Running an interactive and engaging hybrid event is the holy grail of event organizers. That’s because 71% of conference managers say connecting in-person and remote attendees is the biggest challenge.
Therefore, choosing the best hybrid event platform to delight your audience and increase their engagement is vital. That's why, in this article from Superevent, we look at the best hybrid event platforms on the market.
We'll go over their key features so that you can make an informed choice on the best platform to host your hybrid event. Let's get into it!
What Is a Hybrid Event Platform?
A hybrid event platform is a medium that empowers you to host in-person and remote attendees simultaneously. It enables you to break the physical barriers between these audiences by bringing them together to collaborate and interact.
Hybrid event platforms provide you with the tools you need to get these audiences engaged, with the likes of live streaming capabilities and live chat helping to bridge the gap between in-person and virtual audiences.
Why Are Hybrid Event Platforms Important?
If you’re hosting a hybrid event, you’ll need the proper tools to manage it effectively. Let’s take a look at why these tools are so important.
Provides Data-Driven Insights.
You can gain valuable insights into the performance of your event by using a hybrid event platform. Hybrid event platforms provide all the information you need on crucial KPIs like:
The registration to participation rate: Measures the number of registered attendees versus the number of those who actually turned up.
Engagement rate: It looks at the participants’ engagement at various points during an event.
Technical resolution rate: It measures the number of technical setbacks audiences experience and the number of tickets raised and resolved.
Attendee satisfaction rate: It tracks attendee satisfaction and whether they would attend another event.
Event conversions: This metric examines whether you achieved your overall event objectives.
Related: Measuring event sponsorship ROI.
Event Branding Made Easy
Another benefit of a hybrid event platform is that it allows you to use custom logos and other visuals that identify your organization. As a result, potential attendees won’t even realize you’re using a third-party medium.
Greater Audience Engagement
Because hybrid events use hybrid meeting technology, online and in-person participants can engage with each other as they would face-to-face. The hybrid digital tools promote a flow of ideas and information between in-person and online attendees.
For example, Interactive tools such as gamification, polls, Q&As, and live interviews enable participants to discuss and share views and insights during the event. These can even keep engagement levels high during breaks or speaker changes, which helps prevent fatigue amongst your guests and keep them interested.
Hybrid Events Benefits Can Increase Your Event ROI
Harnessing the power of a hybrid event platform can double your event ROI because of the following advantages:
- You can raise awareness about the event before it starts and survey the attendees after.
- It’s possible to make follow-up online events, allowing you to gather key insights on your event performance.
- You can create on-demand content by repurposing your event.
- Q&As, live polling, and gamified activities can elevate engagements.
- You can track the event’s performance by assessing hybrid meeting statistics.
- It can improve your sponsorship revenue by providing sponsors with value. For example, you can offer ad space for interested companies.
- You can enjoy countless opportunities for advertising and enhancing brand visibility.
What You Should Look For In a Hybrid Event Platform
An event management platform must have several capabilities to provide your audiences and sponsors with positive results. Let’s explore some of these capabilities.
Session accessibility
To ensure your hybrid meeting is accessible to virtual or in-person attendees, it must operate from a single event agenda. For example, an online keynote should welcome in-person and remote attendees.
Also, the participants should be able to use their mobile applications to view the session as they travel to the conference venue. As soon as they arrive at the site, they should locate appropriate meeting rooms without hassle.
Attendee tracking
Another crucial feature you should consider is a hybrid event platform’s ability to monitor attendees during meetings. It helps you gain insights into what topics you can present next time.
As a result, choose a channel that provides you with an attendee tracking feature. It works effectively with surveys and automatically tracks active participants in specific discussions.
You can use the feedback to conduct a survey or reach out to those groups of people on the hybrid event platform itself.
Event Mobile Application
With 85% of Americans owning smartphones, picking a hybrid event platform with a mobile app is a must. Attendees can access the conference anywhere and interact with each other on the mobile app.
Furthermore, the mobile software must offer Q&As, chat, polls, and video interaction features to help participants enjoy a fruitful experience. A social feed integration is a great addition, as audiences can use this feature to share their ideas and thoughts instantly.
