V
irtual events are gaining a lot of popularity for good reason! They allow you to target a wider audience, remove geographical restrictions, reduce carbon footprint and boost ROI. Some other benefits include the chance of getting great speakers, easier planning and record sessions to repurpose it later.
Given their popularity, there are also a number of platforms at play. Let us look into two popular platforms and understand which suits your requirement better.
Airmeet
Airmeet is a complete online events platform, built for real connections and scale. It can power up the entire spectrum of live events ranging from personal meetups and team stand-ups to virtual summits, conferences and workshops. Airmeet is an all-in-one platform where you can publish your events, manage registrations and go live on the same interface.
Networking and engagement, the core pillars of Airmeet, offer features like Chat, Virtual tables for a breakout, Raise Hand, Social Cards and more. Airmeet enables you to analyse attendee data, and even record sessions for later use.
Features of Airmeet
- No download: Airmeet enables you to join and host events straight from the browser. Use any device and any modern browser to enjoy hassle-free.
- Highly Scalable: Airmeet can easily scale up to thousands of participants without any compromise in quality.
- Superior Quality: HD quality, no-delay, live streaming of events.
- Robust Security: Strong security protocols and architecture safeguards events and data. The platform is GDPR compliant and uses end-end encryption which ensures that your communication is secure.
- Chat: Airmeet offers both public and private chat options, which is also safe and secure.
- Live Social Stream: You can choose to live-stream your event on Youtube or Facebook and maximise social.
- Social Lounge: One of the most admired features of Airmeet, it allows attendees to network better. They can indulge in live conversations with co-attendees of the event, sitting on the same table during a networking break. For bigger events, you can customise virtual tables with logos to maximise sponsor recognition.
“The most successful event is one that achieves your goals and exceeds your expectations. ”
The most successful event is one that achieves your goals and exceeds your expectations.
Pros
- Ease of use: Airmeet interface is very user-friendly. Setting up and event management is very simple on Airmeet. Plus, Airmeet support and training take the hassle out of hosting.
- Raise hand: Participants can use this feature to join the speaker on live stage and contribute in a session. As an attendee, you can raise your opinion or ask a question using the feature.
- Q&A: Airmeet offers an exclusive Q&A window where attendees can ask questions, the host/speakers can upvote and answers.
- Contact Cards: A new feature, it allows attendees to exchange their cards virtually when they meet at a social lounge, much like visiting cards in a physical event.
- Polls: Another new feature of Airmeet, Polls help you get feedback easily. Polls and surveys can be organised for feedback and suggestions or to gather valuable feedback from attendees.
- Recorded videos: In-built Airmeet enables you to record unlimited event sessions, at no extra cost.
- Multi-speaker sessions: For bigger events, you can line up multiple speakers to make the experience more enriching.
- Backstage: Connect with your speakers in this space and have last-minute interactions with them.
Cons
- Ticketing through external partners: Currently, Airmeet events have to be ticketed using other payment platforms. But Airmeet is releasing new versions frequently, and this feature can be expected soon.
Hopin®
Hopin® is a similar all-in-one live virtual events platform. With Hopin®, you can host small to large scale events like training events, webinars, trade fairs and recruitment drives, with ease. Similar to Airmeet, Hopin® is built to create a similar experience like a physical event and scale to thousands of attendees. With Hopin®, organisers can host Public, private or even hidden events.
You can use an external registration system and hybridize your events via Hopin®.
Points to Consider when Evaluating Hopin®
- Host Pricing Plan: To become an event organizer and publish events, you need a Hopin® organizer account costing $99/organizer/month with 100 free registrations included and $.50 per registration above 100 in a month.
- Ticketing: if you opt for ticketing through the Hopin® platform, you will have to pay 7% as Hopin®’s platform fee. This is over and above the stripe fees (Stripe is a payment processing platform), that they charge.
- Engagement Features: Hopin® doesn’t have features like Q&A or polls. This limits engagement and the kind of interaction you would expect from your event.
- Raise Hand: In an in-person event, attendees can get permission to come on to the stage and be handed over the mic to speak. This is a great feature to allow attendees to share their opinion and interact with the speaker on live-feed. However, this is not possible with Hopin®.
How do you choose?
Now as an event organiser the million-dollar question is how do you choose between two platforms that are both built for networking! We list a few key points that will help your decision-making process easier.
- Size of the event: Airmeet is the perfect platform for small, medium and large events. It allows up to 100k attendees and 16 speakers concurrently for large scale attendees without any delay in streaming. Whereas Hopin® is a good choice for freelancers, individuals, small and medium events. Hopin® can host up to 100k attendees and up to 5 people can share their live video on stage concurrently.
- Cost: Airmeet has a custom pricing model and is completely free. Hopin® charges 99$/organiser/month for a small to the medium event. For large events, however, they have different pricing which is quotation based.
- Ticketing: Ticketing on Airmeet is through an external payment platform and Airmeet has no ticketing charges. On Hopin®, one can purchase tickets through the same platform but organisers have to pay 7% of the same to the platform.
- Engagement – Airmeet enables attendees to engage using various features like Q&A, Polls and Survey, Raise Hand, Screen Share, Chat. You can leverage gamification in Airmeet to engage the audience better. Whereas, engagement in Hopin® is limited through Chat and Presentations.
Quick Comparison Table
Yes. 1:1 and natural/organic networking through session chats and contact exchanges and connections.
We hope that this compilation gives you a complete list of features of two leading online event hosting platforms and also helps you to make the right choice for your next event.
(Read: Airmeet vs ZOOM)
Note: All data is updated as of June 2021, and the above content is based on the data collected from review sites. Further, prices, features and product specifications of the various service providers may be varied at any time without notice. Therefore, Airmeet does not guarantee that the information provided is complete and up-to-date. Further, the data shown here is for guidance only, and does not constitute any contractual representation or warranty. All copyrights and trademarks of the named service providers are duly acknowledged. Any liability for errors or omissions is expressly disclaimed. Airmeet states that the details on this page does not represent any partnership or association of any kind between Airmeet and Hopin®.
