How to Pick the Best Event Management Software: The Definitive Guide

Hosting an event is a great way for businesses and organisations to generate revenue, increase brand awareness, build relationships, and create a community. But throwing an event requires lots of time, planning, energy, and money. It’s also challenging to deal with multiple vendors simultaneously, track registration and attendance, and attract attendees or sponsors.

To help with these issues (and many others), event organisers often use event management tools to streamline the entire event process, from the planning stage to event day. But with so many available tools, how do you choose the right one?

This guide will show you how, while also exploring some of the best software solutions for managing projects involving events and explaining how they can take the headache out of hosting.

Key Takeaways

• Event management software is an umbrella term that describes tools, platforms, and apps for planning, organising, executing, and reviewing events.
• These tools improve your events by streamlining and centralising planning and marketing, improving attendee engagement and experience, and tracking important metrics.
• To find the right software for your needs, consider platforms’ ease of use, features, scalability, integration, and pricing.
• Many event management platform options are available, but some of the best include Eventbrite, Cvent, EventsAir, Whova, and vFairs.

What Is Event Management Software?

Event management software is a broad term that refers to any tool or app that helps you plan, organise, execute, and review your events.

Examples of this software include ticketing platforms, venue management software, attendee engagement tools, project management platforms, and event registration tools.

Many pieces of software combine all these tools, refining the event management process and helping you organise a successful event with a single system.

How Does Event Management Software Improve Your Events?

Event management software does more than just streamline the planning process. There are various other ways it can help take your events to new heights.

Improves Marketing

This software may enhance your event marketing, as well. Many tools have features to help you attract attendees, create ads, build email marketing campaigns, promote your event on social media, and build promotional event websites or landing pages. Some may even have dedicated search functions where people can browse through various events on the platform.

Enhances the Attendee Experience

Event management software can help you ensure attendees have a positive experience before, during, and after your event. These tools enable you to quickly provide crucial information to attendees, streamline the check-in and registration process, offer networking opportunities, and even get suggestions from attendees.

Whether you host in-person events, hybrid events, or 100% virtual events, ensuring attendees have a great experience should be one of your top priorities. If attendees have a poor experience, they’ll likely tell others about it or leave a review, which hurts your reputation. As a result, future events may not be as successful or popular if people have a negative experience at your first one.

Tracks Attendance and Other Metrics

This software helps you easily track various metrics so you can make informed data-driven decisions and learn how successful past events were. You can keep track of everything from registrations to event attendance, revenue, social media coverage, and even attendee engagement and satisfaction.

These metrics help you learn what things worked and which aspects of the event could be improved for next time. Without being able to gather and analyse metrics, you may never truly know whether an event was a success or failure and may end up spending a lot of time, energy, and money on things that aren’t worth it.

How to Choose the Right Event Management Software

Before you choose an event management software platform, consider these key factors:

Ease of Use

First, consider how easy a platform is to use. Finding and using key features should be straightforward, and your entire team—no matter their tech-savviness—should be able to navigate it easily. If you need to spend days or weeks learning how to use a platform properly, it may delay your ability to get started on important event-planning tasks.

The most useful event management tools will have desktop and mobile versions so you and your team can access them on any device.

Included Features

Of course, the features a platform provides are crucial to consider. Look for features like exhibitor management, event registration, analytics, event marketing, attendee communication and engagement, ticketing, sponsor management, and event app or site builders.

However, the exact features you should look for depend on the event you’re throwing, your budget, and your needs. For example, while some people want an all-in-one solution to handle everything event-related, others may only want a tool to help them with a single task, such as managing tickets, tracking attendance, or managing attendee check-ins.

Scalability

If you plan to host many events in the future, look for scalability in event management software. You want to choose a tool that can grow with you, not hold you back. Scalable software can easily handle increasing demands without negatively impacting performance.

There are a few signs that a platform offers scalability, such as having multiple plans or pricing levels for varying needs or the ability to handle small or large events. Also, if a platform doesn’t have hard limits on events, users, or sessions, that’s usually a sign that it’s scalable.

Integrations

If you use other tools or software, choose a platform that integrates well with everything. Seamless integration between tools combines them into a single process or system without any strange functionality-related issues. This cohesive approach to event planning keeps everyone on the same page and ensures nothing gets missed or forgotten.

Many platforms provide a list of tools or software they integrate with, but if not, don’t hesitate to reach out to the company and ask if you’re curious about a specific integration.

Pricing

Lastly, consider the cost of the software. Some options may only cost a few pounds per month, while others may cost hundreds every month. The number of features a software provides—and the more advanced these features are—the more a company generally charges.

Every organisation is different, so do your research to learn what you can afford and find a tool within your budget.

The Best Event Management Software to Consider

Now that you know what to look for when evaluating event management software, let’s review some of the best options.

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is a tool primarily used for ticketing but also includes features like registration, event promotion, and analytics. It’s quick to set up, lets you manage multiple events simultaneously, and helps you keep attendees engaged with customisable email reminders ahead of your event. The platform integrates well with social media and is user-friendly on mobile devices and computers.

It’s also great for marketing and promoting your event to potential attendees. Many of the tickets sold on the platform come from people just searching for interesting and unique things to do. This is because the platform offers personalised recommendations tailored to attendees’ interests and passions. So, even if someone doesn’t know about your organisation or event, they may be recommended the event on the Eventbrite homepage or in search results.

Cvent

Cvent assists you at every stage of event planning—from finding a venue to contacting vendors, marketing the event, engaging with attendees, tracking your return on investment (ROI), and gathering feedback after the event.

The tool helps you track and organise meetings, manage speakers and exhibitors, build websites, and offer a seamless on-site experience with streamlined check-ins and badging. It even lets you perform venue diagramming to visualise your event with realistic 3D rendering.

Cvent has helped organisations manage millions of events over the years and processed hundreds of millions of registrations. The platform integrates with various popular industry software and has a mobile app and a desktop platform for easy access on any device.

EventsAir

With decades of experience and hundreds of thousands of events under its belt, EventsAir is a leader in the industry. It helps with all types of events and offers features like managing inventory, running detailed data reports, publishing content, assigning tasks, and taking payments.

The platform also lets you set up live polls and surveys during the event, send event recordings, manage accommodations, generate leads, and translate languages for events with a global audience. EventsAir even offers a customisable 3D experience for virtual and hybrid events to enhance immersion.

Additionally, you can create a custom-branded attendee app or site in minutes so that all attendees and staff can easily access important event information right on their devices.

Whova

Whova is an all-in-one events solution that helps people register for an event, track their agenda, view photos, check announcements and up-to-date information, and print name badges. It also helps automate tasks like creating branded images and sending emails.

The platform features interactive maps so attendees never get lost and a community board to help them network or plan meetings. Plus, it gamifies events with contests and leaderboards to keep people engaged.

In addition, Whova offers full personalisation and customisation for your organisation, makes check-in a breeze, and lets you see both pre- and post-event analytics. It also provides high-quality and helpful customer support if you have any issues with the software.

vFairs

Another of the best event management apps is vFairs. It offers on-site solutions for in-person and hybrid events and a beautiful virtual experience for online events.

The platform lets you easily create apps and sites, manage ticketing and registration, and keep attendees engaged with webinars, gamification, networking opportunities, and interactive activities. Plus, it helps you manage your budget, design badges, send scheduled event reminders, and build email marketing campaigns.

vFairs offers tailored solutions for several industries—including retail, education, IT, healthcare, and financial services—and works for events of all sizes.