Pluggd.in has been using Ayojak service for all of the UnPluggd events and we switched to DoAttend for the first edition of Appnomy Conference.
A lot of other bloggers, companies asked us to share our feedback of the two event management services and here is a quick comparison, based on few important parameters.
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Comparison: Ayojak Vs. DoAttend
Last used: Ayojak (July 9th, 2011) | DoAttend (August 27th, 2011).
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[Parameter]: Event Setup
Setting up the event in Ayojak is quite a sequential process and they walk you through the entire setup (in a more logical way than DoAttend). For example, setting up event header etc. comes naturally when you are using Ayojak, as opposed to DoAttend.
Having said that, DoAttend is very intuitive and you will end up appreciating the user experience in the product. They actually follow the lean model and also maintain an active blog (especially customer stories, which increases stickiness).
[Parameter]: Technically
Technically, DoAttend turned out to be a little better than Ayojak, especially with payment gateways. Having said that, Ayojak added EBS just during July 9th week, but we didn’t really test it out (I am hoping that they have significantly improved).
Overall, DoAttend is a sleek product and gets the basics out very quickly.
Having said that, Ayojak offers offline payment solutions (which we haven’t tested yet).
[Parameter]: Pricing.
Both Ayojak and DoAttend have similar pricing structure – i.e. free for free events and charge INR 15 (convenience fee) + transaction percentage (DoAttend charges 4.9%, while Ayojak charges 5%).
Ayojak offers a lot more solutions and has multi-tier pricing structure.
[Parameter]: Event Solution.
This is an important parameter, if you are a large organization looking for event solution. Ayojak surely has an edge here, as the company offers social media solution, SMS marketing, email marketing, press release writing etc. The fact that this is Ayojak’s bread and butter vs. one of the product at DoAttend (i.e. TenMiles), shows up. Not in any wrong sense, but Ayojak is meant for bigger event organizers (like La Tomatina) and offer a lot more event solutions than DoAttend (in its current form).
An Important Parameter: Support.
While a lot of registrations for the Appnomy Conference happened at the venue, there were quite a few failed online transactions. Ditto with UnPluggd event. In fact, based on our experience, almost 50% registrations happen at the venue, and rest online. Of all the online registrations, failed transactions stand at around 20-30%.
What do you do with them? A potential attendee wants to attend the event, but he/she isn’t able to complete the registration, owing to several reasons. In such cases, what matters is the support provided by the event platform during the online transaction, especially when the transaction fails.
The Ayojak team actually score a big plus over DoAttend – they send out mailers (and failure reasons) for each and every failed transaction and as an event organization, you actually are seen providing a better support during the purchase.
In fact, it leads to better conversion and eventually a happy customer. With DoAttend, the team relies on the product capability and there are ways to send reminder emails when there are incomplete orders.
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Overall, this article is not about announcing who is the winner here (early stage for both the companies), but it’s about sharing our experience of using the two services. Going forward, we will continue to experiment with more startup services and will share our review with the audience.
What has been your experience? If you have any query/suggestion/feedback regarding the two services, please share.
