If your event has exhibitors, Swapcard is the right kind of product and heer(ish) is the wrong one. If it has 50 to 500 people who flew in, a hotel list that lives in a spreadsheet, and no booths to sell, heer(ish) does the one job that matters there, for a price paid once per event instead of an annual licence.
What each one is
Swapcard calls itself a "revenue-first event management platform" and means it. The homepage sells exhibitor ROI, lead quality, monetisation, and turning "one-time exhibitors into loyal, high-spending partners". Registration, badges printed from a QR code, an interactive floor plan with routing, AI matchmaking and a meeting scheduler come with it. It ran 4,000 events in a year. heer(ish) is a link. Attendees open it in the phone browser, add a card with their hotel and dates, and see who else is in town on a map, plus a list of plans anyone can propose and anyone can join. There is no agenda in it and never will be.
| Swapcard | heer(ish) | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Engagement platform from $610 a year, final cost by attendee volume and add-ons. Registration is a custom quote. All plans annual, 90 days' notice to end. | Paid once per event, no contract. |
| What attendees install | iOS and Android apps or the browser. An account is created for you at registration, with a password, a code or a magic link. | A link in the phone browser. No app, no account. |
| Who is staying where | Nothing for lodging. A floor plan of the venue with booth routing. | The core feature. Hotels with faces on them, always a named place, never a coordinate. |
| Meeting people | AI matchmaking and one-to-one meeting requests, up to five pending per person. Group meetings are scheduled by invitation. | Open plans. Anyone proposes a run or a dinner, everyone can see it and tap yes. |
| Exhibitors, badges, lead scanning, agenda | The whole product. | None of it. |
| Data after the event | The account stays for three years after the last login. Event data stays "as instructed by event organizers". Removing it is a decision the organiser has to take. | Deleted 14 days after the last day, 30 in the US region, with a receipt for the organiser. |
| Built for | Trade shows, conferences and association events with exhibitors. | 50 to 500 travelling attendees per link. |
Where Swapcard wins
Anything with a booth in it. Lead retrieval, sponsor visibility, badge printing at home and at the door, an attendee list the AI filters by company size, and a profile that follows the attendee from show to show so the matchmaking gets better each year. A 3,000-person trade show buys Swapcard for those reasons and every one of them is dead weight at a 120-person offsite with no exhibitors.
Where heer(ish) wins
The contract. Swapcard is an annual licence with 90 days' notice to leave. heer(ish) is paid by card the day you create an event, and nothing recurs.
Adoption at small events. Swapcard runs in the browser too, so the install wall is low. Every attendee still gets an account, with a password or a code from an email, and it stays for three years. On heer(ish) an attendee types a name and they are on the map.
Swapcard keeps event data as instructed by the organiser and the account for three years after the last login, so clearing an event out is a task somebody has to remember. On heer(ish) the purge date is set at creation, everything is gone within 24 hours after it, and the organiser gets a receipt.
And there is no hotel map in Swapcard, because a trade show does not need one, and a cohort weekend or an EMBA residency spread over six hotels needs nothing else.
Which one to pick
Swapcard, if you have exhibitors, sell sponsorship, or run a registration with thousands of people. heer(ish), if the room is 50 to 500 travellers, the exhibitors are zero, and the question you get asked most is "which hotel is everyone in?". Both together also works. heer(ish) is one link and fits in any announcement.