Greater Giving vs. Whova

Greater Giving is well suited for an organization that is looking to save money on their event software and need a full service solution. It is not as sophisticated as others on the market, but it will allow you to get everything you need done for a reasonable price. This is meant to be used by nonprofit event professionals.

Incentivized

Overall having the Whova app was extremely helpful to provide information and drive engagement in the audience/attendees both on-site and remote. The ability to connect with like-minded attendees both pre-event and during the event was particularly helpful. Clarifying directions for "entering" events remotely would negate user anxiety.

• Greater Giving is very user-friendly for both staff and volunteers
• Greater Giving sales and receipt generating features are well received by the guest at our event
• Greater Giving provides excellent customer support - in particular, their "night of" event support

Incentivized

• facilitated the sharing of research, perspectives, and resources on topics of interest
• enabled easier connection to new and existing relationships with conference delegates and speakers
• allowed me to catch up on content I missed due to time conflicts for concurrent sessions

• Love to see more places to log expenses, so you can run a total report of net income.
• It's often a bit wide for my screen, which I can work around.

Incentivized

• Literature and pictures uploaded but no easy way to download the collection.
• No easy way to access information after the period after the conference ended.
• No easy way to access the list of participants and contact information - could be pdf'd.
• There was a little connectivity issues but not much.
• Some of the meetings were scheduled while we slept.
• The cost of using Whova for small meetings.

Incentivized

We already registered with Whova for our 2024 event and we will continue to use Whova for the foreseeable future as long as the price doesn't rise too high. It was a bit of a shock to see the difference between last year's price and this year's price - nearly 2k increase! We were able to negotiate, thankfully, to lower the price.

Greater Giving is very intuitive. It’s easy to set up in the backend and change as needed. Anytime we couldn’t figure something out on our own, our customer service representative was always available and super helpful!

Incentivized

Whova is quite user friendly, and helpful for the conference planner. It has features such as sample emails to attendees and import abilities if you have your sessions on a spreadsheet to avoid having to enter each session manually. Another thing we didn't like was the inability to allow attendees to enter a pre-recorded session only when it is scheduled to be presented. It's either all pre-recorded can be viewed once the conference opens, or none.

We had no availability issues!

We had no performance issues with our event delivery. We did have some meet-ups that had some glitches for some attendees, but I believe they were quickly resolved and were more on the part of user error than anything. Once they got the hang of it, their meet-ups went more smoothly.

Online support was one of the worst customer service experiences I've ever had (I would give them a 1). Phone support and implementation support were very nice and knowledgeable.

I only had a single issue regarding a photograph that was handled immediately and a colleague somehow ended up with two profiles which was also handled right away. Those two instances are all I have to go by. Other than that it was smooth but I did have ample information regarding who to contact if I experienced an issue

I found Whova to be similar to many social media apps that I already use. It was easy to navigate. This was my second experience using Whova in my presenter role. I liked the icebreaker section to connect with other participants before the event started. I look forward to next year’s event.

We currently use Eventbrite for our pre-event ticket and sponsorship sales as they have a much more streamlined webpage that is customizable, they allow us to pass on the fees to our purchasers, AND they do not charge an annual fee on top of the processing fees. However, they do not have the ability to let you swipe a credit card in advance - you need a membership to Bidding for Good to do so. We tried using Eventbrite and Bidding for Good for only 1 event before we switched back to Greater Giving. Neither platform allowed you to send out tax receipts and the on-site event management was subpar compared to the ease of Greater Giving.

Incentivized

I can't recall the other apps, I've used before, but did have two prior conferences with different apps. I would definitely choose Whova over those other experiences because of the overall package. I also can't say enough about the opportunity to create personal groups to meet with attendees directly. It can often be very intimidating to connect on a larger scale when you don't know anyone, but that option along with the roster (plus option to bookmark people) helped me learn more of my colleagues.

Everyone on our team had their assigned tasks to complete in Whova on a weekly basis and did so with ease and confidence.

• Having one system that can manage online donations, ticket purchases, online auction, donor tax letters, etc. has created efficiency for my org.
• Reports are flawed and lack of data integration with other systems causes me to do a lot of unnecessary manual work.

• Whova made our virtual and hybrid events possible! Our virtual attendees loved the ability to interact and engage with each other, the exhibitors, the speakers and organizers of the event. It also allowed our in-person attendees to do the same, and navigate the conference on-site.
• Whova made organizing the conference possible for our small staffed organization! We only have 1.25 FTEs and were able to pull off a hybrid conference in 2022. It wouldn’t have been possible without Whova!

Incentivized