Eventival Software

Overall, the Eventival software is fantastic. It has streamlined many of our basic festival operations in year 1 of our adoption, with many of the more granular operations expected to be streamlined in year 2. Being able to query the database and then export pretty much anything that you need for web or print design/marketing within a few minutes of knowing the requirement.

Being the first festival in Ireland to adopt the software, we faced a lot of unfamiliarity from our local film community. Now that we have had it in use for a year, much of the customer support issues we faced in 2018 will not be present.

The cons I have found with the software are minor compared to the overall pros obtained by continued and widespread use in our team. The software itself is massively thorough, which can lead to an inexperienced/less than technical user being overwhelmed, but the Eventival team are aware and are continually updating and improving the end user experience of the software.

Pros

Powerful mass email functionality
Quick, reliable and helpful support team
The centralisation of our film festival's primary data stores, making for easier GDPR compliance
Advanced search and export capabilities
Ease of use for film review
Ease of use for staging multiple layers of film submission and related data capture (submission > full marketing data post selection > technical information, all in one flow)
Custom data capture form design
Cinando integration - this makes it easy to research and gather info on non-submitted titles that programmers are interested in

Cons

Unresponsive (non-mobile) design of Visitor Page and back office
High learning curve for the less than technically literate, training videos would be amazing
Filesize limit of 10mb, no support for TIFF images
Certain limitations on exporting data, much is exportable, but some tasks will require doing two separate exports to obtain all data, depending on requirements of your export
Inability to create mass email template outside of setup

We are organising an international educational project Art Department Masterclass. Eventival helped us to increase our work efficiency on daily basis. We used this software to prepare customized application forms, send mass personalized newsletters to our partners and former participants. It's also a very convenient tool to measure the growth of the project - all the registered users are automatically included in the contacts database.
Eventival is an incredibly useful tool, its features seem perfectly suitable for organising film festivals and trainings, although I'm sure there are many other areas where this software would be useful.

Pros

The most useful features for our masterclass were:
- The ability to design custom application forms;
- Assigning different tags (in the contact list) to applicants, selected participants, partners, etc;
- Customized landing page;
- Easy interface and the best possible customer service.

Cons

There weren't any features we found problematic.

Overall time saving...

Pros

I first started to use Eventival about one year ago for Porto/Post/Doc Film & Media Festival. I have to say that now I don't know how I used to do my work without Eventival. The thing that I like the most is the costumer support; they make sure to answer all my questions in less than 24 hours.

Cons

The only thing that I have to point at this time for Eventival - but I am sure that the Eventival Team is working on it - is that it is not so friendly for submitting films.

Pros

It is specially made for film festivals and reflects their production needs.
The costumer service is nice and friendly, helping you along the way.
The schedule and advance search tools are extremely practical and make the organization of information more systematic and accessible to all the production departments.
After you feed the system with the necessary information, it makes life in a big team so much easier: the exchange of info is fast and efficient; some automated features make erros less likely to happen; communication with guests is more fluid and allows guest services to save precious time.

Cons

Given its not so user friendly interface and sheer amount of functions, there is a fairly big learning curve. For users that are not so tech savvy it might a bit hard to grasp all its possibilities.
It is not mobile friendly, but they are working on it.

It combines all festival management tools under one single application. It is a database, event management tool, CRM, cvommunication tool, data analyzer, very very useful for especially film festivals which at first it was designed for.

Pros

With its many interconnected modules, Eventival is at once a database, an accommodation center, a communication hub, a CRM tool--a multi-faceted festival management. I use it mainly for submissions, and without it, it would have been impossibly burdensome.

Cons

Data entry could have been more streamlined.
It needs to be used by the whole team to take advantage of it fully.

We could manage to organize all of our festivals works inside Eventival.
Our mistakes rate dropped by a considerable amount.
It gave us the confidence to expand our festival into different fields and programmes.

