Stova

Ease of use and fantastic customer support

Pros:

The speed at which Aventri (formerly eTouches) responds to support requests is fantastic and a real asset. While they don't always have the perfect answer, they are very consistent in their follow up until the customer is satisfied.

Cons:

Very little to dislike about this software. Only negatives encountered would be the rare occasion that emails sent via their marketing system get filtered out in recipient's spam folder.

Robust product with some limitations, great support - worth considering if you can afford it

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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

Cons:

- 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

Run. Run Away Fast.

Comments: Overall experience: terrible.
Benefits I've realized: literally any other software would be better than this. I'm counting down the days until our contract is up.

Pros:

The ONLY positive thing I have to say about this software is this: The customer service team seems to have it pretty much together...which they'd have to because I can imagine they are quite busy with all the customers trying to figure out their convoluted system.

Cons:

Where do I begin? - Upon trying to get out of our 3-year contract (after suffering through months of painful training), we were told by our sales rep that "Aventri is incredibly intuitive" and "there are endless features if you'd just go through the training". Well we did go through the training. The free training, that is. Aventri wanted another $2,500 for private training with our team! If your product is so intuitive, why would we need 16 hours of training valued at $2,500? - I absolutely abhor this software. I dread having to figure out new features. 90% of the time, I end up emailing customer service because I cannot find what I need. This software makes about as much sense as a purple llama named Tuesday that didn't like his doorknob for the fuzzy coffee cup. - Their "client support portal" is a joke. Supposedly you type in a phrase and it comes back with helpful tips and articles to solve your problem. Well, in my opinion someone screwed with the algorithm and it spits back the most useless junk you've ever seen. It is NEVER relevant or helpful.

Our complicated ticketing was made much simpler!!

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Great product - flexible to suit a wide variety of events

Comments: Our team was looking for a registration solution that could be flexible to suit our needs - it needed to be reasonably priced as we are a non-profit. Aventri has been a life-saver! Our team was up and running - building events within a week.

Pros:

The ability to template the routine events and still be flexible to create individual experiences for others. Customer service is exceptional - amazing support team who are always on hand to help.

Cons:

Websites are fairly basic, but it gets the job done with limited technical skill on my part. They are in beta with a brand new website function that looks amazing.