★★★★★
“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.”
OpenWater sells one engine, a form with a review round behind it, applied to abstracts, awards, and grants.
Teams looking at OpenWater alternatives usually hit the same wall: forms and review work fine, then everything after acceptance lands back in email. Sessionboard runs abstracts, blind review, awards, speaker CRM, portal, and session content on one record. Cadmium fits suite buyers, Ex Ordo fits review-only academic scope, Award Force fits standalone awards programs.
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 | Abstracts and awards share one contact graph with the meeting itself. Call for papers, blind multi-round review, judging, speaker CRM, portal, and session transcription run on one record the committee configures itself. | 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. |
| Cadmium (eventScribe) | The society already runs education and CE products on the Cadmium suite and wants abstracts on the same vendor contract. | Committee changes route through vendor configuration, and the speaker layer beyond review often ends up in email. | Suite pricing across modules. |
| Ex Ordo | Academic conferences need submission and review only, with no awards program and 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. |
| Award Force | A standalone awards program with no connected meeting needs entry, judging, and winner management. | No abstract or speaker side at all, so societies running both end up with two systems and two contact databases. | Tiered on entry volume and features. |
Scope. OpenWater handles forms and review well, and stops there. Teams running a meeting behind the forms end up managing speaker readiness, faculty history, and session content in email and spreadsheets, then go looking for a platform that runs the whole arc.
For abstracts and awards, yes: call for papers, custom forms, blind multi-round review, judging workflows, and winner management run natively, plus the speaker CRM, portal, and transcription OpenWater does not offer. Grants programs are the one OpenWater use Sessionboard does not chase.
You can run the split, and some teams do for a cycle. The cost is two databases: the member who submits an abstract, judges an award, and speaks at the meeting exists three times. Consolidating on one contact graph is usually why the evaluation started.
None of the four publish full list pricing; quotes follow scope and volume. Sessionboard pricing follows meeting and submission volume, and a scoped quote takes one demo. Put it beside your OpenWater renewal before you sign it.
It becomes the starting point. Past submissions, entrants, and reviewer assignments import into the speaker and contact CRM, so returning participants see prefilled profiles and staff see who delivered.
Talk through your event workflow — abstracts, speakers, content, and marketing on one program graph.
Ready to talk through your workflow?
Request a demo