Guidebook Reviews

Something that I liked most about this software is the scalability and the ability to update in real time. I cannot tell you how much this saved us during orientation trainings for our student staff when I was a Resident Director. We had instances where rooms were changed at the drop of a hat, or lunches/sessions were altered on start or end times and being able to update their schedule within the...

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Pricing was really dicey for us as we had limited budget for large training groups. You have the options for self versus full service to kind of play around with. Unfortunately with budget cuts we weren't able to sustain using this. With the full service you can control branding which is AWESOME though, so if you have need for that it's really something to consider!

The backend interface is fairly intuitive. I've been able to train my event staff and interns on how to build robust apps for our events!

It feels like it needs a bit of a facelift. It's looked the same for the last 5+ years. It's not bad, but as a weekly "builder" within the platform, I'm ready for a nice look/style.

For what it does, Guidebook is very useful. Great at being that one place on the phone for visitors to click to for information about the events taking place on campus.

Customization is really bad. You're forced to use their color palette, which doesn't make sense.

The app was easy to set up and manage. Even a non-technical person can do it

It was quite a bit more expensive than other apps of the type

It is very user friendly! I was placed in charge of building and adding all the information we needed for our event to guidebook, and as a first time user I found it easy to learn. First, you can work on it and then publish it and make it live. So no worries about accidently messing up before the big day. Second, I loved that you could edit the features - you can easily add a map, a list of speakers,...

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The survey was difficult to figure out how to use. You have to get out of the guide you're working on and create the survey on your dashboard. From there, you have to ht surveys and polls. Then you can create and edit surveys and attach them to specific events - for instance we had surveys for every workshop, so I was able to attach a survey to each and every workshop we had. BUT the issue came with...

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Guidebook is a pretty easy tool to use when coordinating, planning, and scheduling events such as conferences and organizational/ company days. I have used in education when planning PD days for our district or when attending conferences. best part is the mobile app that users get to use and interact with when you make it live. Decent amount of included capabilities as well, that are in the free program, including images, and a feedback system.

When using with the free program, you are limited to the total number of downloads of your mobile app. I assume when paying this will change. As of now, the free version has sufficed.

It puts the essential information in the hands of the people who need it. It's easy to navigate. Icons are universal and understandable. Sending out schedule changes, updates, or reminders is a great feature. Easy for the guest to create a custom schedule.

The hardest part is taking a nice, orderly word document and getting into excel format to upload. It's hard to put one session with multiple sections into a format that works for the guest to easily choose and add to their personal schedule. Guest can't add non-Guide events to schedule.

I love that the attendees can access any time and there is a live update option and it works for everyone immediately.

Difficult to try and explain all the features. But it is what it is and all programs take some time to figure out.

The method of organizing for each of your activities that you can save as a digital book is really amazing and useful, with the app you do not worry about taking paper and pencil as in the old school, although necessary but not so practical.

It is a little confusing when looking for your activities and it brings problems when editing, there are cases that do not save the modifications.

Not many event apps support local storage of documents in order to ensure reliable, simultaneous retrieval by 1000+ participants. I also appreciate the modern, easily customizable interface across mobile and web clients.

Important enhancements are needed to make the integrated PDF viewer more useful: ability to go to a specific page number; and within-document search.

I have used guidebook for a few years now. Most of my usage experience has come as a conference attendee. I no longer need to get tree-killing printed conference schedules (unless I am presenting, then I want a copy)! The tool is very easy to use in most situations. You can create a registration/check-in for folks, put in guides, schedules, reminders, and push notifications to users. I have explored using it for my own office as well, and had worked with guidebook to set up a trial. I thought the tool was very useful for our work (University - training undergraduate student staff), however, the price was a little too high for the extent to which this product would have been helpful, so I decided not to go through with this.

The schedule explore can be a little clunky, it will not keep your place at times, randomly refresh itself, etc. The search feature can be your best friend if you know what you are looking for, because the organization system is not designed for any specific context, which means that while it is good for many different uses, it leave a little to be desire in each specific context.

The ease of use! Everything is very straight forward and even if I don't know how to do something, the support team responds in record timing. I enjoy the customization and easy drag and drop features. I also love the ability to copy content from one guide to another to save time on building.

Sometimes there are small glitches that cause me to have to reload the page, but nothing crazy. Any issues that arise are totally normal (nothing is 100% perfect) and are resolved quickly. I do wish that the sponsor cards could be copied to the next guide as they are usually the same.

