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Ask HN: Ever run a conference? What's the best software to use?

3 points by jsdalton ↗ HN
My company is overhauling our events management and registration processes right now. I'm loathe to build something from scratch, so I'm looking at third party solutions such as Amiando, Expectnation, Eventbrite, and Cvent.

Has anyone worked with any of these products? Any advice, reviews or other suggestions?

I don't believe I've seen this topic come up on HN before so thought I'd ask. Thanks!

3 comments

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chris-top
eventbrite.com is so bitchen' it hurts. Ouch!
jsdalton
My only complaint right now is that it only offers payment via Paypal and Google Checkout. If it weren't for that, I probably would have settled on it.
roberte3
Usually the combination that I have been using for the events that I have planned, has been eventbright with pathable.com

Eventbright handles a lot of the registration problems very well. Although it falls down in the following areas, Paypal sucks natch, and it doesn't handle individuals buying more than one ticket well at all. i.e. 1 person buys 5 tickets for people at their company. All of the tickets belong to that person even if you want all of the different peoples names. The google checkout is a bit better than the paypal nightmare.

Pathable is really great, because it can pull the xml feed of your attendees out of eventbright, and has a lot of community features for your attendees. It sets up groups, lets people self tag their interests, handles emails between the people attending and really helps you establish a community between the people coming to your event.

Pathable also lets you print out fancy looking name badges with peoples names on them, and the names of people that they should talk to at the event (as an option). Anyway Pathable is good stuff.