Each year, independent research firms evaluate event management platforms, highlighting vendors’ strengths and weaknesses. Their reports often serve as a valuable reference for teams undergoing a search process to select their next event platform.
But although the reports can help narrow down the options, they need to be considered in the context of each team’s individual needs. Rather than comparing rankings to see which platform is best, buyers should ask, “Which platform is best for us?”
Here are some tips for sorting through analyst reports and using the most relevant information to identify the ideal event platform for your organization.
Decide Which Criteria Are Most Important
When preparing their reports, each major research firm uses a different set of criteria. They all require vendors to submit a variety of product details, roadmap plans, customer validation, and data. Understanding the nuances that make each report different allows you to compare their top criteria to your own. A few significant reports released this year are:
- The 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Event Marketing and Management Platforms: Analyzes vendors on two axes: ability to execute and completeness of vision. Ability to execute covers product, sales, pricing, and customer experience. Completeness of vision covers innovation, market understanding, and roadmap.
- The Forrester Wave™: Virtual Event Management Platforms, Q2 2026: Evaluates vendors’ current offering, strategy, and market presence. It goes into detail on product capability and how well a vendor’s strategy holds up under scrutiny.
- The IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Virtual Events Applications 2026: Examines vendors’ capabilities and strategies, emphasizing vendor viability, market momentum, and forward-looking strategy.
Keep Your Existing Tech Stack in Mind
Independent research firms do an excellent job of listing exactly which integrations each event management platform has. From there, you can directly compare with your existing tech stack to determine which platform will operate best with it. Sales and marketing integrations in particular are important for maximizing the business impact of your next event platform.
Ask Vendors for Customer Evidence Connected to Report Claims
The research for analyst reports typically includes customer validation, but the specifics and the names often do not appear in the report. As a next step, look into whether the customers that participated in the report share your needs, event portfolio, industry, or other attributes. Use the customer validation aspects of analyst reports as a starting point for vendor conversations. You may discover alignment, or find that, for example, the customers who praised the platform have an event portfolio dissimilar to yours.
Analyze the Full Product Map
Finally, give extra attention to vendors’ product roadmaps. Analyst reports include this information, but because their questionnaires to vendors differ, each report may share different facets of companies’ product roadmaps.
Combined, these reports offer comprehensive insight into vendors’ future plans. When you decide on your preferred vendor, your team will likely be using that vendor for several years, so it’s important to know what is available now as well as what is in development. Consult multiple reports, and get more information on the parts of the roadmap that matter most to your team.
Year after year, RainFocus is recognized as a leader across all major analyst reports. At the same time, we always encourage companies to carefully compare the content of these analyst reports to determine whether RainFocus is a fit for their organization. If RainFocus is already on your shortlist of vendors to evaluate, request a demo to learn more.
