Readyhall vs Sched: which fits an academic conference?
Sched is good software. It has been the default "just publish the schedule" tool for a decade, and if you are running a film festival or a tech meetup it may be all you need. This page is about the specific case of academic and education conferences — sessions with papers and presentations, ordered authors, a CFP, and a programme that arrives as a PDF or Word document three weeks before show day.
The short version
Choose Sched if you want a mature, general-purpose schedule tool and your sessions are simple: one title, some speakers, a room.
Choose Readyhall if your programme has papers and presentations inside sessions — author or presenter order that matters, discussants, a review process — or if your programme already exists as a document and you would rather not re-type it.
What's genuinely different
1. How your programme gets in.
In Sched, you build sessions one at a time or import a spreadsheet where one row equals one session and participants are joined in a single column. For a paper session with four papers and nine ordered authors, that model has nowhere to put the structure. In Readyhall, you upload the programme you already have — PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, or pasted text. The AI extracts sessions, papers, presentations, authors, rooms and tracks into a reviewable draft; nothing publishes until you approve it. A real 7-page programme becomes a reviewable 22-session draft in about two minutes.
2. Papers and presentations as first-class records.
Readyhall models papers and presentations inside sessions with ordered authors or presenters and discussants — the parent/child structure academic programmes actually use. Sched's data model has no paper object; papers become text in a description field.
3. Pricing.
Sched publishes prices (roughly $600–$3,900/year by tier, attendees counted in blocks — verify current figures at sched.com). Readyhall publishes prices too: free for events up to 50 attendees, $79/month Pro, or one-time per-event plans from $149. No sales call for either product — credit where due, Sched also sells self-serve.
4. Calm by default; networking when you want it.
No engagement leaderboards, no push-notification campaigns, no attendee-data monetisation. Readyhall does include opt-in networking — meet-ups, a photo feed, icebreakers, targeted posts — but it's organizer-controlled, off by default, and never gamified. Academic attendees are colleagues, not an audience to activate. If gamification is what your event needs, neither we nor Sched are the tool — that's Whova's territory.
Speaker Readiness
Readyhall sends each presenter a personal link — no account, no login. They upload; you approve or reject. Reminders go out at 7 days, 2 days, and once when overdue. Sched requires speakers to create accounts and log in. If that account model is what you need, pick Sched.
Honest reasons to pick Sched instead
- You need built-in payment processing — Readyhall publishes fee info, payment links, and PO/check instructions and tracks who has paid, but does not process payments itself. Pick Sched if you need built-in payment processing.
- Ten years of organizer muscle memory on your team.
- Your sessions genuinely are simple, and re-typing thirty of them is fine.
Try the difference
Paste your real programme into the demo at readyhall.com — the extraction runs in your browser against your actual document. If it doesn't save you an afternoon, use Sched with our blessing.