What are the features of event management software?
Attendee management: Capture and store information about the people attending events, including contact information, food preferences, session sign-ups, VIP status, and arrival plans.
Event scheduling: Schedule events and plan and track venue reservations within the event management calendar.
Event registration management: Enables users to manage registrations for events, conferences, or seminars via online and offline channels. It helps increase the response rate by creating automated registration forms tailored to your business requirements, eliminating the manual or archaic methods of rolling out registration forms, collecting information, and preparing data sheets.
Ticketing: Facilitates the sales of event tickets and registration forms through offline and online channels. It also helps you collect payments via cash or e-payments. You can also customize ticket prices, set quantity limits, and offer discounts or special packages.
Reporting/analytics: Generate reports to calculate event expenses and return on investment (ROI) using metrics such as audience engagement, revenue per attendee, and sales leads.
Email marketing: Send attendees customized and branded emails from within the tool. This feature is especially useful when sharing tickets or requesting feedback after an event. It can also be used to share information about upcoming events.
What are the benefits of event management software?
Increases event planning efficiency: Event planning is full of complex logistics, and an oversight in any one area has the potential to derail an event. Event management software keeps all the details in one place. It makes events easier to organize and keeps an event planner focused on fulfilling expectations rather than juggling details.
Reduces workload and saves time: By assimilating almost every event management task in a unified platform, event management software saves time and reduces event planners’ workload. It lets you handle all of the tasks from a single source rather than choosing various systems for registrations, event website creation, e-mail advertising, etc.
Improves exhibitor and vendor management: Exhibitors pay a lot for booth space and special access, and vendors provide the goods and services required to make events successful. These logistics are critical, and the best event management software applications have dedicated tools to help users manage event exhibitors and streamline communications with vendors better.
Eliminates miscommunication: Event management tools enable users to collaborate, track engagement, and conduct outreach. It also furnishes a dedicated platform to conduct seamless communication with attendees before and after the event. Event management tools also keep track of all the tasks and send timely reminders, eliminating miscommunication. It saves you from spending your money on multiple end-point solutions, such as registration management software and attendee engagement tools that only handle a specific function.
Increases engagement: Event management solutions include audience engagement tools, such as live polls, surveys, questions, gamification tools, award points, and interactive whiteboards. Event professionals can also analyze attendee engagement to customize your outreach and maximize responses.
Comes with multiple customization options: These tools allow you to customize everything in your event, from logos to color schemes. You can also create personalized event websites or apps as per your brand’s requirements.
Offers hotel room block and travel management features: When event planners invest in dedicated event management solutions, hotel room block and travel management become more manageable. These solutions allow users to search hotel room block rates, create paperless contracts, and record VIP itineraries from within the application.
Facilitates detailed event reporting: Event management software allows organizers to get access to detailed data on attendee engagement and participation. Event organizers can capture actionable insights to analyze the impact or success of the event. The collected data can also be utilized to enhance the event activities and ensure quality experiences for future events.
How much does event management software cost?
Most products in the market are priced on a per-month basis and can be divided into three pricing tiers based on their starting price.
Price ranges:*
$2 - $7
$8 - $39
$39+
*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering found on vendor websites on November 28, 2022. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.
The above list summarizes pricing for the base plans of most products. An enterprise or premium product that is priced higher may include additional features such as real-time analytics, dedicated account managers, self-check-in scanning stations, and more.
How to choose the best event management software
Ensure the software offers the event marketing tools you need: Standard event management software should include an event website designer, social media promotion tools, and email marketing capabilities. It should be able to support both your offline and online marketing activities, including pushing out email messages, publishing social media posts, and creating promotional posters and websites.
Evaluate attendee engagement tools: The event management tool you select should provide attendee engagement tools, including event agenda creation, audience polls, social forums, networking, content sharing, live streaming, workshop booking, digital signage, sponsorship displays, and custom integrations and branding. These features will help you organize highly interactive events.
Look for white-label branding features: Ensure that the event management solution you choose provides white-label branding. It will help you customize your event marketing material with your business’s logo and color scheme. Professional-looking email campaigns and event pages are more likely to elicit participation. Embeddable QR codes and voucher codes for event marketing are some other good-to-have features to look for in your software.
Choose customizable registrations: You will be using event registration software to invite individuals and gather the required registrant information for an event. Most forms are not one-size-fits-all, which is why the software you choose should offer end-to-end customization features. It should also include customizable templates, logos, and icons to develop suitable registrations.
Consider total ownership cost: Some event management solution features can cost more, and you may need to pay maintenance or employee training fees. Make sure to confirm the total cost of ownership before selecting an event planning software system.
Common questions to ask before choosing the best event management software
Does the software offer integration options? Software integrations with accounting, membership management, payment processing, and other software make it easy to share data across different systems. It can speed up workflows and prevent mistakes.
What customer support options do I get with the tool? The event planning tool you choose will inevitably require tech support for glitches that may occur and cause event delays. Consider the available customer support channels and other related resources offered by software providers and ask whether they provide 24/7 or 24/5 customer support.
Is the software mobile compatible? Event coordinators are often on-the-go, evaluating venues and meeting with caterers and other professionals to get everything set up. Having a solution that is mobile-compatible enables a seamless workflow from anywhere.
Sources
Products evaluated for the pricing calculation were taken from Capterra’s event management software directory and sorted by the number of reviews. The pricing ranges exclude freemium versions of the products. The features highlighted were identified based on their relevance and the percentage of products in Capterra’s directory that offer them.
