Stova (Formerly Meetingplay & Aventri) Reviews & Product Details

My company has been using the Stova platform for a little over 4 years, and we have been consistently satisfied with the product throughout this time. Previously, we used a platform that lacked flexibility and had a support team indifferent to problem-solving.

This platform has significantly enabled our organization to fully integrate and collaborate more efficiently, resulting in well-planned events. From the outset, Stova has proven highly user-friendly for our entire company: Event Coordinators/Customer Support use it for reporting and managing attendees, our flight team benefits from PNR integration, and our marketing/tech team utilizes it for developing websites, registrations, and apps.

Stova's customer support and account management teams consistently offer assistance and are receptive to feedback for future improvements. Since no platform can cater perfectly to every use case, it's extremely helpful to have them listen to our suggestions for enhancing the platform. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

With any event registration platform, companies often prioritize developing features that may not be relevant to our specific needs. Stova's development focus leans more towards features that we neither currently use nor foresee using, which makes us especially eager for them to enhance the features we do rely on daily.

We sincerely hope they continue to prioritize the core function of the registration platform and consistently improve it to ensure it remains current and modern. We' love for them to focus on regularly providing new and modern templates for website and registration design. Ultimately, clients using the front-end expect an attractive website and a streamlined, modern registration process.

Some newer companies prioritize these aspects exclusively, whereas older companies focus on expanding onsite solutions or backend meeting planner tools. While Stova is great at listening to feedback about updates, their priorities sometimes differ from ours. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I have been working with Stova for several years, and my experience has been exceptional from the moment they acquired Aventri. The level of service has been consistently outstanding. Their customer support team always goes above and beyond to meet our clients' needs. I vividly recall a representative assisting us with an urgent client request on a Sunday afternoon, demonstrating their commitment to our success.

The recent product roadmap presentation has me excited for the future developments at Stova. Our clients frequently praise the app’s design and functionality, which keeps us returning to Stova for our event app needs. The app is user-friendly and easy to set up, enabling us to deliver high-quality results for our clients efficiently.

Whenever we've faced challenges, Stova has been there to support us. I am grateful to the Stova team for their dedication and support. Thank you, Stova, for your commitment to excellence! Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While my overall experience with Stova has been fantastic, I have noticed a recent improvement in their training materials. In the past, navigating training on new modules or features could be challenging. However, I am excited about their new LMS platform and the enhanced training resources it promises to deliver. This improvement will undoubtedly make using Stova even more seamless and enjoyable. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Flexibility and simplicity of setting up websites and registration paths. The ability to checkmark what questions and visibility are to different attendee categories is simple and fast to update. Many other systems require updating every path when there is a change and this leaves room for error. Reporting, the simple mobile app that pulls a lot from registration, and easy-to-build websites are also great!

I have had a good experience with customer support! I want to point out that Peter Wieczorek has been extremely helpful in multiple situations. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There is no invitee list in the system. In other systems, you can manage an invitation list directly in the registration settings. Stova has some reporting that you can pull from the pre-approved data but it is very clunky. It would be great to have the invite list uploaded in the system and the option to manually decline/register attendees so they no longer get emails and we can pull reports with the complete and accurate invitation list. Currently, you have to remove people from pre-approved and then under e-marketing. It's super clunky. I unfortunately have to create a separate database outside the system to manage this. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The platform is very user friendly and easy to use. I have found that myself and my team can often work our way through issues and figure them out quickly.

Should there be an instance that we are unable to figure it out - the Customer Service team is phenomenol! I have called them and had them walk me through issues right away. It's a great feeling knowing that they take the time to educate and help their customers. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes the HTML can get tricky and I have a difficult time fixing things to our liking in terms of formatting.

As a complex organization, we sometimes have to manipulate the program to work for our needs. The STOVA team is fantastic at brainstorming with us on this, but sometimes it leads to small issues when cloning events at a later time, or if working with a new Account Manager. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I've been using Stova for my event management role for around 5 years now, we host around 1000 events per year at different times and locations accross Australia.

The features within the system are vast, it really can do almost everything you need it to do - I'm sure there are still a lot of functions that I'm not aware of. The main functions we use it for customer registrations, reminder emails, checking in attendees, post-event surveys and reporting.