Pros

Eventival is everything you'll need and everything you never thought you are going to need.
Scheduling the screening has never been easier.
Advanced search and customized exports give you thousands of options to fulfill your needs.
Powerful email platform with hundreds of merge fields to integrate inside emails.
The translation system for publications is well implemented.
Advanced access permission for users.
The logic behind Eventival as its backbone is notably great.
Everything in Eventival is customizable.
Best support I've ever seen.
Moral attitude towards extra requests you will have in the future in terms of payment for your customizations.

Cons

The visitor page (user account for end users) is not responsive and mobile friendly.
Might be a little bit expensive for small or non-profit organizations.

We are in the process of trying it all out for the festival 2018

Pros

Before training with the Eventival team we had very different experiences with the system from nothing to experts on the booking modules from our film department. Today we use many different systems for all the festival´s needs and was looking to merge, integrate and push all these into one system as much as possible. We can with certainty say that we had a revelation with what we actually can do with Eventival! The most important thing that came up in the training sessions was the fact the system makes us more confident as a festival. It teaches us something about how we can organize ourselves better to get more value out of our own data from the festival. It makes us asks some questions about us as festival and that it super- awesome, when that is how we grow stronger, merrier and bigger!

Cons

We would have wanted the system to be more mobile friendly and more mobile integrated but understand this is something Eventival is working on now.

Pros

It is a tool that allows to easily connect the work of the main departments of a festival. It leaves nothing to chance. In addition the improvements they do during the year are very useful and never fail to continue improving. Eventival team is fantastic. It is a pleasure to work with them and we love to improve all together.

Cons

At first it is not very intuitive, but once this step is solved with the kind help of the Eventival team, it becomes an essential tool for the organization of the event.

I think that the leadership of Eventival is the result of problem solving concept and an inspiring enthusiasm of its creators. I appreciate very much the sensational job of Eventival team on this event management software which we have been successfully using during the past years...

Pros

I think that the leadership of Eventival is the result of problem solving concept and an inspiring enthusiasm of its creators. I appreciate very much the sensational job of Eventival team on this event management software which we have been successfully using during the past years

Cons

Nothing

Eventival helps us efficiently organise guest services for dozens of annual events in various language mutations and for various target groups, and it is also enormously useful when organising the work of our team of six hundred volunteers. Like with every information system, the start may be a little rough, but it has paid off, and Eventival has become a companion to everyone on our team.

Pros

Easy to use whenever you are.

Cons

Tough start, like any other database.

We began to use Eventival when, besides organising the three-month music festival JAZZINEC, we created JAZZ WORLD PHOTO, an international photography competition. We were looking for something that would facilitate the registration and categorisation of the applicants and accepting photographs into the competition, but that would also be a communication tool facilitating independent deliberation of the jurors, production of the gala evening and, in the next stage, organisation of our travelling exhibitions. All this can now be done with ease and comfort. Most importantly, Eventival fulfilled a rather exceptional request we had: that none of the jurors and voting organisers would have access to the current data as long as the application period for the new round is running, This was necessary in order for the compete neutrality of the jurors. Only Eventival could do this for us.

Pros

It's easy and comfortable.

I've been using it quite a lot to send invitations for film festivals. The search queries are not too intuitive at first, but once you understand the logic of it, it's a great tool.

After five years of using Eventival, it has become an essential tool for almost all our departments, and the festival is running very smoothly with it.

Every year, we use it more extensively: this year, we have used the Personal Schedules much more professionally and systematically, in 2017 we plan to integrate our new website with Eventival even better. We also always appreciate the availability and flexibility of the company's staff, and the constant willingness to develop the system further while listening to our needs and demands.

We really appreciate this collaboration.

Eventival is a highly customizable database that can solve specific needs of any film festival. Eventival can import profiles directly from cinando solving a lot of the regular data capture problems. Being a online database its perfect to stay connected to the festival from every where you are. Eventival's support team has tended must of our requirements. But the fact that you can customize the platform to your needs is the best feature.

