Brella alternative: smarter matchmaking without the setup complexity
Brella's matching runs on categories you design in advance. All Along asks one open question instead, so matches include things nobody thought to list.
Co-founder and Product Lead, All Along
The short answer. Brella is a full event platform that takes networking seriously - ticketing, a multi-track agenda, a sponsorship and hosted-buyer product, deep analytics and an open API, with matchmaking at the centre of it. If you want one tool that sells the tickets, runs the schedule and matches the room, Brella is a better fit than we are and it is not close. All Along does the matching only, from a spreadsheet, in about five minutes, and every match arrives with a written reason. Consider us if the matching is the part that is not working.
Brella is one of the few platforms in this category that has clearly thought hard about networking rather than treating it as a tab. That makes for a more interesting comparison than the usual one, because the disagreement is not about whether matching matters. It is about how much else you want to buy alongside it, how much setting up you are willing to do, and what happens to the small number of minutes an attendee will actually give you.
If you are still scoping the category more broadly, it is worth reading the three questions to ask before you buy an event networking platform and why most people leave an event without meeting anyone useful. This page is the head-to-head once Brella is already on your shortlist.
How Brella and All Along compare
Every row below says who we think does that job better, including the rows where the answer is Brella. A comparison written by one of the two companies is only worth reading if it is willing to lose an argument, so here are the ones we lose.
| What you need it to do | Brella | All Along | Better here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sell tickets and control who gets what | Free and paid tickets, coupon codes, bulk purchase, custom questions per ticket type, and - the clever part - the ticket type decides what content and networking that person can access | Nothing. We never see a ticket. You keep whatever you already use to sell them | Brella |
| Make money from sponsors and exhibitors | A hosted-buyer programme, a digital marketplace for sponsors, sponsored sessions, gated breakout rooms, lead scanning and a booth traffic report | Not offered. The report we produce can help you sell next year's package, but there is no sponsor product | Brella |
| Measure what happened | A dedicated analytics product spanning networking impact, content and session performance, livestream engagement, sponsor return and booth traffic, with export to your own systems | One report, deliberately narrow: what people said they came for, who could have helped, where the gaps were. Useful, and much less broad | Brella |
| Connect to the systems you already run | Native connections into the main registration and sales tools, thousands more through the usual automation services, plus a public interface for building your own | A spreadsheet upload. Nothing to connect and nothing that flows back | Brella |
| Set the matching up | You design the structure - categories, then interests inside them, then intents inside those - and attendees pick from what you built. Powerful once it is right, and it is real work to get right. Brella publishes no timeline for this and we will not invent one | There is no taxonomy. Attendees answer one open question about what they are working on and what would help, and the matching reads the answers | All Along |
| Tell someone why they were matched | Matches are surfaced with the shared interests and intents behind them, so the basis of the pairing is visible | Each person gets a written sentence about what the other is working on, in their own words. Not a shared tag - the reason | All Along |
| Know what it costs | Brella publishes no prices, no tiers and no attendee thresholds. Their pricing page is a features overview with a form | On the homepage. Free under fifty people, then a flat per-event fee with a money-back guarantee | All Along |
| Add matching without changing anything else | Matching comes as part of the platform, so adopting it means adopting the platform | That is the whole design. Keep your registration, your app and your agenda, and add matching next to them | All Along |
Everything in that table about Brella was checked against their own website on 18 August 2026, and the pages we used are listed at the bottom of this post. Products move. If you find something out of date here, tell us and we will correct it.
What All Along costs
Our prices are published, which matters more in this comparison than it usually does, because Brella's are not. Events under fifty people are free and get the full matching and the full report. Above that it is a flat fee for the event: as at August 2026, AU$209 for up to a hundred attendees and AU$419 for up to two hundred and fifty, roughly AU$1.70 to AU$2.10 a head, with a money-back guarantee on every paid plan. You pay on the number of people you invite, not the number who complete the form. Free events over fifty people are not charged for. Larger events are quoted, and communities that want matching running all year subscribe monthly.
Full plans and what is included are on the events pricing and community pricing pages.
What we can see that a bigger platform cannot
Across every event we have run, attendees have described what they came for in their own words, in a single open question rather than by picking from a list somebody else wrote. Those events span construction technology, law, cyber security, startup communities and general professional networking, and the same thing happens in all of them: what a person most wants help with is rarely something anyone would have thought to put in a category. That distinction is the whole argument on this page. A taxonomy can only return the answers it was built to contain.
“This is a must-have for all events - the bigger the event, the more necessary so attendees can be intentional about connecting prior to the event and it helps overcome any pre-event jitters. All Along also provided a way for more introverted attendees to jump into networking opportunities.”
Choose Brella if
- You want one platform to sell the tickets, run the agenda, host the sessions and match the room, rather than assembling it from parts.
- Sponsors and exhibitors are part of how the event pays for itself. Brella has a proper sponsorship product and we have none.
- You need analytics across the whole event, not just the networking - content performance, session ratings, booth traffic, sponsor return.
- You want the data flowing into your registration and sales systems automatically, or you want to build against an interface yourself.
- You like designing the matching structure yourself and want that level of control over what attendees can ask for.
Choose All Along if
- You already have a platform, or do not want one, and the specific thing that is failing is that people do not meet anyone useful.
- You would rather ask attendees an open question than design a taxonomy and hope it covers what they actually want.
- You want each match to arrive with the reason written out, so the first message is easy to send.
- You want to know the price before you book a call.
- Your event is small, or free, or a one-off, and committing to a platform for it makes no sense.
The honest summary: Brella and All Along are built for different jobs. If getting the right people to actually meet is the outcome you are judged on, see how All Along works, or run the free networking gap calculator to see where your current set-up falls short before you commit to either platform.
Other comparisons
Most people reading this are weighing more than two names. The rest of our head-to-heads, written to the same standard and checked against each company’s own website: Grip, Braindate, Whova, Cvent and Swapcard.
Frequently asked questions
Brella already does matchmaking well. What would All Along add?
If Brella's matching is working for you, nothing, and you should keep it. The case for us is narrower: attendees answer one open question instead of picking from a structure you designed, so what comes back includes the things you would never have thought to put on the list. And every match carries a written reason rather than a set of shared tags.
Do I have to stop using Brella to use All Along?
No. All Along takes an attendee list and returns matches, so it runs next to whatever you already have. In practice organisers who already own a platform use us on the events where the networking is the thing they will be judged on.
How long does All Along take to set up?
About five minutes for the organiser - upload the attendee list, choose when matches go out. Attendees spend roughly two minutes answering one question. There is nothing to configure per segment because there are no segments.
What does All Along cost?
Free for events under fifty people, including the full report. Above that, a flat per-event fee published on our homepage, with a money-back guarantee. We cannot give you a comparison figure for Brella because they do not publish one - their pricing page directs you to their team.
About the author
Cate Trotter
Co-founder and Product Lead, All Along
Cate is co-founder and product lead at All Along. She's spent 15+ years helping organisations turn emerging tech into commercial results, and founded and sold two retail-focused businesses before building All Along. She writes about how events can turn networking from a happy accident into a repeatable outcome.
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