ConfTool vs Session Canvas

ConfTool is conference management software for academic conferences, congresses, workshops, and seminars, including on-site and virtual events. It supports submissions and reviews, program scheduling, participant registration, administration, and invoicing. With ConfTool Pro, organizers can configure open or blind reviews, optionally use multiple tracks, schedule accepted submissions, and check presenter conflicts. Participants can create personal agendas. Pro registration supports participant groups, time discounts, event options, and admission limits; payments can be handled by bank transfer, PayPal, Stripe, or connections to more than 45 online credit card payment systems. Pro can link sessions and presentations to external virtual-event resources and export data in Excel, Word, CSV, JSON, and XML. ConfTool Standard is free on request for smaller non-commercial events, for up to 150 participants, and requires local installation. Pro is hosted and billed per conference; its fee depends on event requirements and size, and optional modules may cost extra. The maker lists HTTPS access, automatic backups, and role-based access control. Standard comes without support, while Pro includes professional support.

Session Canvas is open-source software for managing conference submissions, reviews, agendas, speakers, and event communications. Organizers can build calls for papers with reordered questions, conditional rules, required fields, deadlines, and draft submissions. The review process supports track-based routing, a passwordless evaluator view, and optional blind review. Agendas have day, room, and list views, with warnings for potential time, room, and speaker conflicts. Speakers can use magic links to check submission status, update profiles, and complete tasks. Organizers can send templated acceptance or rejection emails, reminders, and calendar invitations that update when event details change. For sharing event information, it provides embeddable schedule and speaker widgets, a public JSON schedule feed, and whole-event iCal export. Five public widgets are viewable without logging in. Optional Airtable sync is off by default. Session Canvas runs on the web and is self-hosted on the organizer’s Supabase project. It is MIT-licensed and costs nothing.