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Successful events aren’t easy to pull off. From planning and promotion to engagement, sponsor expectations, and reporting, organizers have a lot to manage.
The right event management software can make that process far more efficient. Forrester found that companies with fully integrated event technology are 31% more satisfied with overall event performance, while Gartner says comprehensive event technology is now necessary to reach audiences and deliver engaging experiences.
That’s why choosing the right EMS matters. The best platform saves time, reduces costs, simplifies workflows, and supports better outcomes before, during, and after the event.
In this guide, we’ll walk through 22 essential event management software features to look for, so you can choose a platform that helps you create stronger experiences, build lasting connections, and make your brand stand out.
We’ve divided the features of the event management system into four categories.
Our free template helps you stay on top of managing content, speakers, exhibitors, and all the details.
Event registration is the first step your customers take when they’re considering attending your event. It has to be a smooth experience. Your EMS should have several features that enable a smooth event registration and ticketing process. Let’s break down all the event registration and ticketing must-haves.
Some events need more than just a simple event website. If your event has complex needs, your event management software should come with a team of experts who can help bring your vision to life.
They should be able to handle special requests like adding custom layouts, interactive features, or connecting the site with other tools you use in your event website.
Of course, not every event needs expert help. That’s why your EMS should also include an easy-to-use landing page builder, so anyone on your team can build a great website without writing a single line of code.
This means the software should allow building multi-page websites through a simple drag-and-drop builder. It should also enable you to choose from a set of pre-existing website templates. Plus, it should reflect changes in real-time so that you can make improvements on the fly.
These websites should be fully customizable. This means you can include branded fonts, icons, colors, and more. The platform should also support hosting the website on a unique branded URL.
Today, event registration forms are taking more than thousands of registrations. People are registering for different roles (presenters, attendees, exhibitors, etc.), from different countries, and for different experiences. Your form should provide a personalized experience to every registrant.
Look for an EMS with a user-friendly drag-and-drop form builder that allows you to design forms easily. It should offer advanced features like conditional logic (such as “and-or” rules) to tailor the experience for different registering groups.
Other than that, it should also support pre-defined form fields for managing airline tickets, meal preferences, and accommodations.
People register differently. Some sign up solo, others in groups, and some rely on their employers to handle it. The registration platform should enable both individual and group registrations.
Your event management platform should be able to support your ticketing strategy no matter how dynamic it is. It should enable you to offer multiple ticketing types, such as general admission, VIP tickets, and more.
Plus, it should offer tiered ticketing options such as gold, silver, and platinum.
Other than that, it should also accept coupons and apply discounts including early birds, last-minute flash sales, and more.
You don’t want to lose people one step before they make the payment. Your event management software should support popular payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal, alongside regional options for localized convenience.
It should also accept multiple payment methods, like credit and debit cards, bank transfers, and mobile wallets. And automatically detect and process payments in the attendee’s local currency.
Finally, to accommodate people with financial limitations, let attendees pay in installments or even upgrade or downgrade their package after completing the initial registration.
A well-curated registration process allows you to set the tone for the entire event.
When all the elements flow in the right order, including the event registration website, forms, and payment options, it becomes extremely easy for your attendees to learn about your event and navigate through the registration process.
This helps you maximize your registrations. People are more likely to register when the process is easy and curated to their specific needs. By using conditional logic, you can display the fields that are relevant to your audience, saving them from long, irrelevant fields.
Plus, an efficient registration process helps you collect relevant information. With the right data, you can execute better events. Think about it: you know the demographics and interests of your attendees. This data can easily be leveraged to craft different experiences that your attendees will love.
As an event organizer, an event management software that provides you with all of these registration features saves you hours and hours of work. You can direct your efforts from repetitive operational tasks to more strategic activities.
Imagine you’re hosting a trade show or a career fair. Chances are that you’ll have hundreds of exhibitors and sponsors for the event. Streamlining different processes and communication with them can bring unique challenges.
For example, how will you collect and manage all the data? If you’re going for a virtual event, how will you facilitate the process of setting up their virtual booths? How will you ensure that your attendees get to network with the exhibitors?
All of these questions point to one answer, i.e., sponsor and exhibitor management. It’s a must-have feature in your event management software.
