KraftyLab vs Outback Team Building: prices, kits and booking

Outback Team Building started in 1992 as an adventure company run by two brothers, James and Steve Corbett, ran its first team event in 2000 and took its current name in 2018. It says it has worked with over 30,000 corporate groups across North America. It sells three formats: in-person events with a facilitator, hosted virtual games on Zoom, and self-hosted activities that your own organizer runs with a guide and a browser app. It also sells 25+ professional development programs, from coaching to conflict resolution.

KraftyLab is built for the person who has to get a good event on the calendar this month. Every activity page shows the price for your headcount, a live host runs the whole hour, and we ship the kits and handle the call. Our hosted game shows, murder mysteries and virtual escape rooms cover the same ground as Outback's virtual lineup, and our kit workshops add candle making, tastings and crafts with the supplies at every guest's door.

Outback's pitch is scale: virtual games for 5 to 1,000 people and in-person events for over 1,000. We plan for that too. A multi-event program runs several activities at once for up to 1,000 people, each in its own breakout room with its own facilitator, like the holiday party we planned for a thousand people at Meta, where each guest picked an activity.

• A virtual retreat: Cisco Meraki filled a full day with us, from a morning coffee tasting and a cook-together lunch to a management training, then rebooked.
• Skills in an hour: our lunch and learns cover time management, goal setting and public speaking in 60 minutes, from $850 for up to 25 people. Outback says most of its training programs take four to eight hours.
• A speaker: book a live 60-minute keynote talk on burnout, sleep or leadership for the whole company.
• Hybrid teams: office tables and remote players compete in the same hosted game, or the office gets an in-person game and remote staff get their own session.

• Lead time: hosted games book about two weeks ahead, kit events three, and custom questions or branding about four. Outback recommends 4 to 6 weeks for small in-person groups and 8 to 12 for large events.
• Split time zones: book the same game twice, one session per region, and nobody has to play at midnight.
• After the event: KraftyLab Intelligence sends a short pulse survey to every participant with an email and sums up the answers with AI.
• Whole companies: a free team portal tracks every booking, and a branded booking portal lets team leads book from a catalog you approve, inside monthly budgets per team.

Comparing more vendors? See our list of Outback Team Building alternatives, the wider roundup of team building companies, or browse every virtual team event.