Conferencer
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Conferencer vs Sessionboard.

Sessionboard is speaker and content management for event teams. Conferencer is free, open-source software for the same job — the call, the review, the decisions, the onboarding, the agenda and the public site — that you run yourself.

Open the live demoSessionboard pricing page

What it costs

Sessionboard: From $249 / mo. Conferencer: $0.

Sessionboard
From $249 / mo
The pricing page lists three plans — Professional, Enterprise and Tailored — each shown at $249 per month, and every one ends in the same button: Request a Demo or Talk to Sales. There is no self-serve signup and no free tier on the page.

Conferencer

$0, always

MIT licensed and self-hosted: no plan, no per-event fee, no limit on submissions, no share of your revenue. Your only bill is the box it runs on, and a $5 VPS covers it.

What Sessionboard is

Speaker and content management for event teams.

Sessionboard is a hosted speaker- and content-management platform for event teams: submissions, evaluations, speaker communication, agenda planning and a speaker CRM, with AI tools and integrations into event suites such as Cvent and Bizzabo. It is the product whose Program module Conferencer was written to replace.

Who it is for: Event teams at companies and associations running one or many conferences.

Side by side

The same job, line by line.

The Sessionboard column states only what their own public pages state; the sources are linked at the foot of the page. The Conferencer column is checkable in the repository.

Published price

Conferencer$0 — MIT licensed, no plans, no per-event fee

SessionboardFrom $249 / mo; every plan is demo-gated

Self-hosted

ConferencerYes — one container, one SQLite file, Node 22+

SessionboardNo — hosted only; no self-hosted plan is offered

Call for speakers

Conferencer14 field types, show-when logic, saved drafts, per-person limits, close dates

SessionboardUp to 25 forms per event, conditional logic, draft submissions

Committee review

ConferencerMulti-round plans, anonymized rounds, 8 scorecard types, conflict-of-interest recusal, auto-distribution with caps

SessionboardMulti-round evaluation plans, rubric scoring, per-evaluator caps

Speaker onboarding

ConferencerOnboarding tasks, versioned file requests, a deliverables matrix, a speaker portal

SessionboardSpeaker portals, file requests, automated reminders

Agenda

ConferencerRooms grid with drag-and-drop, blocked room clashes, speaker-clash warnings, publish diff

SessionboardDrag-and-drop builder, conflict flagging, agenda versioning

Public site

ConferencerA full public site — sessions, speakers, agenda, itinerary, gallery, personal .ics schedule — no login

SessionboardPublishable embeds and a public API for your own site

Speaker CRM

ConferencerAn org-level speaker CRM across events, with merge, segments and a sourcing pipeline

SessionboardSpeaker CRM with dynamic lists, notes and source tracking

Messaging

ConferencerTemplated email with per-recipient preview and an in-app outbox

SessionboardEmail and SMS with templates and tracking

Getting started

ConferencerClone, npm run seed, and click around a real demo conference

SessionboardRequest a demo

Where Sessionboard is genuinely better

SMS messaging
Sessionboard sends texts as well as emails, with delivery tracking. Conferencer is email only.
Fifteen-plus native integrations
Cvent, Bizzabo, Swoogo, Zapier and more sync speakers and sessions both ways. Conferencer offers an API, signed webhooks and feeds instead of pre-built connectors.
Sponsors and exhibitors
Sessionboard manages sponsor and exhibitor workflows alongside speakers. Conferencer covers the programme and its speakers only.
Enterprise SSO
Admin and portal SSO ship on the Enterprise plan. Conferencer has email-and-password accounts only.

Where Conferencer differs

No demo call required
Two minutes after cloning you are clicking around a seeded demo conference with real data in every screen. Nothing is gated behind a sales conversation.
You keep the database
Every submission, score and uploaded deck lives in one SQLite file on your disk. Leaving is a copy; there is no export request to make.
The price is the LICENSE file
MIT, twenty-one lines, no pricing table in it. No plan to outgrow and no renewal to renegotiate.

Sources for every claim about Sessionboard on this page, read on 12 August 2026: sessionboard.com/pricing · sessionboard.com. If a figure here has gone stale, the linked page is the truth.

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