Here are all the exhibitor and sponsor management features to look out for.
An exhibitor management tool helps manage everything between you and your exhibitors through a self-serve interface. It allows the exhibitors to purchase, create, and manage their booths.
This means they can access the platform to view all the booth options available and select the one that best meets their goals. They can also customize their booths by choosing from a list of options, adding different icons, and previewing changes in real time.
At the same time, the platform enables organizers to preview the progress of all the exhibitors through an exhibitor dashboard. It summarizes details like exhibitor information, booth preferences, engagement metrics, and beyond.
Sponsor management tools streamline communication between you and your sponsors.
For you, it provides a platform to manage every aspect of sponsorships, from initial outreach to final deliverables. This means you can automate communication with sponsors, like sending onboarding emails and follow-ups. Next, it allows you to centralize all sponsor information like engagement metrics, booth preferences, and more. Finally, it also enables you to categorize them into different types.
For sponsors, it helps them make decisions like choosing different sponsorship packages and managing their booth spaces with ease.
Getting all the sponsors and exhibitors on the same page is a tedious task with numerous moving parts. However, exhibitor and sponsor management tools provide a structure to the process.
Firstly, communication improves greatly. Since the platform provides a centralized space for exhibitors and sponsors to communicate with the organizers, everyone stays informed about key updates, deadlines, and requirements.
Secondly, resources are allocated efficiently. Exhibitors and sponsors can manage booth designs, sponsorship deliverables, and promotional materials directly within the platform. This simplifies resource allocation and ensures everything is in place before the event.
Finally, this allows scalability. No matter if you’re bringing in 20 or 200 sponsors, you can manage them easily with minimal effort and time.
Managing speakers across an event is more work than it looks. You have bios to collect, sessions to schedule, conflicts to resolve, and speakers who need constant updates about their slots. Without a dedicated system, this happens across email chains and spreadsheets that get messy fast.
A solid event management platform handles all of this in one place. It should start with a structured way for speakers to submit proposals and materials through their own portal — no back-and-forth emails, no chasing attachments. From there, a session scheduling tool lets you build out the agenda, assign speakers to rooms, and catch conflicts before event day.
Poor speaker logistics show up on event day in ways you can’t hide. For example, wrong room assignments, outdated bios, sessions running over because nobody flagged the conflict. A dedicated speaker management tool keeps everything organized before it becomes a problem, and ensures accurate session information flows automatically to your event app and website without manual updates.
How long is your call-to-paper process? Are you individually emailing all the speakers to turn in their abstracts? What about peer reviews?
We can understand how extensive abstract management can get while organizing events. This is why an abstract management module is a must-have feature in your conference management software. Here are all the benefits an abstract management module in an EMS must provide:
The admin dashboard gives organizers full control over the abstract management process. You can track submissions, assign reviewers, and monitor progress in one place. It also lets you set submission and review dates, configure email notifications, and manage access codes.
Features like blind review, confidentiality settings, and accept/reject controls ensure a smooth evaluation process. You can also set limits on submissions and revisions based on event requirements.
Tired of speakers asking the status of their application or requesting you to let them edit the doc they shared with you? A submitter dashboard can be a lifesaver.
With a dedicated submitter dashboard, participants can register, log in, and manage their abstracts. A mandatory profile setup ensures all required details are provided before submission.
The dashboard lets them save drafts, edit submissions before the deadline, and download their submitted abstracts. They can also track their submission status and view reviewer feedback once evaluations are completed.
A timely and unbiased review process is the core of abstract management. A reviewer dashboard ensures just that.
Reviewers can access all assigned submissions through their dashboard. They can view and download abstracts, evaluate submissions with scores and feedback, and accept or reject abstracts with comments. If enabled, they can also review evaluations from other peer reviewers to ensure consistency in the grading process.
An all-in-one event management software that simplifies abstract management is useful in several ways.
First, it organizes the submission process. You can manage the paper collection, reviews, and communication with the participants easily.
Second, it ensures a fair review process. By automating the process, there’s no room for bias.
Finally, it helps you deliver a better attendee experience. You can keep applicants notified about the status of their application. They don’t have to keep on guessing if they’ll be qualified or not.
