Event Tools: The #1 Guide for Event Professionals

Welcome to the most comprehensive ungated list of event tools on the internet. Whether you are an event planner or marketer, you’ll find what you’re looking for.

Technology isn’t just helpful for scaling an events strategy, it’s downright essential.

According to the Event Success Formula report, 91% of marketers from successful organizations believe that technology can have a major impact on the success of their events.

Meanwhile, the majority of marketers from successful organizations are utilizing a comprehensive “event stack” replete with marketing automation software, sales CRMs and event management software.

Just because event professionals should be investing event technology and tools, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily easy to figure out which ones to invest in.

We’ve put together this extensive guide to event tools to cover all of your event needs—be it securing event venues, increasing event registrations, boosting attendee satisfaction, seamlessly transferring data, or saving time.

Table of Contents (Click to jump to a section)

• Event Management and Registration Tools
• Event Data Integration Tools
• Venue Booking and Management Tools
• Event Staffing Tools
• Event Sponsorship Tools
• Marketing Attribution Tools
• Email Marketing Tools
• Social Media Tools
• Audience Engagement Tools
• Event Streaming Tools

Event Management and Registration Tools

• Social Tables – Social Tables empowers professional event planners, caterers, venue providers, and other related services to come together in the cloud, and to collaborate on achieving the perfect event for their clients—all through a user-friendly interface.
• Bizzabo’s onsite solutions suite – Create guest lists by importing contacts from platforms like Excel or Bizzabo. Your guests can register for your event and check themselves in upon arrival. Bizzabo’s onsite solutions allows users to print name tags as guests check-in. Additionally, onsite solutions is a lead retrieval app, which means that it captures and follows up on interested attendees.
• Bizzabo – Bizzabo is the world’s most loved event software. It helps organizers market, manage and grow their events. Easily build branded event websites, create networking commmunities for you attendees, showcase event sponsors and partners, engage your attendees with Bizzabo’s event app, prove ROI, draw insights and more.
• Slack – Slack is one of the leading B2B messaging platforms in the industry. It is a real-time group chat that is built for effective internal communication and is ideal for groups that constantly need to be in sync. Slack works great for event organizers because it enables them to update other team members and receive updates about an event in real-time. It can even integrate with some event management platforms to keep you in the know with real-time event updates.
• Trello – Trello is a flexible tool that uses cards and columns to organize tasks. It is perhaps the most visually intuitive tools on the list because of the column and card system. Team members create assignable cards with a due date, a card title, and if applicable a label, and project summary.

Compare the leading event management platforms in the Event Software Buyers Guide. Click the button below to access event software data and over 70 questions that you should ask event software sales representatives.

Event Data Integration Tools

• Zapier – With over 1,000 apps and growing, Zapier is one of the foremost data integration platforms out there. It’s also extremely easy to use. With Zapier, event planners create Zaps to build a workflow between different apps. If you’ve ever wished that “this information” was over in ‘that app,’ it’s likely Zapier can help you do this automatically and without writing a single line of code.
• IFTTT – This free web-based service is capable of creating complex chains of automated actions. IFTTT is comprised of two simple features. The triggers are “if this” and the resulting actions are “then that.” These two features make up applets, the core of this automation tool. As of today, IFTTT can connect to over 360 applications.
• LeadBridge – Facebook custom audience. How to target Facebook Ads based on an email list. Unique and targeted audience without needing to update a spreadsheet
• Webhooks – Webhooks are used to send data from one web application to another after an action is completed. You can use Webhooks to send data notifications, changes, and any other real time updates. By specifying a URL for receiving the information you are able to trigger a transfer of data you have stored in your event app to any desired application.
• Open API – While not a “tool” per say, open APIs offer a robust way for event organizers to sync data from their event platform with additional systems. However, this requires extensive knowledge in coding and an event platform with an API that is public. If you find that other integration options are too limited or too expensive it may be worth using an open API to create custom integration solutions.
• Mulesoft – Mulesoft combines the power of data and application integration across legacy systems and SaaS applications, with a path to the full power of API-led connectivity. Mulesoft’s Anypoint platform connects sensors, data, and applications. It allows you to design and test APIs for your servers, before you publish them.
• Bizzabo – As an event management platform, Bizzabo is outfitted with many integrations to make collecting and analyzing your data as seamless as possible. First, the entirety of the Bizzabo events stack—event registration website, event app, networking community, event email marketing—is integrated with one another out of the box. You can follow the journey of an attendee to attending the event and beyond. Second, Bizzabo integrates with over 1000 platforms (including Salesforce and Mailchimp) right out of the box. Third, Bizzabo’s Open API makes it easy for you to customize Bizzabo to work with any platform out there.

