Fourwaves vs pretalx

Fourwaves is a conference management service for academic and scientific events, covering abstract submissions, peer review, registration, event websites, programs and attendee apps. Submission forms can support calls for papers and abstracts, and organizers can export abstract books with author indexes. Review workflows offer single- or double-blind processes, reviewer conflict detection and custom scoring grids. Its iOS and Android app includes the event program, personal agenda, participant list and presentation materials, and works offline. An API with organization-specific keys provides endpoints for event, registration, form, submission and session data. The free Starter plan costs nothing and caps yearly submissions at 25. Essential costs $999 a year with a 100-submission limit; Advanced costs $2,599 a year with a 300-submission limit. Each lists a 3% service fee. When a yearly cap is reached, new submissions pause until an upgrade, though existing submissions, registrations and event websites remain accessible. The company describes its audience as research communities, universities, scientific societies and research networks.

pretalx manages conference calls for participation and the work that follows, including submission review, talk selection, speaker communication, scheduling, and publication. Organizers can customize call pages, set multiple deadlines, accept submissions in multiple languages, and use a chosen domain. Review teams can rate and discuss submissions, and organizers can add questions for reviewers. The schedule editor uses speaker availability and warns about conflicts; published schedules can include an RSS feed and public changelog. Organizers can use full API access or download static schedule pages for hosting elsewhere. pretalx is open-source software under the Apache License and can be installed with pip. It can be self-hosted or used as a hosted service. Self-hosted software costs nothing, but server costs and maintenance apply. Hosted service includes backups, certificates, updates, operational maintenance, and assistance; pricing is per event and varies with conference size and ticket price, with no price listed here. The hosted service says it uses servers in Germany, encrypts data in transit, and does not track attendees with cookies, analytics, or sensitive IP logging. Event-page and schedule availability is usually guaranteed for six months after an event.