Unisfair vs. ON24

Dennis,
I will start by sharing that I work with a competitor to both companies, called INXPO and like Unisfair, we began as a robust Virtual Event Platform and are generally recognized as the leader in the space with over 1200 events and over 1 million attendees. The customer service INXPO is known for has helped hundreds of organizations deploy this emerging technology and mount successful events and communities from 50 to 50,000.

We have a Virtual Playbook that outlines the whole process, making it easier to build a successful virtual event, classroom, office, briefing center or community campus.

While I concur with some of the above distinctions between the two companies you have named, I would also urge you to check out Virtual Edge January 12-13 (it will also be available virtually) to look at the full landscape of technology providers (and partners) and match the right technology to your needs. Cheers, m

Michael Westcott, VP Marketing INXPO
www.inxpo.com

I wish you would restrict your question not just to Unisfair or On24, since there are many more interesting vendors in the space, like Inxpo, 6connex, Imaste, Ubivent, Visualmente...

Each platform has its strentghs and weaknesses, try to find a platform that is battle tested for scale and get a complete service with full support, not just a technological solution.

Good luck,
Miguel

Dennis,
I want to disclose upfront that I am working at Unisfair. Our platform is being used for the widest range of business applications from Lead generation to customer engagement, corporate training, recruiting and company meetings. You will find a number of great case studies for all of these use cases on the company website. Here is what I think are the main differences between On24 and Unisfair:

Unisfair is the company that in 2000 had the original vision of a virtual environment for business, where attendees can connect, learn and engage on the internet.
On24 is a webcasting company that recently added functionality to enter the virtual event market.

1. Integrated User Experience
Unisfair has developed all components of its platform inhouse, which creates a seamless and easy-to-use attendee experience where you almost feel that you are in a physical location.
Companies that create mashups with other technologies (e.g. chat, content, video...) often have a lot of disconnected windows pop up, which is confusing for the user. A good test is to listen to a webcast session, leave it on and play another one, or go back to the main hall, where you play a video or a virtual host greeting. In a less integrated environment, these will now all play at the same time, which is hard to stop and very confusing for less technical audiences. In Unisfair you will navigate from location to location and let the platfrom manage your experience.

2. Configurability and Self Serve
Unisfair has the Venue Builder, which allows you to create your own branded virtual environment with mouse clicks - just like configuring your Yahoo account. Flexible hotspots also give you unlimited freedom in creative design and brand expression.
You can make changes in real-time, add locations, change navigation, swap out logos, even while a live event is going on in your virtual venue.
Other vendors typically reqire changes to me made by their services team with a "freeze period", after which you can't make any more changes to the environment, which can be weeks before the live day.

3. Virtual Engagement Center
Unisfair has the only 3-tier organizational model in the industry, which allows you to create any numbers of virtual venues, with any configuration of rooms, locations etc. and run any number of virtual events.
This is key for developing a coherent engagement strategy, where you can track attendees across your virtual events over time.
For attendes this means that they can visit all of your events using the same profile or identity, without re-registering. Also, they can keep their virtual briefcase to collect content and contacts across all your events.

4. Reporting
Unisfair has Smart Reporting capability across all your virtual properties and events. You can track everything an attendee does, providing unmatched lead qualification for your sales team.
The unique Unisfair Engagement index allows you to distill all of this data into one metric, combining attendee Demographics, Activities and Interest. With just that number you can rank your leads, alllowing you to keep less qualified attendees in the environment to mature and send those that you deem qualified to your team for follow-up. You can configure the engagement index to represent exactly the type of lead and the type of behavior you are looking for and you can configure different indices for your different sponsors.

5. Events vs. Engagement
Unisfair's customers are deploying always-on virtual environments, to connect with their audiences 24/365.
Other vendors are focused on standalone virtual events that don't allow you to track attendees across your different events over time - critical to gather meaningful marketing intelligence.

These are just some of the differences. I would encourage you to go to the websites, check out some of the case studies to see some of the ways companies use virtual events and then contact both vendors to get more details.