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.

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.

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.

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.

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

- 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

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have been able to better coordinate discount codes for certain registrants plus offer various registration types, which has saved me a lot of time and communication. Another prior issue was CEU scanning, which with Aventri will be much more streamlined, will reduce congestion and will require less staff volunteers.

The most helpful tool for me is their Custom Reporting feature. I can find exactly what I need, when I need it. I also really enjoy being able to see the website update automatically as I make any changes or updates. The new BETA version is so much better!

I have no complaints at this time other than its high price. Any issues I encounter are quickly remedied by their fantastic support staff. They typically respond pretty quickly and escalate the issue if needed. I also appreciate the opportunity to leave feedback on each ticket.

Excellent customer support! Very happy with the overall experience after running events using Aventri / eTouches since about 2014.

Tons of flexibility in how to manage registration processes and stay organized with registrations and name badges. I also like how easily it integrates with lead collection technologies.

I feel their website / e-registration module could be improved in both looks and functionality, and I think it's disappointing a mobile app feature is no longer included with their desktop plan pricing. Too expensive for the mobile option so we end up using a 3rd party.

We are organizing around 10 events per year which are our touchpoint with our members and all the community. Etouches has been first our registration software. What we value most is: Registration setup : - managing members only rate with automated filters - easy design of the pages - setup administrative invoices and other documents - management of complex information gathering (session, extra-data, share-transportation...) And also a templating of these setup to allow us to duplicate all or parts of these setup... Communication management: - manage layout of emails easily with global templates or event-specific customization - send out invitation and monitor answers - manage the "no" answer (great one) to allow you to remind only the one that did not answer in & single click - manage automated email for incomplete registration, confirmation, changes in the programme... Financial & reporting: - really easy automated report - daily email custom report (just magic for other stakeholders) and live private lists - finance management with our context (taxes are complex for association)... Sponsor management: - we also used etouches to manage sponsorship - from confirmation of packages - invoices - quota management for badges and VIP pass CRM management: we use the option of "global database" : - this include that our global DB is automaticaly updated by every single registration - we have cross events data - we can monitor engagement, loyalty - we can detect low engaged people to be proactive in the communication with them before they leave the association - we can provide detailed data about quality, quantity and interest of our community to our potential sponsors --> fully integrated with no import / export / excel skills (and time spent)

eTouches is very user friendly and easy to explain to someone how to use the registration. Easy to walk attendees through the process. Many ways to customize each event as we need,

Sometimes the email system does not work with some firewalls. eTouches is sometimes hard to get to merge with other programs that we use for different parts of our events.

I love how easy eTouches is to use, in all aspects. It's incredibly intuitive and user friendly, it meets every need that we have from setting up registrations, to marketing events, and syncing it back to our Salesforce database. It's an essential part of every event and program that we run and helps our small staff get things done efficiently, quickly, and produce really high-level materials. There are some additional features that I would like, but I've been able to submit those needs through the customer support portal and eTouches continually adds them to the development queue. They are always making updates to increase the functionality of the system. Before we implemented eTouches we had a TON of problems customizing emails, getting them out, getting attendees to convert from viewing an email to registering for an event and sometimes they would try and register for an event but just give up because our old system was so difficult to use. With eTouches we've increased all of our metrics around our digital marketing, event registration, and attendance. We do a lot of events every year (over 60) and we have a team of 3 for all the marketing and event production, so our time is really valuable. eTouches has reduced the amount of time we need to spend working in the platform while increasing registrations and revenues from our events. eTouches has literally changed the way we do business and now we have more time to work on the business, rather than just in it. This really is the most robust software on the market for event planning and management.

Etouches (now Aventri) gets the job done. It's not as comprehensive or intuitive as some other event management platforms we've used, but it has a lot of necessary functionality.

The two pieces that lack significantly are the website builder and email builder. We have had to use a lot of workarounds. They are not super intuitive and the templates they've provided us are pretty restrictive.

While the intention of the eTouches software modules are right on target they have not been successful (yet) at thinking though the processes all the way to the finish line. If you choose to use this software be prepared to spend a lot of time working out the nuances to fit your needs. Tech support is lovely and helpful but the documentation is poor at best. They have a lot of information but the information doesn't let you understand how the actions in one area affect the outputs in other areas. Which items you must layout first to insure success in the later aspects of your planning. eSelect has a long way to go and I have been assured that the next version will be vastly improved. For instance, don't bother to create the "custom merge codes" for each custom field, they don't work; tech support knew that immediately when we called. However we only called after spending a considerable amount of time setting the fields and custom emails up. There is no indication in the software that these fields are un-usable and in fact you are prompted to create the "custom merge code" each time you create a field. I am keen to see the next version of the software because these folks are close but at this point the software has cost us more time than it has saved us. We ended up re-creating all of our own email downloading two different reports from eSelect, manually merging the reports into spreadsheets in order to generate the needed emails to authors. It took 6+ hours to re-do the job and in the end we used MS Word and Outlook to address the process. Wishing them luck - but will need some good proof before our company pays considerable money to wind up being a beta tester for their products again.