Event marketing features help you create, manage, and optimize marketing campaigns directly from your event management application. They help you streamline and amplify your promotional efforts.
Here’s a breakdown of all the event marketing features you should expect in your EMS:
Your event management system software should enable you to automate personalized email campaigns. You should be able to send different emails to different types of attendees, like speakers and participants.
It should also allow you to set up email workflows that are triggered through certain actions. For example, you can create a workflow that sends confirmation emails to people right after they register. Or, you can schedule different reminder emails before the event day so that the attendees stay prepared.
Apart from this, your EMS should also provide different email templates so that drafting emails becomes quicker. Plus, there should be options to add your personal branded elements within the emails, like logos, brand colors, icons, etc.
Finally, it should also share the performance of your email campaigns with reports that share open rates, click-through rates, and so forth.
As an event planner, we know you’re spending hours on creating content, whether it’s for social media, press releases, emails, landing pages, and whatnot.
Having an AI content creation tool within your EMS will save you time doing all the repetitive tasks. Your EMS should be able to take prompts and generate content for various marketing activities from landing pages to emails.
The event management software should support scheduling and posting updates directly to social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. along with tracking engagement.
Remember how we mentioned that an all-in-one event management platform makes event execution faster and easier? Well, event marketing is one of the features that exemplifies it.
For example, if you use a mainstream AI tool like ChatGPT for event content creation, you’ll have to provide all event-related information to get relevant output.
But your EMS knows everything about your event.
It knows if your event is hybrid or virtual, all the sessions taking place, and the kind of meals included. As a result, you can expect an AI content creation tool within your EMS to be faster, and more accurate.
Beyond that, event marketing is a big hassle as well as a responsibility. Streamlining all promotional tasks within your EMS allows you to reach a vast audience in minimal time. You can effectively build anticipation, drive attendance, and ensure the success of your event.
If you ask us about the best event management software, we’d recommend choosing the one with maximum AI support.
AI tools in your EMS enable you to execute a lot of tasks with just a few prompts. There is a list of must-have AI tools that you need to look out for. We’ve already talked about AI-powered content generation. Let’s talk about some other use cases.
Attendees often have lots of questions before, during, and after the event. Reaching out to organizers or the help desk every time can be slow and frustrating.
Your event management software should let you add an AI-powered chat assistant that’s available 24/7. You should be able to train the bot using your event details, so it can answer questions like an expert.
This chat assistant can be added to your registration website, event app, and more, giving attendees quick, helpful answers anytime they need them.
A one-size-fits-all approach no longer works when it comes to events. People need personalized experiences where they can spend their time on stuff that actually matters to them.
Your EMS should enable you to offer smart sessions and agenda recommendations to people based on their interests.
Networking is one of the biggest reasons why people attend events. But you’d agree how difficult it can be to just go and meet people randomly. You can be lucky to resonate with some people, but mostly it’s just a waste of your energy.
With AI-powered matchmaking, you can connect attendees and exhibitors based on their shared interests and goals and initiate some meaningful connections.
Here’s how it works: The AI studies attendee profiles, including their interests, industries, and goals. It then suggests relevant connections to all the attendees.
Besides this, smart matchmaking can also help you through the actual conversation. It can suggest questions based on the attendee’s profile to break the ice and get the conversation going.
All of these AI tools are necessary features in the EMS you go for. Why?
First, it helps you save loads of time. Even for the fastest writer, it would take at least 10-30 minutes to draft an email. But with AI, it’s not more than 5 seconds. And that’s not even counting tasks like matchmaking and reporting that would add hours of work to your plate.
Second, it helps you reach a substantially wider audience. With tools like AI content creation, you can become a content-generating machine. Of course, a valuable one. With more insightful content out in multiple formats, you’re set for better engagement and higher registrations.
Lastly, it helps you deliver personalized event experiences to the attendees. With AI tools like intelligent matchmaking, you’re curating an experience for them that’s exactly in line with their interests.
AI tools aren’t nice-to-haves today; they’re must-haves for any EMS. We recommend you prioritize these event management software features any day.
