Sched vs Planio

Communication is the main problem that Sched solves. It's an at-a-glance snapshot of an entire evening that easily drills down into specifics. It invites interaction, so that's another communication problem solved/helped. I couldn't be more thrilled to have Sched working on my event's behalf. Thank you!

- Heather B. Producer, Lit Crawl Portland

We used to publish our own website with conference info; it had the basic info, but it was hard to keep the pieces consistent. Now we link to the Sched site from our event page and attendees find everything there. Speakers can post their pix and handouts and complete/update their profiles and send e-mail blasts to all who signed up for their workshop. We got good reporting and from it (and Google Analytics) see a high engagement rate (not just page views; over half set up accounts and created a personal schedule). This is all from their lowest service level/tier; higher levels integrate more with registration/payment etc., but we already have an online store and used it for front-end registration.

- James C. Technical Evangelist

It wasn't too difficult to get everything set up, but we needed a human to help us select the right package to purchase. It was way too difficult reaching someone and we were actually told that no one could assist us for at least another week because that department was going to a conference.

- Lane S. Director

Overall: The system is reasonably fast, and good at what it does. Problems are responded to promptly (very quickly in some cases!). Over a 6 month period we reported three relatively obscure bugs, and all three were fixed within 24 to 48 hours. The core functionality is strong and reliable. If there is a negative, it's that the company makes assumptions about its user base which in our case do not apply, especially in the area of external task status change notification. Specifically, the system allows plain text email notifications, but these contain all the task data, which represent a serious potential leak of private information. To avoid that, one can activate encrypted email notifications, but then every member of the system MUST have encrypted email setup in their email client. As anyone who has ever tried to configure that in Outlook or Thunderbird can tell you, the installation of a certificate and the configuration of the client to use it are fraught with difficulties. Many people just give up. An ideal solution would be for the system to support plain-text email notification of task status changes as it does now, but with the option to not include the details, just the task title and the statement "The status of this task has changed. It is now assigned to you with XXXX Priority. Please see the task for details [link]". However, this is a relatively minor problem that does not detract significantly from our overall positive experience using the system. It's a strong solution.

- Bob A.

Overall: Generally ugly looking and can be very clunky and frustrating to use. Overcomplicated for what we need. But it does the job for simple things, and I had a really good experience with customer support quickly fixing a bug.

- Amy G.

The obtaining of reports in relation to the hours worked, the assigned projects and the organizational structure is fantastic. We continue using Planio for all our projects. It allows us to optimize operations more and more.

- Daniel P.