A Swoogo Review Four Years In – A Comprehensive Perspective on the Ultimate Event Management Solution for Agencies and Clients
I'm now going into my 4th year of using Swoogo for building events for the agency I work for and our clients. Having used other popular event management platforms here and there over the years, I've come to the realization that Swoogo just ticks all the boxes when it comes to ease-of-use for both registrants and admin across in-person, virtual, and hybrid events, and that alone is enough for us to continue using their services.
What I love about Swoogo:
The support is incomparable to anything else I have used - event platform or otherwise! The support team is readily available through their simple ticketing system, and they respond quickly and thoughtfully. I can't think of a single instance where I needed a question answered or technical advice and not had at least one working solution within a few hours or less (usually much, much less). I also cannot undervalue their vast library of resource articles and videos in addition to always having access to a real person and not a chat bot.
The customizability of the event website builder allows me to create a branded experience for clients. Access to their included themes' code gives me even more options to customize their templates.
Registration, this is the big one. Swoogo allows you to completely customize registration forms, from the field type, to what is contained in the field, to who can see the field. I can create one registration form/path for all of my registrant types - no multiple pages for each path or reg type unless you want that - and set the visibility conditions based on whatever I want. This person is on that invitation list? Then they can see this field. They chose a specific answer in a previous field, now they can see this one. The visibility conditions go beyond just the registration form too - I use them for emails, website pages, reports, and more.
What our clients love about Swoogo:
Our clients LOVE the custom reporting feature. You don't realize how great it is until you use something else. Being able to share direct links and schedule emails with access to real-time data with clients, showing them exactly what they need, has become essential to us. The ability to jump right into an individual registration or make a change to multiple directly from the reports is something I've noticed any other platform we've used or looked into using just does not do.
A white-label experience across the board - the event website, emails, apps, etc. We can brand the entire event just to them (without having to pay to remove the Swoogo branding). This is clearly a pro-Swoogo review, but clients love that their event experience doesn't have to include branding from the platform if they don't want it to.
The annual license pricing model allows for unlimited events and registrants, which is almost unheard for event registration platforms.
The 'cheap & cheerful' mobile app - while not overly sophisticated compared to other event mobile app options out there, it allows our clients to provide their registrants with an intuitive mobile app experience at a more than reasonable price. The app credit system is great for clients who don't want to commit long-term to an app provider or only need/want the app for a single event.
The platform is also easy-to-use and easy-to-learn for people who don't have years of experience in Swoogo, or a lot of technical expertise. While I provide a service managing Swoogo for clients, they also feel confident enough to go in and make updates, pull reports, send emails and more themselves (which we love too!).
What we'd love to see from Swoogo in the future:
An enhanced hotel management experience - The existing hotel feature is just as great as the other features in the platform, but our clients would like to see more features become available for the hotel rooming list and block management, specifically when it comes to managing shared rooms. We've nailed down a process that works well enough for our clients using the existing feature, but being able to simplify the roommate matching/block management for shared rooms within the platform would make Swoogo the perfect event management platform to us.
As an agency partner, we continually recommend Swoogo to multiple existing and new clients for all of their event and training needs. I have had conversations with multiple members of the Swoogo team in pre- and post-sales, support, Pro Services, and even their C-suite - all friendly and accessible to their customers. I'm excited to see what else is to come for our event management software of choice. This review is entirely based on my true experience with the platform over the years, and I recommend Swoogo to agencies, institutions, and individuals who need a great overall event management software solution.
21 December 2023
Unprompted review