Tracking the event budget is a tedious process. You need to factor in all the costs, even if it’s the few bucks you spent buying donuts for the team. And no matter how hard it is, you’ve to do it because it’s necessary.
Your event management software should simplify this chore and save you from getting lost in Excel sheets. It should offer an intuitive interface that connects revenue to registration numbers while allowing you to log all incurred expenses.
A well-managed budget helps you avoid common pitfalls like overspending, underspending, or misallocating resources—all of which can affect the quality and profitability of your event. By tracking your expenses in real-time, you can make quick adjustments to ensure every penny is working for you.
Your event holds sensitive information about your organization, attendees, sponsors, and exhibitors. Ensuring maximum security should be your priority. This is why your event management systems software should offer robust security and compliance. Here are some security measures to look out for:
Data and IP encryption protect sensitive event data by encrypting it during storage and transmission. This prevents unauthorized access to your content.
Granular controls of the event management platform are necessary to maintain control of your data. Your event planning software programs should enable you to assign different user roles to people who are going to use the platform differently. For example, event owners, admins, booth admins, etc.
Choose event management apps that provide encrypted and PCI-compliant systems to process event ticket payments securely.
DDoS protection safeguards you from malicious attempts to crash your server.
GDPR compliance is the industry standard that any online event management solution should follow. This guarantees that attendee data is collected, stored, and used in line with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
A data breach doesn’t just compromise data, it erodes customer trust. This is why event management software that prioritizes security is a must-have to maintain credibility among your stakeholders.
Security-compliant event management software saves you from different data breaches and DDoS attacks. These attacks lead to disruptions and downtimes during critical live sessions. As an organizer, you can’t afford to sabotage the attendee experience over anything.
Likewise, secure payment gateways help process payments from attendees and sponsors. If there’s any sort of financial fraud, for example, the credit card information is stolen, organizers could face chargebacks and liability issues.
All in all, while selecting an event management system software, prioritizing security and compliance will result in a better attendee experience and protect your brand and reputation.
A good event management platform should make every touchpoint, including registration forms, event websites, virtual platforms, and webinars, usable for people with a range of needs.
Look for accessibility profiles that users can switch on themselves, such as seizure-safe mode, vision impairment settings, and ADHD-friendly layouts. Virtual event platforms should support screen readers, alt text on images, and simplified color contrasts for color blindness. For webinars, live transcription and real-time language translation ensure you’re not leaving out attendees with hearing impairments or those joining from other countries.
According to WHO, around 1 in 6 people worldwide experience significant disabilities. As a community, we should prioritize accessibility in the event manager tools we choose. This promotes equal participation and engagement for everyone, regardless of their abilities.
On the other hand, it will help you gain higher engagement and attendance, too, since you’re tapping into an additional audience. These actions are well-received publicly and can help boost your brand image.
Many regions (e.g., ADA in the US, Equality Act in the UK) mandate accessibility at public events.
One of the necessary features of an event management system is that it should smoothly integrate with your existing tech stack. This means that you could connect your event planning software solutions with other tools.
An EMS without integrations doesn’t have much functionality. For example, you generated tons of leads from the event you hosted. What’s the use of all these leads if you cannot integrate them with a CRM for follow-ups?
Here are various integrations your EMS should support:
An event doesn’t just happen in a silo. There are a bunch of bits and pieces you have to connect to execute it successfully. Integrations bridge the gap between an EMS and various other tools. This transforms an event management system into a comprehensive event ecosystem.
As a result, the overall operational efficiency increases. Plus, there’s less back-and-forth between tools as the workflows are simpler. This positively impacts the overall event ROI.
Your event is incomplete without having comprehensive analytics reports that guide you on what worked and what didn’t. So, having an event planner software for professionals that provides real-time analytics and reports goes without saying.
Here are all the reporting and analytics must-haves that event software solutions should offer.
Your EMS should be able to track and visualize a wide range of event metrics like attendee engagement, session popularity, exhibitor performance, and more.
The event management application should enable you to access and visualize up-to-the-minute data before and during the event. This helps you monitor performance and make informed decisions on the fly.
While automated reports are great, sometimes you have your own ideas to test. This is why your event management application should allow you to generate custom reports. They help you analyze the performance of various aspects of the event.
