★★★★★
“Sessionboard has been one of our most successful investments this year, making our team more efficient and allowing us to focus on the most critical components of our events.”
Almost every abstract submission tool handles the easy part well.
Abstract submission software collects structured proposals, routes them to reviewers for scored and often blind evaluation, and records decisions. The options split by where they stop: form builders collect but do not review, academic tools end at the decision, suite modules depend on vendor configuration, and program platforms carry acceptance through to speaker materials and the schedule.
The right tool depends less on submission volume than on what has to happen after the committee decides.
Blind review, conflict-of-interest exclusion, and a scoring rubric are requirements — the process has to prove it was fair.
Learning objectives and disclosures have to be collected at submission or accreditation paperwork becomes a manual reconstruction.
Acceptance is the handoff that breaks — presenter confirmations, bios, and slides should come from the submission record, not a new form.
Under fifty abstracts with one review round, a paid platform is overkill — you need to know where the free ceiling actually is.
“Sessionboard has been one of our most successful investments this year, making our team more efficient and allowing us to focus on the most critical components of our events.”
“Sessionboard saves significant planning time and makes it easier than ever for speakers and sponsors to participate in our clients' events.”
“We used Sessionboard daily. It served as our source of truth for tracking speakers, sending emails, and accessing reports. The ability to set a weekly digest email was a huge time saver.”
“Honestly, I loved it! Getting everything out of the spreadsheet. It collects all the information and gives you a visual of who you might want to invite.”
Ordered roughly by where each one stops in the lifecycle, which is the distinction that matters more than price.
| Vendor | Best when | Tradeoffs | Pricing note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Form builders (Google Forms, Typeform, Jotform) | Collection is the whole job — under ~50 abstracts, a single reviewer or a committee that meets once, and no blind review requirement. | Review happens in an exported spreadsheet, reviewer assignment and scoring are manual, no COI handling, and nothing persists to next year's call. | Free to roughly $30/month. |
| Academic review tools (Ex Ordo, Oxford Abstracts, ConfTool) | Peer-reviewed academic conferences where scored review and proceedings are the deliverable, and the program is built elsewhere. | The workflow ends at the decision, so presenter confirmations, materials, and scheduling need another system, and each edition often starts from a fresh import. | Typically priced per conference on submission volume. |
| Suite modules (Cvent, Cadmium) | The organization already licenses the suite for registration and the module's default workflow fits the committee's process. | Form and workflow changes route through vendor configuration, so committees queue for edits during the busiest weeks of the call. | Bundled into suite licensing. |
| Medical abstract specialists (CTI cOASIS, MiraSmart) | Large medical and scientific congresses with established committee processes and accreditation requirements. | Configuration is generally vendor-managed rather than self-service, and the surrounding speaker operations tend to remain separate. | Quoted per meeting. |
| Sessionboard | Submission is the front of a full program: forms the committee edits itself, multi-round blind review with assignment rules and COI capture, and acceptance flowing into speaker portal, materials, scheduling, poster sessions, and content capture on one record that persists across years. | Built for programs with real review and speaker operations — a thirty-abstract symposium does not need it. | Licensed by meeting and submission volume. |
A system that collects structured abstracts or session proposals from authors, routes them to reviewers for scored evaluation, and records the committee's decisions. Stronger products continue past the decision into presenter confirmation, materials collection, and program scheduling.
Effectively yes, if collection is all you need: Google Forms, Jotform, and similar tools cost nothing and work fine under roughly fifty abstracts with one review round. The ceiling arrives with blind review, reviewer assignment, conflict-of-interest handling, and the acceptance handoff — all of which become manual spreadsheet work.
Submission describes the front of the process — the author-facing form and the intake. Management usually implies the whole cycle: submission, reviewer assignment, scored and blind rounds, decisions, and often the program build that follows. Vendors use the terms loosely, so it is worth asking where a given product actually stops.
Assign reviewers by topic expertise with conflicts excluded, score against a written rubric such as relevance, rigor, clarity, and novelty, and keep review blind where accreditation or bylaws require it. Larger programs run two rounds: a broad screen, then a program-fit pass on the survivors.
Everything review and program build need, collected once: title, structured abstract body, topic track, preferred presentation format, author and co-presenter details, learning objectives where CE applies, and financial disclosures. Every field left out at submission becomes an email later.
It varies, and this is a common gap. Many tools treat posters as an afterthought or push them to a separate ePoster product, which splits one program across two systems. Ask whether poster and platform submissions share a pipeline and whether accepted posters can be published to a gallery.
Usually not, and it should not have to. Registration, badges, and housing generally stay on Cvent, RainFocus, or an AMS, while the abstract and program layer runs alongside them with data flowing between the two.
For form builders, hours. For self-service platforms, days to a couple of weeks to configure forms, tracks, and review rounds. For vendor-configured systems, plan in months and work backwards from your call-open date, since configuration queues lengthen in the busy season.
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