In-House Technical Support
Some conference venues offer in-house technical support to help you with production and technical aspects. That means you can zero in on other essential tasks to make your hybrid event a success.
Flexibility in Pricing
The cost of using a hybrid event platform is also crucial to consider. Find a budget-friendly hybrid event tool that provides you with the primary features you need to run effective conferences.
A hybrid event platform with a paid subscription is better because it lets you host many people and centralize event management. Also, some event management platforms can provide you with templates to build and manage your meetings.
15 Best Hybrid Event Platforms
Hybrid event companies offer a wide range of services, so it can be challenging to select one that fits your conference goals and meets your needs. To save time, here’s a list of the top 15 hybrid event platforms:
- Superevent
- Stova
- InEvent
- SpotMe
- Hopin
- Bizzabo
- Cvent
- Eventmobi
- vFairs
- Hubilo
- LiveStudio
- Brella
- Airmeet
- Intrado
- Grip
Read on for insights into pricing, features, and more for each of these platforms.
#1: Superevent - Best All-in-one Event Platform
Superevent is a complete event management platform that powers in-person, virtual, and hybrid events. Its web and mobile applications allow you to build your own app to run summits, networking events, virtual conferences, and more.
Its user-friendly interface makes it a breeze to set up and host engaging seminars for your participants. In addition, the platform comes with an easy price plan based on the number of event attendees, meaning whether you’re hosting a large or small event, you’ll be able to find a price that suits you. Plus, for those hosting micro-events of less than forty attendees, you can use Superevent for free.
Key Features
- Virtual & In-Person Events: Create an event app that supports both virtual and in-person events with access to powerful features like agenda, interactive sessions, networking tables, polls & surveys, Q&A tools, and more.
- Customization: Make your events look professional by giving them your own branding and customizing the visuals with themes, logos, colors, etc.
- Attendee Engagement: Engage attendees with real-time interactions like polls, surveys, live chat, and notifications.
- Sponsorship & Promotions: Monetize your events through sponsorships and promotions with tools like sponsor pages and banner ads.
- Web & Mobile Support: Superevent is available on both web and mobile platforms with native apps for iOS and Android.
Live Streaming: Stream your events live to a global audience with integrated tools for streaming audio and video.
Pricing
Superevent offers free and paid subscription models. There’s no fixed price for their premium plan; instead, you’ll be priced based on the number of attendees at your event. Plus, the free plan is incredibly comprehensive, providing all features at no extra cost, as long as your event has forty attendees or less.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Easy to create and promote your event app without technical experience
- Offers a free subscription
- Supports several languages
- Offers live streaming capabilities
- Intuitive content management
- Range of guest engagement tools
Cons
- Branded apps can take longer to create because of Apple and Google review time
- Less suitable for big expos or tradeshows
#2: Stova - For Enterprise Companies
If you’re looking for an effortless way to manage your events, Stova is the perfect platform to hold captivating virtual and hybrid events. It’s a cloud-based meeting and event management channel that helps you run events from start to finish.
Key Features
Attendee Networking: Virtual booths, virtual event games, group chat channels, and more encourage remote and in-person attendees to build connections.
Attendee Registration: Templates, multilingual capabilities, and several payment options make it easy for people to sign up for your event.
Pricing
You can request a demo to test the product, where you’ll be given a quote based on the number of registrants to your event.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Dashboard for analytics and reporting
- Ticket tracking
- Easy attendee registration
Cons
- Unfriendly user-interface
- Technical software glitches
#3: InEvent - For Live Agencies
InEvent is an event management platform for live agencies to host meetings, TV-like broadcasts, and virtual events. It lets you hold successful meetings by managing registration, promotion, tickets, and payments.
Also, the hybrid event solution helps you promote your event through email campaigns, landing pages, and more.
Key Features
Event Agendas and Schedules: You can use this feature to create a list of event activities with sponsors, speakers, names, descriptions, materials, etc.
