Dryfta vs. SignUpGenius

I can't provide a scenario where Dryfta could be well suited. I guess it's a matter of delivering what has been promised on time, and without having to invest thousands of hours in extra work, as it was in our case. If it worked properly it could be a good tool for any conference.

SignUpGenius is a great option for teachers and instructors looking to find a digital way to have their students sign up for anything that involves "slots," whether those slots are temporal/time-based (e.g., presentation days/times that are pre-scheduled), or whether they are more abstract (e.g., a limited range of subjects or topics that students need to pick from). Its free version is ad-supported, does not require registration, and operates primarily using links within emails for authentication, so while it isn't necessarily "secure," it is perfect for situations where the honor system is enough.

Incentivized

• It has a lot of functionalities (website and administration) all included in the same platform. If it worked properly, it allows you to organise a conference paper-free.
• Help desk responds quite quickly
• They consider making improvements when asked for.
• It’s not too expensive.

• Post-sign up communications - allows for pre-event communication to specific rsvp types or to all respondents
• Post-event reporting - allows for export of signup information
• Easy to use - for our community, both management and volunteers use SignUpGenius to facilitate participation and planning for a wide variety of events and activities

Incentivized

• Multilingual issues. Although it is advertised as multilingual, it didn’t really work as such. The many issues that popped up throughout the conference preparation were fixed little by little at a cost in time, from help desk emails and to struggles with the unfriendly UX.
• Admin pages reloaded every time you clicked on a button (their developers seem to ignore Ajax technologies). It was time-consuming and required constant page searches.
• Inflexibility in many of the supposed functionalities it offers.
• Certificates were not modifiable nor custom when we had to send them (it was solved months after the conference finished when we were surprisingly contacted by the help desk).
• Problems with the size of images to be displayed on the site, very small fonts and limited options to display content. We had to hire a professional developer in order to get a graphically consistent and presentable website.
• Very poor mobile version. Too big margins, unreadable text, endless text blocks and lists, distorted pictures, etc.
• Issues with the ordering of the authors’ names for different proposals (authorship being so important in research).
• Fixed, inflexible fields in the contact sheets, speakers info, and so on.
• Special character issues (due to Latin characters and other types used in linguistic research).
• Not being able to include links in the HTML editor due to Dryfta's inadvertent decisions to block them.
• Only one Superadmin user allowed to access the full functionalities of the platform, so we had to share it (consequently not knowing who did each action).
• Problems with the generation of reports and the high complexity of their interface.
• Some issues on the mandatory anonymity. The double-blind review process not fully respected due to unclear user info and options, with other issues coming up on the go such as unwanted info in automated notifications and messages in the Welcome dashboard.
• Not being able to use the other payment methods on the platform because they were incompatible with the conference country.
• Missing information and time wasted when creating events for sessions with info that already existed in the server that randomly failed to be selected. These issues were reported even with video proofs (help desk didn’t believe us), and were never solved. We had to repeat the same processes again and again, never knowing what was going on

• I think an area that needs improvement is allowing for more than 5 slots at a time. I would like to see at least 10 offered instead of having to keep adding 5 at a time.
• Adding additional templates or templates in which you can just change a color selection would be great. Really utilize this for school PTO/Booster Clubs would be beneficial. Cater to them.
• Allowing for a 'cheaper' price than what you have for the souped up version would be nice as well.

Incentivized

It is a great product that works efficiently for our needs

Incentivized

It was quick, that's all we can say. Quite a few times they sorted out the problems and issues. But, sadly, sometimes their answers were useless and irritating (not addressing the problem or simply ignoring it, "passing the buck"). In some cases, they pretended the problem didn't exist and we had to send them videos as proof. No response to that.

I don't have any feedback for support because I have not had to use support (if referring to IT support). If this question is in referral to support from other staff/company, then it has been received well in that sense.

Incentivized

We briefly used another sign-up website called "Bring the Cups."Needless to say, this website did not nearly offer the same amount of robust features as SignUpGenius did. Bring the Cups was streamlined and simple, but it bordered on simplistic. In all honesty, Bring the Cups did not nearly meet our needs the way SignUpGenius did. Consequently, I returned to using SignUpGenius as quickly as possible.

Incentivized

• The overall performance was okay in the end, but it was due to our team's commitment and effort. Without that extra work, the results would have been awful.

• Students and even other staff love it! It improved the turn-around time from when I respond to student requests for academic coaching to setting up the intake meeting about 50%. Also, in the case that I respond quickly but the student is delayed several days, the link I sent is still live and always has relevant dates and times (whereas in the past, I would send a few days' worth of options and by the time a procrastinator looked at them, they were passed).
• It's an easy, mobile-friendly option that helps students to see that we're with it, not trapped in the stone age. That factors into their overall perception of our department, our services and our organization.

Incentivized