★★★★★
“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.”
Most Cadmium replacements start the same way: a program committee waiting on a configuration queue for a form change they could have made themselves.
Teams looking at Cadmium alternatives usually want committee self-service instead of vendor configuration, a speaker CRM that persists across years, and content capture on the session record. Sessionboard covers all three plus call for papers, review, and awards. OpenWater fits form-based programs, CTI/cOASIS fits analyst-run congresses, Ex Ordo fits review-only scope.
Match your role to the job Sessionboard solves — program ops, content reuse, or marketing attribution.
Chairs and reviewers still coordinate in email — you need committee ops on the program graph, not another submission form.
Speaker data resets every submission cycle — you need one faculty record from acceptance through show day.
Social shares without registration attribution — Advocacy tracks peer links; Dispatch covers internal team distribution.
Transcripts and clips live in a separate tool — you need capture, Attendee Hub, and Create on the session record.
“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.”
No single winner — match the tool to your trigger, data ownership, and team workflow.
| Vendor | Best when | Tradeoffs | Pricing note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sessionboard | The committee wants self-service abstract and speaker operations on one record, from call for papers through review, speaker portal, transcription, and awards. Faculty history persists across years in a speaker CRM. | Registration and CE credit stay on your existing stack; Sessionboard runs beside them rather than replacing them. | Licensing follows meeting and submission volume; a scoped quote takes one demo. |
| OpenWater | Multiple form-based programs (awards, grants, abstracts) need to share one horizontal contract and forms-plus-review is the whole scope. | The workflow after acceptance, speaker readiness, materials, and content capture, typically lands back in email and spreadsheets. | Priced by module breadth across program types. |
| CTI / cOASIS | An anchor congress with tens of thousands of abstracts runs on analyst-led configuration and the society prefers a services relationship. | Form and report changes go through a vendor queue, and committees wait on configuration cycles mid-season. | Services-led engagements scoped per congress. |
| Ex Ordo | Academic conferences need submission and review only, with no speaker operations worth software. | Everything after acceptance needs another system, and each edition starts from a fresh import. | Priced per conference on submission volume. |
Configuration dependence. eventScribe changes route through the vendor, so committees wait on a queue for form tweaks, report changes, and workflow updates during the busiest weeks of the season. Self-service platforms remove the wait.
For abstract and speaker operations, yes: call for papers, custom forms, multi-round blind review, conflict-of-interest tracking, speaker portal, and transcription run natively. Registration and CE stay on your current stack, and Sessionboard runs beside them.
In-flight review rounds can finish where they are while the next cycle opens in the new system. Accepted submissions and faculty records import, so returning speakers see prefilled profiles instead of a blank form.
None of the four publish list pricing; quotes follow scope and services. Put a scoped Sessionboard quote beside your Cadmium renewal before you sign it, the demo takes an hour.
It becomes the starting point. Past participation, bios, and materials import into the speaker CRM, so returning faculty see prefilled profiles and the committee sees who delivered across editions.
Talk through your event workflow — abstracts, speakers, content, and marketing on one program graph.
Ready to talk through your workflow?
Request a demo