Advanced Reporting: A live dashboard gives you insights into your hybrid event’s performance. You can see statistics on downloads, enrolled people, live people, engagement, online people, checked-in people, and more.
Pricing
InEvent has several pricing plans, each with different features. The first plan offers a live studio, a virtual lobby, analytics, etc. With the V&H Pro plan, you can get badge printing, email and communication analytics, and more. The last plan includes customer support. All plans offer a free trial, so you can at least test it out before you buy.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Friendly admin interface
- 24/7 customer support
- Easy to learn and implement
Cons
- Not easy to navigate
- Sales reps lack in-depth product knowledge
#4: SpotMe- For Enterprise Business
Another powerful hybrid event platform that allows you to run engaging meetings is SpotMe. It’s a popular solution for businesses that are more focused on webinars.
With this event channel, you can host webinars and other high-touch events. You can also enhance your conferences by using its video production and app-building features.
Key Features
Engagement and Interaction: Live polling and question-and-answer (QA) sessions enable each participant to have meaningful contributions during the hybrid event.
Event planning: This feature allows you to register your attendees, create a personalized agenda, make announcements, and automate event alerts.
Pricing
SpotMe’s pricing model caters to different business levels, from starters to enterprise organizations. The starter plan offers you up to two virtual, hybrid, or in-person events. You can get up to five conferences on the business plan and up to 25 meetings with the last plan. A demo is available.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Easy to set up and use
- Offers valuable data insights
- Engaged audiences
Cons
- Slows down during high traffic
#5: Hopin - Formerly For Start-Up Business
If you want a 5-in-1 event management platform, Hopin used to be the right candidate for your business. However, due to the recent takeover by RingCentral, it's hard to say where this platform is going. As of yet, it is unclear which features will remain and if the pricing model is going to change. Below, you'll find the key features and pricing of how Hopin used to be. Let's just hope that it's stays this way!
Key Features
Referral Tracking: This feature is available in your event dashboard and lets you create unique links for speakers or any attendee to monitor the ticket sales they generate for your meeting.
Form Builder: Hopin’s Canvas enables you to develop customized event websites without technical experience.
Pricing
The platform’s pricing includes a freemium, which lets you host unlimited events with up to 100 registrations/events. Advanced plans with detailed analytics, CRM and API integrations, and more are available upon request.
Pros and cons
Pros
- High-level engagements and networking
- Easy integration and interface
Cons
- Lack of live customer support during events
- Weak reporting analytics
#6: Bizzabo - For Event Experience OS
Bizzabo is another great event management platform with a sleek interface due to its intuitive Event Experience OS. You can use it to host productive in-person, virtual, and hybrid events.
Key Features
Event Management: You can use features like ticketing, registration, an event app, an event website builder, networking tools, etc. to plan and manage your seminar.
Sponsors and Exhibitors: Bizzabo’s sponsor tool empowers you to communicate with your partners via automated emails and tasks.
Pricing
The company has one usage-based pricing plan, which is based on the number of events, the number of participants, selected features, and more. You need to request a demo to know the fee structure.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Fast mobile app
- Intuitive web interface
- 24/7 customer support
Cons
- Poor reporting analytics
- Customer representatives lack in-depth product knowledge
- Expensive
#7: Cvent - For Small Events
Cvent is an excellent engagement platform for managing events for small audiences. It’s a cloud-based product that makes it easy to handle venue sourcing, virtual event registration, payment processing, and budget management.
You can also use its reporting analytics to monitor the attendance of participants over several sessions.
Key Features
Event Promotion: This feature allows you to plan and promote your event by creating personalized marketing and event websites.
Workflow Management: You can use Cvent’s Spend and Workflow Solutions to automate the event planning process and manage meeting workflows.
Pricing
The pricing is based on the type of event you want to run. You can get a plan for up to 1-5 events or an event type, such as a roadshow or trade show program. The second plan covers end-to-end event management for large or high-volume events.
In the advanced plan, you get a strategic approach to managing your entire event program in any format.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Efficient customer service
- Easy to use
- Reporting analytics
Cons
- Poor user interface
- Not easy to customize
#8: Eventmobi - For Event Networking
Eventmobi is one of the older hybrid platforms, with over a decade on the market. As a cloud-based event management solution, Eventmobi is suitable for businesses of any size.
