attention here.

Incentivized

Some Android users could not get the app to work, so they had to use the web-based version of our conference guide. Most functionality was still there, but they could not pull up the QR code, which impeded the registration process. The presence of the log in with Apple ID button caused issues because most work emails were not attached to Apple ID, which caused access issues.

Incentivized

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.

Socio (now WebexEvents) is one of two products I use that gets customer service right. Not only can you get an answer from an actual person quickly during business hours - but if you are asking after hours, you know the response will be waiting for you in the morning. Not only are they fast, but they are also smart about their products and customers. There is very little back and forth trying to explain the problem I am having, or the new way I am trying to use their product, that may even be novel for them.

Incentivized

WebEx Events has the same functionality as many other platforms, but with a more affordable price tag. I have also found it to be more intuitive and easy to use on the user side. I don't have experience on the administrative side with other platforms but we have been very satisfied with our experience with WebEx Events.

Incentivized

• 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.

• We had more sponsorship applications than usual due to using Webex and the multiple sponsorship capabilities.
• We had more attendance than in previous years due to using Webex since it is so incredibly user-friendly.
• We increased ROI by using Webex over other platforms due to pricing and features.