Confex (The Conference Exchange) is a specialist in scholarly conferences — abstract collection, peer review, and registration for medical and scientific meetings. If your events are conferences, exhibitions, or corporate programs rather than academic proceedings, a modern all-in-one platform may fit better. Here's an honest comparison, starting with Novex.
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Confex has decades of experience in scientific meetings, and for abstract-heavy scholarly programs it's a proven choice. Teams usually start comparing alternatives for a few recurring reasons:
A modern, all-in-one event platform that runs the full lifecycle — CRM, branded registration with ticket types and waitlists, on-site check-in and badges, invoicing, and attendee comms — with transparent pricing and self-serve onboarding.
The Conference Exchange — specialist software for scholarly meetings: abstract collection at scale, peer review, speaker and presentation management, continuing-education credits, and conference registration.
An established enterprise event platform with deep functionality across large, complex programs and a broad partner ecosystem.
A widely used ticketing and registration platform known for self-serve setup and a large public event marketplace.
| Novex | Confex | |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free Beam, then $299–$2,499/mo, public | Quote-based (as of July 2026) |
| Free plan | Free Beam plan, no card | Demo / sales-led |
| Primary focus | Full commercial event lifecycle | Scholarly conferences: abstracts, peer review, CE credits |
| Registration | Branded forms, ticket types, waitlists, embeddable widget, CSV/Excel import | Proven at 50–8,500 registrants, multi-currency, association-system integrations |
| Abstract management | Call for Speakers: public application form + review queue (not scientific peer review) | Abstract collection at up to 10,000 abstracts per meeting, peer review, ePosters |
| On-site check-in & badges | Built-in kiosk: QR scan, walk-ins, offline mode, badge designer | Attendee apps; confirm on-site tooling with Confex |
| Beyond the event | CRM, quotes, invoices, budgets, email + WhatsApp campaigns | Continuing education & credits, presentation archives |
Comparison reflects publicly available information as of July 2026 and Novex's own product capabilities. Competitor features and pricing change — verify current details with each vendor before deciding.
If you run scholarly or scientific meetings where the program is built from submitted abstracts — peer review, presentation management, ePosters, continuing-education credits — Confex is purpose-built for exactly that, at a scale few platforms match. Novex doesn't do scientific peer review, and says so. Novex is the better fit when your events are commercial conferences, exhibitions, or corporate programs: you get registration with ticket types and waitlists, a call-for-speakers pipeline, on-site check-in and badging, and the CRM-to-invoice back office in one platform you can set up yourself today.
Confex (The Conference Exchange) is specialist software for scholarly meetings — medical, scientific, and academic conferences. It handles abstract collection and peer review, speaker and presentation management, continuing-education credits, and registration that has handled events from 50 to 8,500 registrants across up to 98 countries.
It depends on what you run. For abstract-driven scholarly programs, Confex's specialist scope is hard to replace. For commercial conferences, exhibitions, and corporate events, Novex covers registration, check-in and badges, CRM, invoicing, and attendee comms in one modern platform with public pricing and a free plan.
Confex uses quote-based pricing and does not publish standard rates as of July 2026 — you contact their team for a proposal. Novex publishes its pricing publicly: a free Beam plan, with paid plans from $299/month.
Novex includes Call for Speakers — a public application form with a team review queue, where approving an application creates the speaker and publishes them to your event microsite. It's built for conference speaker sourcing, not scientific peer review. If you need structured abstract review at scholarly scale, Confex is the specialist tool.
Yes. Novex bulk-imports existing attendee lists from CSV or Excel — from a previous tool or a spreadsheet — and exports your list back out at any time. You can start on the free Beam plan and test the import with a real event before committing.
Yes. Novex includes an agenda builder with multi-day, multi-track sessions, workshop selection with per-workshop capacity, speaker management with travel details, and a public event microsite that updates as you publish.
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