Switching from Swoogo: a practical guide

If you're evaluating whether to move from Swoogo to ema, here's the honest version. What gets better, what's different, and where Swoogo still has strengths worth acknowledging.

What Swoogo does well

Swoogo is a well-built registration platform. The UI is clean, the form builder is solid, and attendee management works the way you'd expect. If your events are primarily registration-driven — webinars, single-track conferences, marketing events — Swoogo handles that workflow competently.

Their event website builder is mature and flexible. It's been iterated on for years and it shows. If branded event microsites are central to how you run events, that's a genuine strength.

Credit where it's due: Swoogo doesn't try to be everything. They picked a lane and built well for it.

Where teams outgrow Swoogo

The friction starts when your events get more complex. Swoogo is a registration platform first, and the rest of the event production stack — exhibitor management, floor plans, speaker portals, multi-track programme building, task workflows — isn't part of the package.

That means teams running conferences with exhibitors, complex schedules, and production logistics end up bolting on additional tools. A floor plan app here, a speaker management spreadsheet there, a task tracker somewhere else. You're back to the five-tools-and-a-spreadsheet problem.

The other pressure point is pricing. Swoogo charges per user, starting at roughly $11,800 per year for a single seat. Need your production coordinator to have access? That's another seat. Want your volunteer manager in the system? Another seat. The cost scales with your team size, which creates an awkward incentive to limit who can access the platform.

What you gain with ema

ema is a full event production stack, not just registration. Here's what's included out of the box:

Exhibitor management. Portals, booth assignments, compliance tracking, document collection. No separate tool needed.

Interactive floor plans. Design and manage floor plans that connect to your exhibitor and venue data. Not a static PDF — a working document that updates as assignments change.

Speaker management. From call for papers through to scheduling. Submission review, acceptance workflows, speaker portals for collecting bios and presentations.

Programme builder. Multi-track, multi-day scheduling with conflict detection, room linking, and speaker availability checks.

Task management. Built for event production workflows with five views, deadlines, and team assignment. Not a generic project tool repurposed for events.

AI agent. An assistant with access to specialised tools across your event data. Ask it about your budget, schedule conflicts, exhibitor compliance status, or attendee numbers. It understands context, not just keywords.

Real-time collaboration. Comments, mentions, live updates. Your whole team works from the same current state.

The pricing maths

This is where the comparison gets straightforward.

A three-person team on Swoogo runs roughly $35,000 per year. That's three seats at the standard per-user rate, and you're still only getting registration and event website tools.

The same team on ema starts with a package-led model rather than per-user licensing. The final price depends on event volume, included usage, support needs, and any hard-cost services. Your coordinators, volunteers, and stakeholders can all get access without adding seats.

The gap widens as your team grows. Five people on Swoogo means five seats. On ema, the pricing model is fundamentally different: ema is priced around event operations, not the people using it.

What's different (not better, different)

Swoogo's event website builder has years of iteration behind it. ema takes a different approach to event sites. If your workflow depends heavily on Swoogo's specific site-building tools, evaluate both side by side and see which fits how your team actually works.

Swoogo also has established integrations with certain marketing automation platforms. If you're deeply embedded in a specific martech stack, check ema's integration options first. We're API-first and growing the integration library, but it's worth verifying your specific needs.

Migration

Moving data from Swoogo to ema follows a standard export-import process. Registration data, attendee lists, and session information can be exported from Swoogo and brought into ema.

The practical steps: export your attendee records and registration data as CSV files, map the fields to ema's import format, and upload. Session and schedule information transfers the same way. Most teams complete the data migration within a day.

Your team will need to rebuild event websites and registration forms in ema, but the actual data — the attendees, sessions, and event details that matter — comes across cleanly.

When the switch makes sense

If your events are registration-only and Swoogo's website builder is central to your workflow, Swoogo might still be the right fit. It does that job well.

The switch makes sense when you need the rest of the event production stack in one place. When you're tired of managing exhibitors in spreadsheets, building floor plans in separate tools, and coordinating speakers over email. When your team has grown and per-user pricing has become a line item that's hard to justify.

ema gives you the full picture — registration through to production, in one platform, at a price that doesn't scale with your headcount.