Cvent is a large event technology platform built for in-person, hybrid, virtual, and webinar use cases. It covers much more than abstract collection, including venue sourcing, registration, exhibitor tools, attendee engagement, and broader event operations.

For organizations that want a broad event suite, Cvent can be useful. For smaller academic meetings focused mainly on submissions and peer review, it may feel expensive and heavier than necessary.

Openwater positions itself as a flexible system for abstracts, awards, fellowships, conferences, registration, and mobile event features. It appears broader than pure abstract management and leans heavily into configurable workflows.

It can work for abstract submissions, but its broader focus on awards and application-style workflows may make it a better fit for organizations managing multiple program types, not just conference abstracts.

MeetingBloom is built specifically for conferences that need powerful abstract management without paying enterprise-level pricing. It combines the core tools organizers actually use into one streamlined system, making it a strong fit for academic meetings, scientific conferences, associations, and nonprofit events.

Unlike many platforms that charge more while spreading features across separate modules, add-ons, or custom quotes, MeetingBloom delivers a broader practical feature set in one place. Conferences can manage submissions, reviewer workflows, scoring, decisions, registration, websites, communications, reporting, and exports from a single platform, while keeping costs substantially lower than many larger competitors.

For teams that want more capability for less money, MeetingBloom stands out as one of the strongest value options in the market.

Oxford Abstracts is built around academic conferences and research events. Its main strengths are ease of use, transparent pricing, clean interface design, and a focused academic workflow covering submissions, reviews, decisions, certificates, reports, and conference websites.

It is one of the more straightforward options for organizers who want an academic-first platform without the extra complexity of a large enterprise event suite.

Whova is broadly known as an event platform with strong attendee engagement, networking, mobile app, scheduling, and event operations tools. It also includes abstract and call-for-speakers functionality.

Its abstract system is present, but the platform is more clearly centered on the overall event experience rather than deep academic abstract workflows.

Fourwaves is an academic event platform that supports abstracts, peer review, registration, event websites, poster sessions, and live participation. It appears to be one of the more research-oriented options on the list.

Its public pricing is a strength, and it looks like a practical option for organizations that want both abstract management and event delivery without relying on an enterprise sales cycle.

Dryfta markets itself as a web-based all-in-one event management platform for universities and academic events. It combines abstracts, peer review, registration, websites, scheduling, CRM, and communication tools.

It offers a broad feature set and some public pricing, though it may require more setup effort and a steeper learning curve than simpler systems.

Ex Ordo is a research-focused conference management system with abstract workflows, peer review, registration, program building, and virtual event add-ons. It covers the end-to-end academic conference process.

Its biggest drawback is pricing opacity. It may still be a good fit for research conferences, but the lack of simple public pricing makes quick comparison harder.

Cadmium offers event and learning technology with Eventscribe as its conference product. It spans abstracts, speakers, exhibitors, logistics, websites, posters, and analytics.

It appears to be a substantial event platform, but pricing transparency is limited and it may feel more complex than lighter academic-only options.

Eventsforce is a larger event management platform covering abstract collection, registration, ticketing, virtual events, and awards management. It appears targeted more toward broad event use cases than purely academic abstract workflows.

It may be suitable for bigger organizations that want a multi-purpose event system, though it is less transparent than some competitors and harder to evaluate quickly.