Information is more scannable when it’s visualized. And what’s a better way to get the gist of the event than a visually appealing dashboard? The EMS should automatically produce intuitive dashboards that present data visually.
What are your attendees doing during the event? What sessions are they attending? What exhibits are they visiting the most? Your EMS should enable you to monitor all this information to make better decisions during the event. This includes metrics like session attendance, booth visits, and resource downloads. On top of that, it should also offer various attendee journey reports.
Engagement is one of the biggest determinants of success. You should be able to measure engagement levels through metrics like chat interactions, poll responses, and Q&A participation within the EMS.
A great way to facilitate exhibitors and sponsors is to provide them with detailed reports on booth traffic, lead generation, and attendee interactions. This helps them assess their ROI directly and visualize the value that your event has added.
Here’s the most important bit: The platform should empower you to track leads captured during the event. This includes contact information and engagement history.
Finally, once the event ends, the software should provide comprehensive reports that assess the overall performance of the event. This includes information like attendee satisfaction, areas for improvement, and beyond.
All of the reports and data should be exportable in various formats (e.g., CSV, PDF) for further analysis or sharing with stakeholders.
Your team has invested a considerable amount of time, money, and effort in the event. You must analyze the performance of your event to understand the wins and mistakes. These insights can help you plan smooth events for the future.
An event management platform that fails to provide granular analytics and simple visualizations leaves organizers blind to key insights, making it harder to measure success or optimize future events.
Finally, if your event management platform is solving all your event-related problems like registrations, exhibitor management, etc., it will provide you reports that offer greater depth and portray the bigger picture.
An immersive environment allows event planners to host an online event in a super-realistic and interactive environment so that people find it equally engaging and fun. A good virtual event platform replicates tons of attributes of an in-person event.
For example, attendees can loiter around different rooms, including the auditorium, exhibit hall, break-out rooms, round tables, etc. Plus, they could engage with exhibitors and attendees through calls and chats, exchange information, and more.
Your event management application should enable you to design and customize immersive environments on your own or pair you up with project managers who can help you do so.
Let’s list down all the must-haves of a great immersive environment that your EMS should support.
First, your online event management solution should enable you to customize the venue. They can either offer a list of pre-existing venue designs or create a brand-new one that aligns with your brand. These designs should be customizable with your logo, tagline, and other stuff necessary for branding or advertisement.
An event venue has multiple rooms for different purposes. Attendees can explore the rooms and choose where they want to be.
First, there’s the lobby, which serves as the main hall and provides access to all the other rooms. Next is the auditorium, where attendees can join sessions and presentations. The exhibit hall is dedicated to exhibitor, sponsor, and vendor booths. This is where attendees get to view different products and services.
For networking, the lounge is the go-to space. It offers numerous interesting activities like 1:1 networking sessions, workshops, roundtables, and more. Lastly, the help desk is available for attendees to connect with event organizers through live chat, calls, or email for any assistance they need
Virtual environments allow you to mirror the look and feel of an in-person event. This way, it’s not a one-sided screen time for your attendees, but an immersive experience where they can interact with other attendees and exhibitors, view content, participate in various activities, and beyond. With higher levels of engagement, the chances of them being happy with your event increase.
A webinar platform allows you to host engaging webinars with added flexibility. This means you get to stream the webinar in various formats and enhance the sessions with engaging features. Here’s how:
A webinar platform allows you to stream a webinar in multiple presentation formats, including live, semi-live, and recorded.
The live format is quite straightforward, where the presenter delivers the content in real time.
On the other hand, semi-live is when the lecture part of the webinar is recorded and streamed during the assigned slot. Whereas the Q&A part is live, and the presenter connects to answer questions.
Finally, in the recorded format, webinars are fully pre-recorded.
The webinar platform ensures your attendees stay hooked till the end with features like quizzes, polls, and Q&A. Plus, it also promotes teamwork through breakout rooms.
Webinars are a great medium to nurture your audience. They are cost-effective and provide considerable value to the attendees. Having a robust webinar platform with engaging features can level up your webinar game and help you deliver more with less.