Eventival helps us to manage a huge amount of interconnected data to collect, sort and transform the information not only about film projects, but also about events, companies, and professionals. In addition, it is a great support for overall communication with film professionals in the Czech Republic and worldwide.
It facilitates the research of specific data, the administration of reminders and many other things that institution like Czech Film Center has to deal with every day. And not to forget, thanks to the copying of data from the database to our website, it helps us build our new online presentation.
Shortly it is ready to take from our shoulders the often exhausting and time consuming back office work in large extent. So if we feed the beast properly with correct data, we can free our minds and use our potential and work experience for more delicate tasks.

We started using Eventival from the beginning (2008/2009) and we have seen grow it year after year. The support team is fantastic and listen to the suggestions of all customers to try to improve the software. Today we consider it indispensable for our festival also for the jury form that they have created for us. Eventival simplified all the festival departments life and it helps us to save a lot of time. It's a web based software and this is extremely useful because allow us to work from different places been always connected.

Pros

web based, very helpful support team, easy to learn and use, saves time and work,

We've had a really fast growth in terms of submissions for the Berlin fashion Film Festival. As having to manage everything via spreadsheets became painful, we were looking for a tool to handle the most important processes in terms of managing the films, such as submissions, film-review, judging, etc. We tried out various systems, but with Eventival we feel the safest, especially because of their great, friendly and efficient customer service. On the rare occasions when you might have a question or problem with the system, you will always get prompt replies and solutions. The tech guys at Eventival have also made plenty of customizations for us at a fare rate. The whole Eventival team feels like an extension to our team, and we love having them in the BFFF family.

We still don't use all of the functionalities of this cool tool but we will extend this usage as we move on.

Since we start using Eventival we must recognize that it simplified a lot all the festival departments life. It helps us to save a lot of time, organize all our data and it easily links them together.
When we started using it last year, at the beginning it meant a big change for us, but Eventival team offered a very useful support with all the question / problems we had. After one year they are still available all the time and it makes the difference.
The fact that is web based is extremely useful because allow us to work from different places been always connected.
We are very happy to have Eventival as a partner: the festival organization without it would be much harder!

Pros

web based, very complete for festival needs, very helpful support team

We have been using Eventival pretty much since it's inception and it's become a essential tool for managing our festival. It has EVERYTHING you need along with stuff you didn't even knew you needed. The team behind it also has one of the best customer services available which is useful in the beginning as it can be a bit overwhelming at first. But as soon as you get a hang of it, it is super user friendly. It is also very adaptive to your needs whether you're a bigger or smaller festival and the connection to Cinando is invaluable to a film festival like ours.
Eventival comes highly recommended!

Pros

Overall the best platform of it's kind!

Cons

Can be a bit overwhelming at first

Eventival is a must tool when organizing a film festival or any sort of event. Developed to cater for the needs of various departments within a film festival, the database has improved a lot in the last years thanks to the imput its creators receive from their partner festivals. Eventival has a user-friendly interface which invites you to explore and does not intimidate as databases usually do. We at TIFF cannot imagine what would mean to organize an event so complex as a film festival without a tool of this kind.

If you are sick and tired of using Excel sheets, you should not hesitate to get Eventival. It offers a better structure of information, assures better communication within departments and saves so much time for everyone.

Pros

It's very friendly use, adapted to our needs and improving constantly. During the festival they are offering the best support to make our life easier and also in the last years we managed to integrate Eventival with our mobile app and also ticketing soft

Cons

Sometimes is difficult to work with Eventival due to internet connection. We have a large team and sometimes we have up to 30 persons working in the same time and the internet can became a problem.

Advice to Others

Make sure you have a proper training with your staff before starting using it. We invested in a Eventival Guru in our team and all the issues are managed by him directly with the Eventival staff.
Also make sure you have a reliable internet structure in your office.