NetWorks alternative: an honest comparison for event organisers

The short answer. NetWorks is speed networking done properly: it pairs participants automatically, builds the schedule and runs the timed session, and its plans are sold by the session. If that format is what you want, they do a real thing we do not attempt. All Along sells the shortlist rather than the session. Each attendee gets a handful of names with a written reason for each, whether or not a formal networking session ever runs, and it works off the attendee list you already have.

NetWorks, from the exhibitions platform ExpoPlatform, is the closest thing on our shortlist to a straight competitor, so this page tries harder than most to be fair. Both products answer the same complaint - people leave events without meeting anyone useful - and both do it by working out who should meet whom rather than leaving it to chance. The difference is the shape of the answer. NetWorks produces a session: slots, tables, a timetable an organiser can review. All Along produces a list: three or four names per person, each with a sentence saying why. One is an event within your event; the other runs quietly in the background of the one you already have.

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 NetWorks is already on your shortlist.

How NetWorks and All Along compare

Every row below says who we think does that job better, including the rows where the answer is NetWorks. 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.

Everything in that table about NetWorks 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 If you find something out of date here, tell us and we will correct it.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

Both of us publish prices, which makes this one of the easier comparisons in the category to check. NetWorks publishes a free tier of unlimited sessions capped at thirty participants each, then paid plans starting at 1 999 for a single session of up to two hundred and fifty participants, rising through three-session and ten-session plans, all valid for twelve months. Their page prints a dollar sign without naming a currency, so we are not going to guess at one for them. Ours: events under fifty people are free, with the full matching and the full report - not a trial, not a cut-down version. 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, which works out at roughly AU$1.70 to AU$2.10 a person, with a money-back guarantee on every paid plan. Plans are priced on the number of people you invite, not the number who fill the form in. The units are different and worth reading twice: they sell sessions, we sell events.

Full plans and what is included are on the events pricing and community pricing pages.

What we can see that a bigger platform cannot

One thing we can see that a session-based tool cannot. Every person who has registered for an event on All Along has written, in their own words, what they were working on and what they could help someone else with, before anyone sat down at a table. It is a small body of first-party material and we would rather say so than dress it up. What makes it worth anything is the type rather than the size: that written answer is what our match note is built from, and it is why our output survives outside a session. A schedule tells you who to sit with at 2.15pm. A sentence tells you why the conversation is worth having at all.

Choose NetWorks if

• A timed meetings session is the format you want. Slots, tables and a schedule are a real product and we do not build one.
• You are running a trade show or an exhibition with a buyer-and-seller programme. That is where NetWorks comes from and it is proven there in a way we are not.
• You want to review and adjust the schedule before it goes out. Organiser approval of a generated timetable is a genuine feature and we have no equivalent because we have no timetable.
• You need everyone in the room to have somewhere to be for the next hour. Filling the remaining slots from whoever is left is the right behaviour for a session and the wrong behaviour for a shortlist.
• You run several networking sessions a year and a plan covering three or ten of them is the cheaper way to buy.

Choose All Along if

• You want everyone at the event served, not just the people who make it to the session.
• Your event has no hour to spare. Not every conference can block out a networking format, and the introductions still have to happen.
• You want each person told why they were matched, in the words both of them used, before they arrive.
• Your event is between thirty and two hundred and fifty people, where their free tier stops and their first paid plan is priced for a session rather than a room.
• You would rather buy per event than commit to a plan for twelve months.

The honest summary: NetWorks 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.