Shoflo, Cvent, Sched: what each is actually for

Almost every tool in this market describes itself as an event platform, and almost none of them are competing with each other. They are solving different problems for different people who happen to work on the same event.

This guide is deliberately plain about where each category is strong, including where that means it is stronger than us. Buying the wrong category is the most expensive mistake available here, and it is usually made by comparing feature lists that use the same nouns for different things.

Cvent is the reference point. Tickets, registration flows, badges, invoicing, travel, accommodation, procurement, enterprise reporting.

If your hardest problem is selling and admitting several thousand people, handling money, and reporting on it to a finance department, this is your category and you should buy the biggest one you can justify. It is not a production tool and does not pretend to be.

Sched and Sessionize sit here, from different ends: publishing a programme attendees can browse and save from, and running a call for papers that fills it.

Strong at exactly that. The limit is the one the agenda piece describes — the agenda is treated as a publishing artefact, so nothing downstream of it is built, and production still starts from a blank spreadsheet.

Shoflo, Cuez and Stagetimer. This is the gallery, the calling position and the stage — cue-level rundowns, department views, timers on the front of house monitor.

These are good tools built by people who have clearly done the job. They start where the programme is already decided, which is entirely reasonable, and it means the running order gets entered a second time by hand.

Whova, Swapcard, Bizzabo, CrowdComms. Networking, matchmaking, messaging, polls, sponsors, gamification.

The value here is the attendee experience between sessions, and for a conference whose actual product is who you meet, that is the whole event. Worth being honest that this is not what EventBlok is for.

Work out which of these sentences is the truest description of your worst week, and buy for that.

"We cannot handle the volume of registrations and the money" — registration. "Nobody can find what is on" — agenda. "The show itself is complicated and live" — production. "People come to meet each other" — engagement. "The same information is being rebuilt in five places and going wrong on the day" — that is the one we built for.

Most events need two of these. Almost none need all five.

Founder, EventBlok. Live, hybrid and broadcast producer, showcaller and technical director, in production since 1996.

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