Event collateral, like presentations and videos, is often scattered across different platforms. This makes it difficult to manage and distribute it efficiently.
This is why a robust resource library is an important feature to consider when you’re doing an event management software comparison.
A resource library serves as a centralized repository for all event-related materials, including documents, presentations, videos, and other content. This centralization streamlines content management and ensures that all stakeholders have easy access to the necessary resources.
A resource library also enables you to create a repository to share on-demand videos, webinars, keynote sessions, and more, after the event has ended. On top of that, you can monitor who’s viewing and downloading what with real-time tracking.
An effective resource library enhances attendee engagement by providing them with relevant materials before, during, and after the event. It also facilitates collaboration among event organizers, speakers, and participants, as all essential information is readily available in one place.
Gamification is one of the most effective ways to make yours stand out and keep people engaged throughout. Look for a platform that supports a scavenger hunt where attendees search for clues across the event space, a spin-the-wheel for prizes, trivia games, and leaderboards that reward the most active participants.
People attend numerous events throughout the year. You need to craft an engaging experience for them so that it cuts through the clutter and is memorable. Gamification is a great way to do so. This is why having an event management software that supports games is also very important.
Your platform should support polls for real-time feedback during sessions, quizzes to reinforce learning or break the ice, surveys before and after the event to collect structured feedback, and leaderboards that reward active participation. Lighter-touch features like a photobooth and collaborative digital whiteboards are a nice addition for events where creativity and teamwork are part of the experience.
Virtual events can be pretty one-sided sometimes. Organizers have to work hard to curate experiences that engage attendees throughout the event. Activities like quizzes, polls, and Miroboards encourage attendees to actively participate, enhancing their overall experience.
These activities also make it easier for attendees to retain information shared during the event. This is especially true for educational seminars, conferences, and product launches where there’s a lot to learn.
Is networking a thing when it comes to virtual events? Well, the answer is a solid yes! With the right event management platform, you can facilitate networking in a virtual event. Sometimes, even more than a physical event. But you need to make sure that your strategic event management software offers features that’d help you do so. This includes:
Features as simple as chat can be enhanced in a way that takes networking to a new level. How? Well, your EMS should be designed in a way that shows various information about the attendees. For example, who’s online, their company name, their position, and finally, how relevant they are to you.
A great way to streamline this is by adding a filter that allows people to search others based on unique fields.
All this information helps you understand who’s relevant to whom. Other than this, within the chat, the platform should include different features like pinning messages, sending documents, and most importantly, emojis.
Finally, the platform should also enable users to manage their inbox as a whole by archiving, deleting, or blocking messages. Features like automated replies can be super helpful as well.
Another important feature to facilitate conversations between exhibitors and attendees is Chat Queues. You’d know there are not a few people that exhibitors have to reply to. Usually, there’s a long line. Since this happens in a virtual environment, attendees do not have clarity about why exhibitors are responding late.
To help with this, the platform should enable chat queues. This feature helps keep the attendees informed about the number of people in the waiting line, which number they fall into, and how long it will take for their turn. Apart from that, the feature makes it easier for the exhibitors as well to allocate a specific time to each visitor.
Not everyone is a chat person. Some people love to hop on a call most of the time. Your platform should allow attendees, exhibitors, as well as sponsors to connect through audio as well as video calls. They can be either between two parties or a group call too.
Your EMS should make it easy to host roundtable discussions, where smaller groups can come together for focused conversations on specific topics.
Attendees should be able to browse different roundtable topics and join the ones that interest them. Once inside, they should have flexible ways to take part, such as speaking up, joining the chat, or just raising a hand to contribute.
Networking is the second most important reason people join virtual events. However, it’s not as easy as it is in a physical setting. As an event planner, you’re responsible for facilitating communication among attendees to enrich the attendees’ experience.
Your event management platform should not only allow you to host virtual events but also provide every feature that contributes to making the event worthwhile. All the networking features we talked about are very important because they drive engagement, foster meaningful connections, and enhance the overall event experience.
Note: If you run hybrid events, all of these virtual features carry over — with one addition. AV integration lets you stream your physical event live to virtual attendees across platforms like YouTube and LinkedIn simultaneously, with backup systems to keep the stream stable. This way, you serve local and remote audiences at the same time without doubling your workload.
