The conference app you don't have to build

A conference app is also called a mobile event app, an event app, an app for conferences, an annual meeting app, a conference mobile app or a conference application, and an academic conference app when it is built for research events specifically. Standalone event apps such as Whova, Guidebook, EventMobi and Sched are bought and paid for separately from the abstract management and registration tools an academic conference already runs on. Ex Ordo, for example, offers the Guidebook app at about $3,500 USD per event, on a quote we received (see the Fourwaves best conference management systems comparison).

The Fourwaves Conference App is the official native app for events hosted on Fourwaves. It is included with every event on every plan, and the conference program, the presentations and the participant directory the organizer already published on the event website appear in the app automatically, from the same event management platform, so there is no separate app content to maintain, for in-person, hybrid and virtual events. The app is free on iOS (16.6 or later) and Android, in English and French, and one install covers every event an attendee goes to on Fourwaves.

• Full program. Every session with its room, time, track and description, and the presentations nested inside it. Attendees browse the session schedules by day, filter by track and search by speaker or keyword.
• Livestreams. For virtual and hybrid sessions, attendees open the session’s livestream link from the app, the same way they would from the event website.
• My agenda. Attendees bookmark sessions and individual presentations to build their own schedule. The event home shows the sessions that are live and the ones coming next on the event day.
• Presentation material. Posters, PowerPoint slides, images and videos uploaded by authors at submission open from the presentation page, next to the abstract and the author list.
• Participant list. Names, affiliations, bios and photos from the event participant directory, searchable in the app, for networking before, during and after the sessions.
• Upvotes. Attendees upvote presentations they liked, with the count shown on the presentation page.
• Offline access. The program, agenda and abstracts stay available without a connection and resync when it returns.
• Live sync. Changes made in the Fourwaves dashboard reach the app on its next sync, and the app syncs every 5 minutes, so the program on the event website, on the virtual platform and in the app is always the same version.

1. Publish your program. Build sessions in the conference program builder, drag accepted presentations into them, and publish. The app shows the same program as your event website.
2. Share the download links. Add the App Store and Google Play links to your event website, your confirmation email and your reminder email.
3. Attendees open their event. Attendees install the app, sign in with the email address they registered with, and find their event: the program, their agenda, the participant list and the presentation files are on their phone. The event is stored on the device for offline use.
4. Update as usual. Any change you make to a session, a room or a presenter in the dashboard reaches every phone on the app’s next sync, within 5 minutes. Nothing to republish.

Attendees who go to several events on Fourwaves in a year keep one app and switch between events inside it.

When an organizer changes a session time, a room or a presenter, the event website and the virtual platform update immediately and the app fetches the change on its next sync, and the app syncs every 5 minutes, so attendees always have the current version. Attendees without a connection keep the last synced version and receive the changes as soon as they reconnect. A withdrawn presentation is marked as withdrawn in the app the same way it is in the online program and the next booklet export, and speaker profiles and session details update the same way.

General event apps such as Whova, Cvent Attendee Hub, Bizzabo and EventMobi sell a fully branded event app per event, with sponsor banner ads, live polls, gamification features, session feedback surveys and networking features built for trade shows and corporate events; that is the right tool for an expo and the wrong shape for a symposium with 200 poster presentations, where attendees need to find a specific abstract, read it, open the poster and know who the presenter is. The attendee experience at an academic conference is built on finding and reading research, so the app is organized around that.

The Fourwaves Conference App is built for the second case. Each presentation carries its abstract, authors, affiliations and uploaded files because it comes from the abstract submission and peer review workflow on the same platform, sessions nest presentations the way a scientific program does, and the participant list is the event’s own directory. Because the app is shared across all events hosted on Fourwaves rather than a branded event app built per event, there is no app store submission, no per-event build fee and nothing for event organizers to maintain. General-purpose event platforms sell abstract submissions, peer review and virtual poster sessions as add-ons when they carry them at all, where Fourwaves includes all three on every plan alongside the conference app. Fourwaves comparisons: Fourwaves vs Cvent and Fourwaves vs Whova.

1. Does it use the program you already built? If the conference app is separate from your abstract and program tools, someone re-types the schedule and every change twice. In Fourwaves, the published program appears in the app automatically.
2. Does it show abstracts, posters and slides per presentation? Attendees at academic conferences pick talks by abstract, not by session title. Fourwaves attaches each author’s files to their presentation.
3. Does it work offline? Convention centers and university basements lose signal. Fourwaves stores the event on the phone and resyncs when the connection returns.
4. What does the event app cost? General event apps are priced per attendee or per event, and the Guidebook add-on Ex Ordo offers is about $3,500 USD per event on a quote we received. The Fourwaves app is included with every plan, including the Free plan.
5. Does it scale with event size? Fourwaves runs events from a 30-abstract research day to a 2,000-submission multi-track congress on the same program builder and the same app.
6. Do attendees need a new app for each event? Fourwaves is one native app for all events on the platform, so attendees who go to several events a year install it once. Support for organizers comes from the same team that supports the rest of the platform, with a median first response under 5 minutes.

Fourwaves charges no per-participant fee and no add-on to buy, which differs from event apps priced per attendee or licensed per event, and support for organizers is included on every plan as well. Plan prices and what each plan includes are on the pricing page.