How to choose a conference app

The advice that ranks for this question is mostly a list of features with no way to weigh them. That is not a decision framework; it is a specification for a product nobody sells. What follows is the sequence that actually narrows a field, in the order that removes the most options soonest.

Step one: decide which half of the category you are in

This question eliminates more of the market than every feature comparison combined.

Do you already have registration and ticketing? If yes, you are shopping for an attendee app. If no, you may need a full event-management suite, and you are shopping in a different, more expensive category with a longer sales cycle.

	Attendee app	Full event-management suite
Buys you	Schedule, networking, live engagement, notifications	The above plus registration, ticketing, badging, sometimes streaming
Typical published entry	$399 – $7,000	$7,500 – $18,000
Sales cycle	Days to two weeks	Two weeks to two months
Right when	You have a registration system you are keeping	You are replacing everything at once

Buying a suite when you needed an app means paying for registration you already have. Buying an app when you needed a suite means discovering in week six that nothing sells a ticket. Both mistakes are common and both are avoidable in ten minutes.

Step two: write down five non-negotiables

Not fifteen. Five. A list of fifteen requirements does not discriminate, because most mid-market products satisfy most of them.

A useful non-negotiable has two properties: you would genuinely reject a product for failing it, and vendors actually differ on it. “Push notifications” fails the second test — everyone has them. “Push notifications that deep-link to the specific session that moved” passes, because plenty of products only open the app’s home screen.

Common non-negotiables that do discriminate:

• The app is published under our name in the app stores, not the vendor’s.
• We can change the schedule during the event without emailing anyone.
• Session capacity is enforced when the attendee signs up, not reconciled afterwards.
• Attendee data is not shared with sponsors.
• There is a maximum total charge per event, stated in writing.

Step three: score the four axes that vary

Once you are in the right half of the category, most feature lists converge. These four axes are where mid-market products genuinely differ, and where a scoring rubric earns its keep.

Content control

Who changes the schedule at 8:40 on the morning of day two, when a speaker’s flight is cancelled? If the answer involves a support ticket, that is a real operational cost and it lands at the worst moment of your event. Score this by asking the vendor to demonstrate the change, not describe it.

Branding and store presence

There are three genuinely different products sold under the phrase “branded app”, and the difference matters:

1. Themed container app. Your event lives inside the vendor’s app, styled with your colours. Attendees download the vendor’s brand and find you inside it.
2. Branded web app. Your own colours and domain, no store listing, nothing to install.
3. Own-name native app. A listing in both stores under your event’s name, submitted for you or by you.

None of these is wrong. The third is the only one where an attendee’s phone shows your event’s name on the home screen, and it is the only one with a store review timeline attached.

Live engagement

Ask what an attendee can do in the room that they could not do with a printed programme. Q&A with upvoting, live polls, and session feedback are the three that change behaviour. If the product does all three but the moderator cannot see a question before the room does, that is a gap worth a point.

The pricing model

Covered in full in what an event app costs. For scoring purposes: get the formula, compute your bill at your expected head count and at double it, and ask whether there is a ceiling. A model that is comfortable at 400 attendees can be untenable at 900, and the vendor’s headline price will not tell you that.

Step four: the scoring rubric

Weight the four axes plus the table stakes, then score each vendor from the written response.

Axis	Weight	0 points	1 point	2 points
Content control	25	Vendor makes changes	Self-serve, publishes on a delay	Self-serve and live
Branding and store presence	20	Vendor-branded container	Branded web only	Own-name native in both stores
Live engagement	20	One of Q&A, polls, feedback	Two of three	All three, with moderation
Pricing model	20	Quote only	Published, no ceiling	Published, with a stated ceiling
Table stakes	15	Any gap in schedule, directory, notifications	—	All present

Multiply, total, and keep the sheet. The value of a rubric is not the ranking it produces on the day; it is that six weeks later you can explain the decision to someone who was not in the room.

Step five: the demo script

Take demos only from your top two, and drive them yourself. Ask for exactly this sequence, in this order, on a shared screen:

1. Add a session to the schedule.
2. Change its room.
3. Send a notification about the change to everyone who saved that session.
4. Show me the attendee’s view of what just happened, on a phone.
5. Open the Q&A moderation queue and reject a question.
6. Show me the analytics screen you would look at during the event.
7. Show me what the app looks like in the store listing.

Seven steps, fifteen minutes, and you will have learned more than an hour of slides can convey. A vendor who cannot do step three live is telling you something important about steps one and two.

Involve the two people who will block it

Two people can stop a purchase after the decision is made, and both arrive late unless you invite them early.

The security or IT reviewer. They will ask where attendee data is stored, how long it is kept, who at the vendor can see it, and how somebody gets their own data deleted. None of those is hard to answer and all of them take time to get answered. Put them in the written round and the review becomes a confirmation instead of a discovery session.

Whoever owns procurement. They will want the contract terms, the data processing agreement, and a renewal position. If your organization requires an accessibility conformance report or a specific certification by name, that is a gate rather than a preference, and it is better to know in week one that a vendor does not have one.

There is a third person who is not a blocker but should be in the room anyway: whoever will actually run the console during the event. They will notice in a demo what nobody else does, because they are imagining doing the work rather than watching it. Their objection is usually the one that turns out to matter in March.

The mistakes worth naming

Choosing on the feature matrix. The matrix rewards breadth, and breadth is where the price is. You will use perhaps a third of what you buy.

Deciding after the demo instead of before it. A demo is a persuasion instrument. Score first; use the demo to check the two answers you doubted.

Ignoring the second event. If you run more than one event a year, the annual and credit-pool models change the arithmetic entirely, and a per-event decision made once will be re-litigated in six months.

Leaving accessibility to the end. Ask for the accessibility conformance report in the written round. It is a slow question to answer and a fast one to ask.

Confusing attendee-to-attendee QR with exhibitor lead capture. They look identical in a screenshot and are entirely different products. If your exhibitors need to scan badges and get a CRM record, say so in writing, because most attendee apps — event67 included — do not do it.

When you have a shortlist, the RFP template turns this framework into a document you can send.