You can use its suite of features like event apps, live polls, registration, check-in, and gamification to manage interactive conferences.
Key Features
Onsite Engagement: The tool’s app helps you keep your participants engaged through interactive games and challenges.
Sponsorship Revenue: You can create in-app banner ads for sponsored sessions, games, or notifications.
Pricing
The pricing differs depending on the type of event you want to host. You’ll need to complete an online form to get more pricing details.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Easy to use
- Fast and customizable
- Responsive customer service
Cons
- Steep-learning curve for users with weak tech skills
- Poor reporting analytics
#9: vFairs - For Organizations of All Sizes
Regardless of your business size, you can harness the power of vFairs to hold memorable conferences and trade shows. It's a virtual events platform perfect for in-person, hybrid, and remote seminars, including online job fairs.
VFairs has nifty features, such as chat and virtual job boards, live webinars, networking tools, and digital content management.
Key Features
Event Builder: Use this feature to create your event with a custom logo, custom registration forms, ticketing, custom landing pages, and more.
Chat and Networking: You can improve networking through vFairs’ embedded live chat rooms, video and audio calls, host topic round tables, etc.
Pricing
Its subscription plan is available upon request. There’s an online form you can fill in to get more information about the pricing model.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Responsive customer service
- Detailed reporting analytics
- Great networking opportunities
Cons
- Inaccessible chat rooms and exhibitor booths
- Poor video production
#10: Hubilo - For Midsize Business
Hubilo is a brilliant virtual and hybrid event platform that helps to enhance engagement and drive sales. You can double the conversion rates of demos, watch parties, webinars, conferences, and in-person meetings.
Key Features
Advanced Reporting: This feature tracks event attendance, engagement, and feedback.
Virtual Experience: Attendees can use a virtual lobby to view sessions, access content, and chat with other participants.
Pricing
Hubilo has three pricing plans, starting from advanced to enterprise. You get more features as you increase to premium, like gamification and advanced branding options, but the prices can be steep. This makes it unsuitable for those looking to host smaller events.
Pros and cons
Pros
- Offers branding opportunities for sponsors
- User-friendly interface
- 24/7 customer support
Cons
- Lacks a feature to record videos
- Limited integrations
#11: LiveStudio - For Self-Service
LiveStudio is a professional event platform that offers a range of services for physical, hybrid, and virtual events. It provides solutions for event registration, attendee management, live streaming, interactive engagements, and post-event reporting.
Key Features
- Guest list import: Easily import a list of guests for your event without manual entry.
- RSVP email: Send automated RSVP emails to your guests, simplifying the RSVP process.
- Event registration page: Create a customized registration page for your event, allowing attendees to sign up easily.
- Automated confirmation: Automatically send confirmation emails to attendees upon successful registration.
Pricing
Contact sales to request a quote.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Every section is positioned based on the activities it carries out
- Fast processing of applied changes
- High-quality mastering presets
Cons
- Occasional crashing upon launch
- Lack of clarity on why crashes occur
- New features may go without improvements for several cycles
#12: Brella - For Organizations of Any Type and Size
Brella is an event management platform that helps plan, execute, and organize events of any type and size. It uses AI to pair attendees based on their interests and goals and allows them to connect and chat through video meetings.
Key Features
- Livestreams and content: It supports multiple live streams, live chat, Q&A, breakout rooms, and a content hub for hosting and watching event content.
- Sponsor monetization: It provides sponsors with visibility, lead generation, and ROI analytics through digital booths, ads, and meetings.
- Event data and analytics: It tracks and measures attendee engagement, content performance, sponsor ROI, and more through a dashboard and reporting tool.
- White-labeled event app: It offers a fully customizable event app for iOS, Android, and web with consistent branding and features.
Pricing
Contact sales for a quote.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Simple and streamlined networking
- Provides backend analytics to the event organizer.