What do you want attendees’ first impression of the event day to be?
One thing’s for sure: you don’t want them stuck in long check-in lines. A badge printing and check-in app helps attendees enter quickly, verify their registration, and receive personalized badges without delays.
With the right solution, you can manage both check-in and badge printing from the same platform, making the entry process faster for attendees and easier for your team. Here’s what your check-in and badge printing app should support:
Self-check-in allows attendees to enter the event by scanning their unique QR codes through self-serve kiosks. These QR codes are emailed to attendees before the event. You can set up branded check-in kiosks near the entrance of the event venue where attendees can scan in in no time.
A facial recognition check-in app uses advanced AI technology to identify and verify attendees by scanning their faces. This eliminates the need for physical tickets, QR codes, or manual verification.
A badge printing software enables you to design a custom badge printing home screen and the badges with a drag-and-drop builder. You can customize font sizes, colors, text positioning, and styling. Plus, you can also add QR codes and custom fields for easy scanning and personalization.
Your badge printing software should support creating badges in different categories, such as VIPs, speakers, and attendees.
There are three badge printing options that the software should offer.
The first method is when the badge printing is synced with your check-in app. As soon as someone checks in, their badge is automatically printed by the connected printer. This works for group registrations as well. The software prints badges for the entire group when one member of the group checks in.
The second method includes a standalone setup. You can set up kiosks with iPads or tablets connected to printers. Attendees simply scan their QR codes on the tablet to print their badges instantly.
Finally, the last method includes bulk-printing the badges beforehand and handing them to everyone on the event day.
A badge printing and check-in app helps you reduce long lines, speed up entry, and create a more polished attendee experience. Instead of manually verifying registrations or searching through printed lists, your team can rely on a connected system that syncs registration, ticketing, check-in, and badge data.
It also reduces errors because attendee information flows directly from your event management software into the check-in and badge printing system. Personalized badges with QR codes can also support lead retrieval, access control, session tracking, and networking.
Humans rely on mobile apps to navigate anything and everything in life. What’s stopping you from building one for your event too?
An event app is a dedicated mobile application that allows people to understand and navigate the event experience through their phones. It consolidates all the event-related information in one place. Plus, it allows them to perform different tasks like check-ins, exchange information, and more with ease.
Here are all the features that an event app must have.
Not all the sessions are compelling to everyone. The app should allow the attendees to create and manage their schedules, choosing sessions and activities of interest.
Push notifications enable you to send timely alerts and reminders to keep attendees informed about important updates.
The app must offer comprehensive details about the speakers, sessions, and topics of the event. This helps attendees stay in the know of what’s happening all the time. The app includes an agenda, and attendees can favorite sessions they want to attend to create a personalized schedule.
The event app should enable you to show various banner and splash ads to generate some extra revenue.
The app should be packed with various networking tools like attendee-to-attendee messaging, meeting scheduling, and social media integration.
The app should enable various features for active audience engagement. This includes polls and feedback collection during the sessions. Additionally, there should be several challenges, leaderboards, and rewards to motivate participation and enhance the attendee experience.
Showcase exhibitors and sponsors with detailed profiles, including products, services, and contact information.
The app should allow access to presentations, videos, and other relevant materials for attendees to review.
An event app makes everything easier for the attendees. From check-ins to navigating sessions, finding booths, and exchanging information, a mobile app is like a buddy that helps people with almost everything. This positively impacts the overall experience and satisfaction levels.
As an organizer, the mobile app benefits you in several ways too. For starters, communication with attendees and exhibitors becomes simpler. You can send in notifications about any schedule changes, announcements, or emergencies, keeping everyone informed and engaged. Plus, you can also run sponsored ads on the app and open new revenue streams. Finally, the app becomes a great source for collecting data. You get powerful insights about what the attendees were interested in, which sessions they attended the most, whom they networked with, and more. This helps you alter your future events accordingly.
For exhibitors and sponsors, lead capture is often the whole point of showing up.
