Aventri

Kommentare: TEDxSydney is a one day event, with a complicated ticketing/purchasing process and many categories of attendees. In the past, we have managed this complexity via a combination of spreadsheets and home-grown databases, which has often resulted in loss of information or registrants on the day, as well as created challenges with reconciling multiple lists of registrants. We used etouches for our event this year, and it made such a difference to have one source of truth for all our registrations, payments and refunds, and to allow us to have an easy and quick snapshot of all our attendees at our fingertips.

Vorteile: I enjoyed having a one-stop shop for all our registrations and the super-flexible configuration capability that handled most of our complex needs. We were able to accommodate all of the attendee categories with the variety of set-up options within eReg. I also liked the ability to link events to mailing lists in eMarketing, which we only really scratched the surface with this year. Next year, we plan to integrate them together even more. We also really benefitted from the ability to print badges for the event on the day directly from etouches. Again, we did not use this to its full potential this year, so looking forward to utilising the software even more in this area next year.

Nachteile: One big challenge we had was the requirement to have at least one public category of attendee that, apparently, cannot be sold out. There had to be an option for people to select when they went to register. Our event is not a public event and purchases/registrations are by invite only, but invitations sometimes went out to more people than we had tickets available for or, alternatively, had an expiry date set for them. If these categories hit capacity or expired, there was no clean way to display a simple unavailable or sold out message without offering another public option. While the software is very customisable, this flexibility does come with some downsides. There are a number of different areas/screens we had to remember to change and update if we added new categories. This was probably made more difficult by the fact that we had a lot of categories, but it did mean that a few categories did not get set-up correctly because we missed one of these many steps.

Kommentare: Kellen has partnered with etouches since 2012. We have seen the company grow & prosper, and we are very pleased with the results. Top successes include continued ease of use, great customer support, good online learning, useful API, great integration between modules, great onsite experience. Some of the challenges include lack of development of the online booth sales & management module (ebooth), slow development of integration with association management systems (AMSs, such as NetForum, YourMembership, i4a...), limited scope of the appointment-scheduling module (esocial). We have used other systems, and for an all-around event management solution, or just as a registration management tool, we feel etouches can't be outdone. We feel we've been part of their development, through sharing challenges and helping design solutions. They've come a long way with their Call for Abstracts module (eselect), and we provided a lot of feedback on that in the early stages. We use ehome quite often, and it's very easy to learn & use, in support of the ereg module. We do not use the task management or budgeting solutions. We have used both emarketing and escan successfully. Their customer service department is responsive, and we are happy to report that senior management is also very responsive to inquiries (when we feel more urgency is required). We process around 10,000 registrations, plus 1000 eselect uses, annually. We chose etouches based on projected ROI and have not been disappointed. We also appreciate and utilize the system's ability to work with multiple currencies, multiple global payment gateways, and multiple languages, including Chinese.

Kommentare: Mostly positive experience. Interface is relatively modern looking - I think it got a facelift recently. Aventri is a solid product. Big companies use it, presumably they have done their due diligence when selecting an events management platform. I also evaluated others like Cvent, eventbrite, etc. Naturally it’s way more capable than simpler yet way more affordable systems that are bolted on like Wix or Constant Contact. It is mostly geared towards larger events that require some relatively complex logistical planning. Organizing Conferences, trade shows, summits etc. Anything with 70+ people with different attendee types, it will have more value. It is still suitable for running things like smaller events like lunches, or dinners for under 50 people. Its a very good RSVP system to track various attendees types, needs and selection choices. It has good logic built in for mailing invitations and sending invites or messages to specific groups of attendees. The hardest part will be standing up the system, populating it with data, and getting your team properly trained and using it competently.

Vorteile: Mostly easy to use - lots of online resources and guides to self-learn - online and phone support is quite responsive and knowledgeable. Robust feature set.
- rsvp reporting is solid
- custom field questions is solid
- pre populated field in registration form is useful
- almost any sort of option has been built in - I primarily focus on RSVP, attendance and invites
- can set agendas for breakout sessions etc.
- can build a website based on backend info of the event - i.e. update info in the backend and it is immediately reflected on website and reg form.
- easy to send invite and rsvp reports by specific filters (e.g. sales rep)
- integrates with boomset which makes badge printing almost completely painless

Nachteile: - Can be expensive to purchase
- Does take time to learn the platform
- Website builder needs updating for responsive design (beta was released and it’s good)
- Difficult to access event information or update event via mobile device - i.e. there is no mobile app for the event planner. This is a huge pain, actually - mostly for getting guest list or dashboard level info.
- costs even more for additional features compared to similar competitors

Vorteile: Good customer support very rarely get sent to hold when I call in. Staff is friendly and if they cannot solve the issue for me immediately, they follow up regularly to inform me where my ticket is in the process. Aventri has so many features that we have yet to utilize. The previous software ran out of features that we needed where as Aventri seems to keep adding more to the portfolio before we even realize its something we need. They are constantly upgrading and improving. Our customer success team is very friendly and engaging and often follows up on our support tickets.

Nachteile: The reporting system is complex. It would be pretty much impossible to maneuver successfully without dedicated support.

Vorteile: Aventri has an ever expanding portfolio of services that have been extremely helpful with out event management. Their customer service is fabulous and they consistently go above and beyond in their service.

Nachteile: Their rapid growth strategy has led to inconsistencies in their software. We've experienced recent outages of service which are quickly fixed, but inconvenient to us and our clients.