Socio filled the technology gap in executing this brand new initiative we launched in 2021. We needed the software to facilitate a community environment while allowing the platform to live stream using our own chosen platform. Socio came in at the right price for the scale and scope for what we needed.

From the research process to executing our program, Socio exceeded expectations the entire way. We needed a solution outside of our current website/database because our program was for people outside our membership. Socio's registration component was very versatile and facilitated the unique group registrations and discounts we offered with ease. The Community platform we used for our 5-month event was super user-friendly and intuitive for our attendees and staff conducting the event. You do not need any advanced experience with web development or technology to build out the community as you need. The Socio support team is also quick to respond and always very helpful.

The standard template to build out the community is pretty rigid. We had to adjust some of our styling and graphics to account for what Socio's template allowed. It was not prohibitive in our facilitation of the program, but just more inconvenient. The other thing we disliked was the inability for event admins to make account changes for users. Several times we had users change jobs, therefore, changing their emails. Each time, we had to go through Socio support to get them access to their account. It would be a much better process if event admins can adjust usernames/emails for their users.

Socio is helping us by giving us an app for our yearly conference that enables hundreds of people to connect and provides them with useful information. We have also realized that we may want to use this app for more events during the year.

I love the new metrics and analytics on the back end. It made it very easy to track all things that the Attendees were focused on during the event. I also love the ability to be creative and add links, attachments, pdfs, etc..

There were a few things that I disliked. I dislike the fact that I cant reset attendees' passwords for them in the backend of the app. This was a severe issue, especially during the event, when people needed to download the app quickly and couldn't reset their password because they didn't have access to their email. I also wish that the socio app had the ability to add more than one email address to a specific person's profile. For example, if someone in the back end logs in under their personal email and not the email that we have on file, it creates two different users in the back end. It would also be nice to be able to link to more things internally in the app. For example the ability to link to maps, social feed and additional app icons created. Also, the ability to slow down the banners would be great — maybe a few options like 5, 10, 15 seconds before switching. It would also be helpful to make it even more distinguishable between past events and current events. We probably had 20+ people who accidentally logged into the 2019 event instead of the 2021 event and they became very confused. Maybe a warning that comes up, saying "Are you sure you want to access a previous event?”

Apart from being less popular, the software works seamless and it helps us run weekly team meetings successfully.

We use Webex Events for our weekly team meeting to communicate with the team at office and the team working remotely. The video conferencing feature is by far my favourite as the quality is great and connects seamlessly.

The deployment of the software is not an easy one as 90% of the team at our organisation are always hearing about it for the first time.

Metrics are super important to any event, it helps us to measure the success of the event and acknowledge areas of improvement. The Socio app allowed us to track the number of users who clicked on Sponsor booths, ads and it even listed these attendees. This allowed sponsors to easily contact the attendees afterwards to follow up with them. The video rooms feature was a huge hit with our event. We used it predominantly for our Pre-Conference event and the attendees loved the intimate settings. This gave the attendees full access to our experts to hold discussions on challenges they were facing and to network with others at the same time. This really added the personal touch to the event and attendees from across the globe felt like they were at a physical event during these sessions.

The Socio product was exactly what we needed for our online virtual event! When running an online event which spans across time zones, it’s very important to ensure that all attendees know what time the sessions are scheduled to take place. The Socio app allowed all attendees to see their local time zone and the event time which was a deal breaker for us given that we had attendees from the US, UK, Singapore, UAE and Australia. We were also very impressed with the rapid response time from the Socio team who helped us to set up everything for our event. Their team usually came back to us within a matter of minutes and helped us resolve issues before the big day, on the day and even after the event. We really appreciated the support from this stellar team and were very grateful for it! The attendees were also very enthralled with the ease of accessing the sessions, ability to switch tracks (we had three tracks at the same time) and the ease of networking. They loved the video chat feature and the ability to connect and speak with the speakers, sponsors and other attendees during and after the event. There were a lot of business opportunities which developed from these sessions.

The only improvement would be to have a version that allowed Socio's full service on older mobile devices as there were some users with older mobile devices 94+ years) whose software allowed them to download the app but they couldn't access the messaging feature. They used the web version instead which was much easier for them.