Look for a platform that lets exhibitors scan attendee badges directly from a mobile app to capture contact details instantly. Better systems go further, letting exhibitors add notes, rate lead quality, and tag each interaction on the spot. At the end of the event, all captured leads should export cleanly into a CRM or spreadsheet without any manual data entry.
If capturing and following up with leads is clunky, i.e., paper forms, manual follow-ups, delayed spreadsheets, sponsors and exhibitors notice. This affects whether they come back or not.
For organizers, lead capture data also feeds your post-event reporting. You can see which exhibitors drove the most engagement and use that to build stronger sponsorship packages for your next event.
A floor plan builder allows you to create an interactive visualization of the event venue.
Don’t confuse it with a simple image of your event venue because it’s so much more. It’s an interactive space that allows attendees to navigate the event venue, learn what each booth is about, and find the way to get there. It’s like a Google map for your event venue.
With a floorplan builder, you can add, remove, or rearrange booths and other elements while making real-time updates. Plus, you can also personalize the layout by incorporating your brand’s images, fonts, and backgrounds. You can even link booths to specific sessions or exhibitors, making navigation easier for attendees.
A floor plan builder helps you in two ways.
One, it enhances the attendee’s experience. By creating clear and navigable layouts, organizers can improve wayfinding for attendees. These interactive floor plans can be integrated into event apps, providing attendees with real-time navigation assistance.
Second, these floor plans can be used to enable exhibitors to gain an understanding of the booths available and buy the relevant ones on their own. This simplifies the booth booking process, allowing exhibitors to choose and purchase spaces online.
If you were to ask us what the best event management software is, we’d confidently say it’s the one that combines outstanding features with exceptional support.
Getting familiar with tech requires time. Ensure that your platform offers helpful and timely customer support from onboarding to off-boarding.
Other than that, it should also include robust technical support. This is especially true for virtual events as they have complex requirements for setting up the event platform. Plus, the platform should also offer on-the-day setup support for in-person events. You can read reviews on platforms G2 or Gartner to get some unfiltered opinions.
Events are complex with multiple moving parts. Getting all the bits to work correctly and timely manner isn’t easy. Support services ensure that your execution is smooth. They’ll help you troubleshoot issues quickly so that technical glitches or platform confusion don’t disrupt the event.
vFairs is an all-in-one software for event planning professionals that covers every feature in this guide, in one place. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
In the end, one thing is crystal clear: an all-in-one event management solution is always the best choice.
This is because an event has numerous elements, each dependent on the other. A good registration process leads to a better check-in experience. A good event app experience leads to great data collection. Good event insights lead to a better follow-up strategy. Going for a solution that offers all the features we talked about will ensure your event is executed with precision and ease.
Are you ready to create this level of synergy in your upcoming events? Book a demo call with vFairs and learn how our event management software can make your event experience an absolute breeze.
A fragmented tool stack means using separate tools for separate tasks — one for registration, another for check-ins, another for analytics. An all-in-one event management platform keeps everything under one roof. Registration, check-ins, reporting, and engagement all talk to each other. That means fewer errors, faster workflows, and reports that actually show the full picture.
Event management software helps organizers plan, execute, and analyze events from one platform. It covers everything from registration and ticketing to check-in, attendee engagement, reporting, and sponsor management for in-person, virtual, and hybrid events.
Start by mapping your event types, in-person, virtual, or hybrid, and the features you rely on most. Then evaluate platforms on feature depth, not just feature count. Ask for a live demo, check reviews on G2 or Gartner, and make sure dedicated customer support is included, not optional.
vFairs is one of the top event management platforms that scales without breaking, handling thousands of registrations, multiple session tracks, hundreds of exhibitors, and real-time analytics simultaneously.
For most event teams, a cloud-based platform is the most practical choice. It means your registration data, analytics, and event settings are accessible from anywhere, updates happen automatically, and the platform scales whether you're running an event for 200 or 20,000 attendees.
Focus on the features that affect your attendees first, including a smooth registration experience, easy check-in, and clear session information. Then look at what makes your job easier as an organizer: a drag-and-drop form and website builder, automated email workflows, real-time analytics, and integrations with tools you already use like your CRM and payment gateway. If you run events with exhibitors, lead capture is essential.
Fiza Fatima
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Jun 5, 2026
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