The Guidebook event app continues to grow and become more valuable to my attendees. Each year something new is added creating more value. The interactive social feed allows attendees to connect with each other. Pushing out notifications enables me to draw attention to key events during our conference. Evaluation of our educational sessions provided immediate feedback to our presenters.

At times there are features I wish were present like being able to jump to a certain letter in the alphabet when listing presenters. However, when I suggest these be added in future updates, I receive positive replies. I also have disliked what seems to me to be a continual change in the interface where the app is built. While it is intuitive and easy to use, the look seems to change too often for me.

We love using Guidebook. It's so simple to teach other editors as well as edit myself. Even though the layout is simple, it's still easy to get creative and intentional with.

With we had more control of layouts. An easier way to put in static maps as PDF files would be great too,

-Notifications to event attendees -Ability to clone guides so that you don't have to rebuild for the next event -Easy upload of documents -Banners

-No Instagram icon for social media -Attendees get confused with a preview vs. a live guide (there should be only a single presence of a guide when downloading)

I have used Guidebook at several conferences, and love the ease of use as well as the total elimination of printed schedules and information. With the option of selecting what events I am planning to attend (and setting calendar reminders as well!) out the menu of offerings for any given day or time period, this makes scheduling a breeze. Maps, powerpoints, speaker notes, and options for social networking allow attendees to have any information they need just with one app.

For my purposes, I didn't have any complaints about this software or its utilization.

As a religious, non-profit organization we don't often get high marks for being cutting edge or contemporary when it comes to our uses of technology. We have made some huge strides in the last 5 years and Guidebook has been part of that formula. Guidebook is one of the top things constituents mention in post-event surveys as something helpful we offer to improve their experience. I spend many hours perfecting the setup but I can't take credit for the platform itself. That's all you!

No cons were added to this review

The ease with which I can manage all aspects of the program, as well as the success rate for people using it onsite. Even those who may be 'technologically challenged' found it easy to download and easy to use

For my purposes, I could not find any part of Guidebook that was difficult or unclear to understand, learn or use.

Generally easy to set up and edit as necessary.

Lacks text messaging except as expensive add-on

When we had Guidebook as a list of events, dinners, speakers, etc. It was a great way to stay on top of things when so much other stuff was happening at Annual Conference. I even had access to some information that I did not have before because of Guidebook! I simply never saw it when the Conference used printed guidebooks.

Depending on the stuff i was looking for, Guidebook was kind of overwhelming my first year, because it was such a Big Conference with a lot of information.

Guidebook has many good things...not only is the system that helps you create your guide app super helpful, they have a ton of resources, the support is phenomenal and you cannot beat the price.

There really aren't any cons...maybe some information on how to customize it a bit more to match branding standards...or a way to do so...but I imagine this would drive the cost up. I would prefer to keep pricing the same to be honest.

This application was so simple to set up and use. No "programming" type functions required of me. Their Customer Service Folks walked us right through the set up and any questions we had afterwards! But most of all, our "end users" LOVED the app.

A bit pricey, but, worth it! We paid for 2 years at a time to get a discount.

The guides we create are very easy to build and navigate. Most menus and items can be customized and the website's support FAQs and step-by-step instructions are incredibly helpful. If an answer can't be found there, I've always gotten quick answers from the support team that address what I need.

The only reason I'm not rating this 5 stars is because there's no lead tracker availability. At our conferences, we have exhibitors that would like to follow up with attendees more directly than just saying "do you have a business card?". Further, we would like to track actual attendance at sessions by having a QR code printed on badges and someone at the door to scan as people arrive. As much as we encourage our attendees, we know not everyone will download the app and check-in to sessions, so that doesn't give us the most reliable data.

I really loved the convenience of having one location to place all of our event agendas, maps, surveys, advertisements, reminders, etc. so that our parents and students could find them all when needed. It helped to keep them on schedule during our New Student Orientation as well as gave them a place to find answers to the majority of the FAQ's that would have bombarded our administrative offices. It also reduced the traffic of "lost" individuals on our campus with the map feature.

There were a few technical issues we had when trying to upload our agenda, however we reached out to technical support and they were efficient and extremely helpful. We were able to resolve them in no time.

Way better than a physical con schedule. Can be updated on the fly and has the ability to display as many sections of information for events, panels, and booths. Helps con goers find everything there is to do

I don't like when con runners don't maximize its potential and put out an unfinished guidebook. That is all