The customer support is fantastic, emails are responded to quickly, instructions and troubleshooting are detailed, and staff follow up until solutions have been found.

Overall it's reliable, detailed, flexible and meets our needs. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

At first it is quite complex to use and can take a while to set up all the templates, but once the templates are in place cloning is fairly simple. We have had to create our own SOPs for users.

It can be hard to understand what functions are available, usually we identify a need then talk to the support team to find out how to do what we need to do, as it's difficult to figure things out on our own.

The platform is a little dated. Some things could be improved - for example when we clone events it would be great if certain fields could pre-populate into the event emails (to and from email addresses for example), at the moment we have to click into each email and change these details manually. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The only advantage of using Aventri/Stova is that the program accepts credit cards. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The steps to create a conference are so complex and need vast knowledge of all the steps involved, numerous tabs, specific assigned meanings and functions to different tasks that are frequently not intuitive, the customer service people tend to dominate the conversation, rather than teach the steps involved. They forgot two crucial steps in a conference I recently helped to organize. Disaster! Had to contact ALL the attendees to return to the site and pay. The customer service rep dictated many lines of code to achieve this. The information to create the conference did not immediately translate to a website last year. Created my own website this year, not with Stova, and the registration was better, but the attendees couldn't complete the payments due to two steps not included. Very unhappy with this program. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Stova has helped our company consolidate efforts and allows us to track, manage, and communicate through a multitude of events. We utilize the Registration Module, Marketing Module, Mobile App Module, and the Website Module for every event and have customized each to serve our needs as much as possible.

The report functions are a great asset for us to help provide registration data for our clients. The email function within each event is also very helpful with the option to automate communications and tailor them accordingly. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Customizing the look and feel for every module has been a source of frustration for our team. The customization options are very limited... colors and imagery can be changed, but typefaces are limited to Google Fonts only, the Website module is archaic at best. You can only upload .PNGs or .JPEGs, nothing optimized for webview. Videos are only supported if you have a public Vimeo or Youtube link. You can add custom CSS, but cannot adjust any of the base CSS. Something as simple as increasing the margins on the registration's mobile view has turned into a huge challenge for us.

The support team can be helpful, but when it comes to larger issues or requested improvements, we've often found that the higher level support doesn't take the time to review or understand the full issue. We've been sent in loops of communication with our Account Manager, the client support team, and support leadership, all of whom seem ready to pass us back and forth along the line. Imagine describing your issue and improvement goal multiple times and never getting a clear answer or being provided a "solution" that either reverts the work you've done or doesn't address the original goal at all.

Ultimately, we've learned that if it can't be solved by the main support team, then it's likely not something anyone from Stova has the expertise to solve, either. We either have to figure it out on our own or accept the tools and look/feel for what they are. This has been a source of frustration for our team, but we work around it the best we can. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

In theory, Stova has everything you need to plan, create, promote and organise an event, having everything in one place makes event planning a lot simpler and more streamlined. The Stova support team are always quick to respond and work had to resolve any issues. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Often the services provided by Stova, such as the marketing email module, survey module etc, are not as advanced as external software which provides this service, this means we often end up using external software for these things and cannot integrate these with stova. Therefore the benefit of having everything for an event in one place doesn't get used to its full extent and seems a waste. There is a lot of room for development and improvemnt in these areas and this seems to be not a priority to improve. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I appreciate that is an all-in-one platform. It allows us to create landing pages, registration websites, and store files and elements all in one place. This comprehensive functionality streamlines our workflow and makes event management much more efficient. Also, it is a very intuitive and easy platform to use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

One of the main issues I’ve encountered with Aventri is its occasional bugs, particularly when creating, editing, and adapting landing pages. It can be quite frustrating to make changes, save them, and then find out that the updates weren't actually saved. This forces you to redo the work, which is both time-consuming and tiring.

Besides that, I think the UI/UX could be a little bit better. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Once you understand it, it is user friendly and whenever I have questions, customer support is very helpful. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are some clunky things with some of the modules. I think the app could use a revamp and more options (i.e. I would love to be able to change font size and have more flexibility with use). I also think the abstracts module is past due for an update. Very clunky and I have voiced this in my support calls. The website module needs more options for templates. We just started working with a designer for more flexibility and options outside of Stova. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.