Registration and ticketing
Selling tickets, badges, housing, and payments. Cvent, Swoogo, RainFocus and Stova compete here; it is the most mature and most expensive part of the market.
Conference management software: how the categories differ
Almost nobody shopping for conference management software needs all of it. They have one problem — registration is too expensive, the committee is drowning in spreadsheets, speakers are chased by email, or CE credit is a manual reconstruction — and the market answers with suites that claim to do everything. The useful question is not which platform is best but which of the four jobs below is actually costing you, because the vendor that wins on registration is rarely the one that wins on abstracts, and vice versa.
QUICK ANSWER
Conference management software is not one category. It divides into registration and ticketing, abstract and program management, attendee apps, and continuing education. Suites bundle several and specialists do one deeply. Most buying mistakes come from assuming one system covers all four, then discovering the abstract committee and speaker workflow were the thin part of the bundle.
WHO THIS IS FOR
The four jobs, and who does each one well
Nearly every product in this market is strong at one of these and adequate at the rest. Naming which one hurts is most of the decision.
Abstracts and program
Call for papers, scored and blind review, committee workflow, speaker portal, and the schedule that comes out of it. The part most often underestimated in a suite purchase.
The attendee app
Agenda, maps, notifications, and on-site wayfinding. Cadmium's eventScribe, Whova and EventMobi live here, and it is largely a solved commodity.
Continuing education
Credit tracking, accreditation reporting, and learning records. Usually an LMS — EthosCE, Elevate, CloudCME — rather than event software at all.
LANDSCAPE
How the main options actually split
Grouped by where each is genuinely strong rather than by what its homepage claims, which is the distinction that survives an implementation.
| Vendor | Best when | Tradeoffs | Pricing note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cvent | Large-scale registration, housing and sourcing across a portfolio of events, where procurement wants one enterprise contract. | The abstract and speaker modules are the shallow end of a very deep suite, and configuration changes typically route through services rather than the committee. | Enterprise licensing, usually the highest in the category. |
| Cadmium | Medical and scientific societies that want registration, the eventScribe app, exhibits and CE credit on one contract. | Abstract Scorecard and Conference Harvester stop at collection and review; the program build and speaker readiness that follow are largely manual, and workflow changes are vendor-configured. | Bundled by module. |
| Swoogo | Registration and event websites built quickly and self-service, at a materially lower price than the enterprise suites. | Not an abstract or program platform, and it does not pretend to be — which is why it pairs with one rather than replacing it. | Mid-market, transparent. |
| Academic tools (Ex Ordo, Oxford Abstracts, ConfTool) | Peer-reviewed academic conferences where scored review and proceedings are the deliverable. | The workflow generally ends at the accept or reject decision, so speaker confirmations, materials and scheduling need another system. | Per conference, on submission volume. |
| Whova / EventMobi | The attendee app and networking are the actual requirement, for a conference whose program is already built elsewhere. | Abstract review and committee workflow are light, and the program layer is not the product's centre of gravity. | Per event, app-led pricing. |
| Sessionboard | The abstract committee, speaker operations and program build are where the time goes — call for papers with self-service forms, multi-round blind review, speaker portal, poster sessions, scheduling, and session content capture on one record that persists across years, running beside whatever handles registration. | Deliberately not a registration or badging system, so it coexists with Cvent, Swoogo, RainFocus or an AMS rather than replacing them. | Licensed by meeting and submission volume. |
BEFORE YOU DECIDE
Buyer checklist
- Which of the four jobs above triggered this search? Replace that job well rather than buying a suite for one weak module.
- If abstracts matter, can the committee change forms, review rounds and reports itself, or does every change open a vendor ticket?
- Does anything happen automatically at acceptance, or does the program build start from an export?
- Does speaker and reviewer history persist between editions, or does each year begin with a blank import?
- Are posters part of the same pipeline as platform sessions, or a separate product with a separate contract?
- Who owns CE credit, and is that genuinely the event platform's job or your LMS's?
- What integrates with what? The realistic answer is usually two or three specialists exchanging data, not one system doing everything.
- What does the total look like across all modules after year one, including services and configuration time?
Frequently asked questions
What is conference management software?
Software that handles the operational work of running a conference. In practice it spans four distinct jobs — registration and ticketing, abstract and program management, the attendee app, and continuing education — which different products cover to very different depths.
What is the difference between conference management software and event management software?
The terms are used interchangeably by vendors, but conferences carry work most general event tools do not address: a call for papers, peer review, a speaker and faculty program, poster sessions, and often CE credit. Software built for corporate events and trade shows usually stops at registration and the app.
Do I need one platform or several?
Most conferences of any complexity run two or three. A registration system, a program and abstract platform, and often an LMS for credit. Single-suite purchases tend to be made for procurement simplicity and regretted at whichever module was thinnest.
What is the best conference management software for academic conferences?
It depends on whether the deliverable is proceedings or a program. For scored peer review and published proceedings, the academic specialists are purpose-built. For a program with invited faculty, speaker readiness, posters and recorded content on top of review, a program platform is the closer fit.
How much does conference management software cost?
A wide range. Registration platforms are frequently priced per registrant, so cost scales with attendance, while abstract and program platforms are usually priced per meeting on submission volume. Enterprise suites run well into six figures across modules; specialists are a fraction of that per job.
Is there free conference management software?
Free tiers exist for small events, and free form builders handle submission collection under roughly fifty abstracts. The limits appear at blind review, reviewer assignment, conflict-of-interest handling, and anything that has to happen after acceptance.
Can conference management software handle abstracts and posters together?
Some can and many cannot, and it is worth asking directly. Posters are frequently pushed to a separate ePoster product, which splits one program across two systems and two contracts.
What should I ask a vendor in a demo?
Ask them to change a form field live, show what happens automatically at the moment an abstract is accepted, and show last year's data in this year's event. Those three answers separate self-service platforms from vendor-configured ones faster than any feature list.