Fourwaves - 2026 Pricing, Features, Reviews & Alternatives

Fourwaves is conference management software for academic conferences: abstract submissions, peer review, registration, event website, program and conference app in one platform, built for researchers at universities, scientific societies and research networks.

The problem it solves

Most academic conferences still run on a patchwork: a Google Form for abstracts, a spreadsheet to assign reviewers, Eventbrite for tickets, a WordPress site for the program and an inbox full of author questions. Every piece has to be re-keyed into the next one, and the person doing it is usually a coordinator, a graduate student or a professor with a day job. Fourwaves replaces that patchwork with one platform where an accepted abstract becomes a program item, a presenter badge and an entry in the conference app without anyone copying data between tools.

From the call for abstracts to the book of abstracts

Organizers open a call for abstracts with a form that already knows what an academic submission looks like: title, authors and affiliations, abstract text with rich formatting, topics, presentation type, and file uploads such as Word and LaTeX documents. Authors submit and revise their own work until the deadline. Reviewers score submissions in a dedicated portal, single or double-blind, against custom criteria, with assignment by topic or expertise and safeguards so nobody reviews their own paper. Revision rounds, decisions and notifications happen in the same place, and accepted work flows into the program and a downloadable book of abstracts with an author index.

Registration, payments and the event website

Registration forms handle pricing tiers, early-bird deadlines, discount codes, taxes, invoices and refunds. Payments go through the organizer's own gateway (Stripe, PayPal or an institutional gateway) and Fourwaves never holds the funds, which keeps university procurement happy. The event website is built from content blocks with your branding and publishes in minutes, with the program, speakers, sponsors and registration already connected.

On site and online

Attendees get a conference app on iOS and Android with the program, a personal agenda, abstracts, posters, participant list and announcements. Poster sessions can run in person or virtually, with digital posters, comments and Q&A. Live-stream links turn any session into a hybrid one. Name badges, certificates of attendance, targeted emails and exports are generated from the same data.

Built for events of every size

The same workflow runs a 30-submission departmental research day and a multi-track congress with 2,000+ submissions. Every event is archived and can be cloned in one click, so when the organizing committee rotates next year, the new team inherits the setup instead of starting over. A free public API connects event data to your other tools.

Pricing you can budget

A free Starter plan includes unlimited events, unlimited registrations and 25 abstract submissions per year. Paid plans are flat yearly subscriptions priced on submission volume, with no add-ons and no per-registrant fee, and a 2 or 3-year term locks the price. Pro is quoted on volume for large or multi-event organizations.

Support from people who know academic conferences

Median first response is under 5 minutes, 96.7% of organizers rate their support experience positively, and the platform runs at 99.9% uptime with data hosted in Canada. Chat, email, onboarding calls and the help center are available in English and French.

Who uses it

Universities, scientific societies and associations, and research networks across North America, Europe, Asia and beyond, including MIT, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard Medical School, NIH, NASA, University of Oxford, University of Toronto, the Organization for Human Brain Mapping, the United States Association for the Study of Pain and the Geological Association of Canada.