Swapcard alternative: focus on matchmaking, not feature bloat

The short answer. Swapcard sells an annual subscription, not a per-event one - their own pricing page says so plainly, and the attendee allowance runs across the year rather than per event. That single fact decides this comparison for most people. If you run a programme of events and want registration, exhibitors, sessions and onsite check-in on one system, Swapcard is a serious platform and the annual model is the right shape. If you run a handful of events, or one, and need the matching part solved without committing to a year, that is what All Along is.

This is the comparison where the commercial model matters more than the feature list. Swapcard is built around an annual licence with attendee volume attached to it, which is a sensible way to buy software if you run events continuously and a poor one if you do not. All Along is priced per event, published, and free under fifty people. Everything else on this page is downstream of that difference, so it is worth settling first.

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 Swapcard is already on your shortlist.

How Swapcard and All Along compare

Every row below says who we think does that job better, including the rows where the answer is Swapcard. 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 Swapcard 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 If you find something out of date here, tell us and we will correct it.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

Prices are on our homepage. Events under fifty people are free, with full matching and the full report rather than a trial. Above that it is a flat fee for that 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. You are charged on the number of people you invite rather than the number who complete the form, and free events over fifty people are not charged for. Nothing renews and nothing rolls over - if you run one event this year, you pay for one event. Communities that want matching running continuously subscribe monthly instead, starting at AU$149 with the first two months free.

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

What we can see that a bigger platform cannot

Every event we have run has produced the same material - people writing down, at registration, what they came for, across construction technology, law, cyber security, startup communities and general professional networking. It is a small body of evidence, and saying so is part of the point: the report an organiser gets is built from what their own room said, not from a benchmark drawn across somebody else's events. In-app behaviour tells you what someone clicked. It cannot tell you what they came hoping to solve, because nobody ever clicked that.

Choose Swapcard if

• You run a programme of events across the year, so an annual licence with a yearly attendee allowance is the cheaper and simpler way to buy.
• Exhibitor revenue matters. The marketplace, with Swapcard's own team selling into it for you, is a genuine commercial product and we have nothing like it.
• You want registration, exhibitors, sessions and onsite check-in on one database rather than stitched together.
• Your attendees expect a proper event app - agenda, streaming, questions, polls - and not just an introduction.
• You are an association or trade show organiser, which is squarely who the product is built for.

Choose All Along if

• You run one event, or a few, and an annual commitment is the wrong shape for that.
• Registration is already handled and the failure is that attendees do not meet anyone useful.
• You want to know the price before a sales conversation, and you want it per event.
• You want each match explained in words, from what people actually said, rather than inferred from what they clicked.
• The event is free, or small, or experimental, and you want to try the whole thing without paying anything.

The honest summary: Swapcard 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 Zoho Backstage.