- Customizable for in-person and hybrid events
Cons
- Limited support for basic users
- No registration function
- It doesn’t have its own live-stream platform
#13: Airmeet - For Training Options
Airmeet is an innovative platform that empowers users to host and attend a diverse range of virtual events effortlessly. With customizable virtual "ballrooms" and advanced features, participants can enjoy tailored experiences and foster meaningful interactions, creating a vibrant and dynamic virtual environment.
Key Features
- Branded events: Create fully-branded webinars and virtual events that are designed to captivate and engage the right audience.
- Personalized experiences: Elevate your brand and leave a lasting impression with event experiences that help attendees connect and engage in meaningful ways.
- Immersive video: Engage and motivate attendees with dynamic content and interactive video formats.
- Automated tools: Streamline event management with automated features like registration, check-in, and post-event follow-up.
- Virtual booth rooms: Provide interactive virtual booths for exhibitors and sponsors.
Pricing
Airmeet pricing options include a free plan for small webinars with unlimited events per year and up to 50 attendees per event. You’ll need to contact sales for information about their paid plans.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Great networking and customer support.
- It gives you full control over how you organize virtual events
- Has a good amount of free features
Cons
- The onboarding journey should be a little more explanatory
- Some users reported that the user experience is outdated
#14. Intrado - For Large Events
Intrado Virtual Event platform enables you to create interactive and engaging experiences for attendees. It is scalable up to 200,000 attendees and features 2D and 3D event experiences, flexible branding, gamification, and robust analytics and reporting.
Key Features
- Scheduled breakout rooms and 1:1 video chat: Allows event hosts and sponsors to hold video sessions with attendees within the virtual environment.
- 2D and 3D event experiences: Simulates real-world venues and provides immersive and realistic settings for events.
- Flexible branding: Enables event hosts to customize the look and feel of their events with logos, colors, images, and themes.
- Robust analytics and reporting: Provides insights into event performance, attendee behavior, and engagement metrics.
Pricing
Contact sales for a quote.
Pros
- Its webcasting tools can be scaled to fit events of different sizes and budgets
- Different event modules with custom branding capabilities
- Provides access to microsites for tracking registrants and attendees
Cons
- Weak support team with limited technical expertise
- Inconsistent quality of support
- Lack of top-tier technical personnel
#15: Grip - For B2B relationships
Grip is an AI-powered event platform designed to enhance business relationships. It enables organizers to establish, maintain, and track connections between participants across multiple events, offering features such as matchmaking, networking, and personalized scheduling.
Key Features
- AI-powered matchmaking: It uses advanced algorithms to connect participants and facilitate meaningful business relationships at events.
- Pre-scheduled meetings: It allows organizers to schedule meetings in advance, ensuring productive interactions between participants.
- Mobile event app: It offers a customizable mobile app that enhances participant engagement by providing event schedules, notifications, and navigation assistance.
- Multiple meeting formats: It supports a wide range of meeting formats, including one-to-one meetings, group meetings, roundtables, and speed networking.
Pricing
Contact sales for a quote.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Offers self-service functions for event attendees such as online registration, content delivery, and fee payment
- Simplifies and organizes the logistics of planning meetings and events
- Supports web, Android, and iPhone/iPad platforms
- Provides training options through in-person sessions and live sessions
Cons
- Missing gamification features
- Integrated engagement features (polls, Q&A) are not yet mature
- Reporting and analytics can be improved
Host Captivating and Engaging Hybrid Events With Superevent
A hybrid event platform is a key that unlocks the success of your conference. Opt for an event management solution with mobile and web applications, ticketing, event registration, and customizable capabilities to really give your event the edge it needs.
It should also empower you to host interactive virtual, in-person, and hybrid events with chats, live polls, and Q&A functions. A platform like Superevent offers web and mobile applications to host professional events, regardless of size.
With our freemium plan, you can leverage the latest hybrid meeting technology to create an event right away. Test it for yourself today!
Learn how to run the perfect event with our free email course
Packed with great tips on how to organize events that engage your attendees. The course is short, actionable and super interesting to implement on your event!