Really great! I am with an account manager that is on top of it and takes care of me, that is half the battle. Easy to set up a registration and easy to get help from the support team!

The developers of Aventri "get" what meeting planners need and have developed a platform that is easy to use. With the lack of time, I was looking for a registration system that was dependable and easy to set up. They did the "thinking" for me.

There are hidden gems and things you can do but unless you use it to the fullest you may not discover these. Aventri needs to better understand all the marketing initiatives that we have as media companies at our disposal and find a way to work these into the system. Example: Conversion Pixel which tracks registrations via Google for Google advertising. Needed to place the pixel on the confirmation but no way to do this after talking with Support many times. We ended up doing Google tag manager instead. But it doesn't track the confirmations. Just a thought!

I really enjoy working with Aventri. It helps us to create a more professional conference and keeps everything organized logistically.

The features I like most about the software was the ease of organizing sessions, the professionalism of the app, the variety of features, it's ability to tell say when sessions were full and how easy it was to input information about sessions.

The conference attendee registration was a bit more difficult as attendees had to toggle back and forth a lot to read session abstracts.

Easy to use, user-friendly event registration software with a great support team and great customer service. I love the reporting features and how I can quickly send a snapshot of the meeting details to show where we are.

It has been a pleasure to use so far. I haven't had any bad experiences with customer support like some others have mentioned.

We have used etouches for many events over the last three years. Powerful and flexible, it is easy to use out of the box for simpler meetings, while its rich set of features is capable of supporting the most complex of meetings - and much more. And, as a bonus, if you have a problem that isn't covered by their extensive knowledge-base, the etouches support team is helpful and responsive - round the clock. This isn't a toy, it will reward the curious, the demanding and those ready to explore its full potential to enhance their meeting design. Pros: Great communications tools, great registration form designer, great custom report generator. An almost perfect set of all the basics that every event manager needs; plus so much more that can be used to add value to any meeting. Cons: Nothing significant that comes to my mind; and if there are any, etouches will be working hard to address them

They have one person in their support department - Leandro Garcia - who is excellent but other than that, the support is appalling in terms of account manager contact and what they can get done. It is feature-rich but dreadful to use. A simple task takes ages to change because they use a third-party HTML formatter that they do not support and have no control over. It has a mind of its own and is frustrating and scary to use. The whole feel is a bit old and dated but they do not seem to care. Do not think about using it for awards and judging - it will add days and days to your workload and expect complaints from your clients. Delegate management is better but it is a clunky system and there are better providers out there. Sorry - but just being honest.....I would steer well clear.

None

Too many to mention now

Managing an event.

There is a lot of functionality built into the software, across the needs of an event.

This isn't user friendly AT ALL. There are only a handful or integrations, and customer service isn't helpful. My impression was that they wanted me to thank them for providing their product, instead of being treated like a customer.

Other than the great costumer service, I do not have a lot of positive feedback for this.

The customer service always responds within minutes.

It is not a very user friendly site and is too complicated for simple events. The interface is a bit outdated but the extended version is way to complicated and takes too much time to figure out.

We hold a lot of events. Aventri allows us to organize each one as well as track payments received and details on the people attending our events.

I find it easy to use. I have all my up coming events in one place. I can easily update attendee information and enter payments.

I find my self click more than once to get an event to open or a registrant list to open.

The Aventri tools provided an easy way to manage an international hybrid event.

It took a while to get acquainted with the system and onboard multiple staff members.

Software has many great features though not overly intuitive how to use. Customer service is top notch.

Could be more intuitive to use. I spend more time then I would like looking for specific settings.

etouches is a wonderful platform. I have nothing but love for the product, the support and the people at etouches. I used the software for our recent user conference, the Unconvention, and was impressed with the vast array of features provided in the application; from flight details, to tiered booking rates, to the mobile app there was always a solution for any idea that I had. The team has been, and continues to be, a great support resource.

The easiest software to use when it comes to any sort of event planning, large or small. It is designed so you can have the same ease of use regardless of what size of event you're planning, technical coding ability or event planning knowledge. In addition, you find it hard pressed to find a more responsive and knowledgeable customer service team in any industry out there.

touches are easy to navigate and to learn compared to similar event registration platforms. I've worked on a variety of types of events from complex to simple registration forms and have found touches to be a great solution for all.

Ease of use

Doesn't have the ability for conditional questioning past 1 level.

Great platform to handle registration for one meeting happening in several locations internationally at the same time. A eReg feature has all great functionalities you need for your event registration.