Learn more about integrating event software in the Corporate Event Planners Guide to Integrations.

back to the top 

Venue Booking and Management Tools

• HeadBox – HeadBox is an event venue marketplace that cuts out the middle man and allows event organizers to directly contact venue managers. Based out of the UK, HeadBox has grown rapidly in the past several years. Their marketplace currently features over 5,000 event venues—and the numbers look like it will continue to go up.
• Breather – Breather is a centralized online marketplace for affordable meeting rooms. Whether you’re looking for a space for a workshop, an interview or a team meeting, Breather can help you out. One distinguishing factor about Breather is how consistent the experience is. Each space is sourced and operated by in-house experts, so regardless of which Breather you go to, you can expect a great experience.
• EVENTup – EVENTup is the world’s largest online marketplace for event spaces. From art galleries to conference centers, EVENTup has you covered. Through EVENTup, event professionals can search for meeting spaces in their area and immediately reach out to venue managers.
• Splacer – Splacer is an online marketplace that gives access to undiscovered and underutilized spaces, offering extraordinary arenas for events, experiences and activations of all shapes and sizes. Unlike some other platforms, Splacer curates its spaces: all spaces are reviewed by our team with an eye for great design.
• Gather – Gather is a management tool used primarily by venues and restaurants. Through Gather, event professionals can manage past, present and future bookings, measure event sales performance, automatically generate documents and communicate with teammates.

back to the top 

Event Staffing Tools

• InitLive – InitLive is a comprehensive event staffing software that allows users to source event staff members, track hours, and record performance all in the same tool. This robust solution is great for event organizers with complex staffing needs who must either manage logisitcs for one large event, or for many smaller gatherings.
• AirEvents – Whereas some of the other event staffing solutions listed in this directory are focused on helping event organizers schedule staff members, AirEvents helps orgainzers to find reliable staff members. The platform acts as a freelancer marketplace, matching available event staff members with event organizers in need of reliable talent.
• QuickStaff – Never experience an unexpected staffing conflict again by using QuickStaff. The simple platform is designed for logistics managers and event planners who are looking for an inexpensive, and intuitive tool to manage small event teams. Automated employee communication and a drag and drop calendar make managing staff members considerably easier than using email and spreadsheets.
• PopBookings – Needing to worry about event logistics prevents organizers from focusing on the big picture. PopBookings was specifically designed for those responsible for event staffing. The user-friendly platfrom helps event organizers to manage and monitor event-day employees. PopBookings even lets event organizers to pay employees directly through the platform, and helps managers to keep track of outstanding employees via a star rating system.
• ShiftBoard – Used by roughly 60,000 businesses including South by Southwest and Major Leauge Baseball, ShiftBoard makes scheduling hourly employees and volunteers a snap. This platform is an ideal solution for event organizers who need to manage hourly workers, like event staff. But ShiftBoard isn’t just a tool designed to track hourly workers, it can also manage employee applications, and help managers to communicate with workers through SMS messages.
• TaskRabbit – Founded in 2008, TaskRabbit has been matching professionals with talented freelancers for nearly a decade. Event marketers and organizers who are in need of logistical help can always turn to TaskRabbit. The platform features a variety of freelancers ready to help you and your team assemble event furniture, or clean up an event venue before or after the event has occured.
• Upwork – One of the largest freelancer marketplaces, UpWork features aproximetly 12 million professionals raring to help you take your events to the next level. The platform features experts in fields like digital marketing, website development, and administration. Event organizers might consider contracting a virtual assistent to help coordinate event logistics, or they might choose to work with a copywriter capable of sprucing up event website copy.
• Fiverr – For just five dollars, event marketers and organizers can work with a wide variety of talented freelancers. From graphic design, to website development, over-taxed organizers should consider turning to a global market of professionals capable of providing a variety of services. While more advanced help will cost more than five dollars in most cases, the majority of freelancers on Fiverr are relatively inexpensive.

back to the top

Event Sponsorship Tools

• Sponsor My Event – SponsorMyEvent is a platform for organizers and sponsors alike to connect with one another for potential partnerships. The homepage features events looking for sponsors with a minimum prices range for each. The site functions as a complete sponsorship management tool, allowing organizers to organize their data as well as process payments all within the platform.
• Sponsia – Sponsia is a marketplace where event planners find sponsors for their events and businesses get a variety of sponsorship opportunities to advertise more efficiently.
• SponsorPitch – SponsorPitch  facilitates quick, smart connections between sponsoring brands and sponsorship opportunities. Unlike many other sponsor search platforms, SponsorPitch provides analytics to help both organizers and sponsors make smarter decisions as well as analyze their competition.
• SponsorPark – SponsorPark is particularly geared towards event organizers, requiring all organizers to post event sponsorship proposals and then wait to be contacted by interested sponsors. Companies can also search for sponsorship opportunities through the “opportunity search” bar which allows them to specify the category, location, and price range of the sponsorship.
• Sponseasy –  Sponseasy can be viewed as a Squarespace for sponsorship proposals. Event organizers create an aesthetically appealing proposal and then posts it on the network for potential sponsors to look through. The site’s emphasis on visually captivating proposals is what makes it stand out from other sponsorship platforms.
• Bizzabo – Bizzabo includes extensive event sponsorship features as part of it’s all-in-one event success software. Take sponsorship packages beyond a logo with interactive sponsorship opportunities. Give your sponsors the ability to be where attendees are – on their smartphone. Dynamic sponsorship opportunities. Give sponsors the data they need to know that their sponsorship made an impact.

back to the top

Marketing Attribution Tools

• Bizible – Used by Act-On and MongoDB, Bizible provides event marketers with meaningful visibility into the effectiveness of event programs throughout the buyer’s journey. Whereas most organizations measure ROI by first or last touch, marketing attribution platforms like Bizible enable marketers to create multi-touch attribution models that can better credit live events used to nurture existing leads in order to move them faster down the funnel. This particular marketing attribution product is designed to sit within existing sales and marketing tools to provide event marketers with real-time information about campaign performance and event ROI.
• BrightFunnel – Some of the best marketing teams use BrightFunnel to accuratley calculate marketing ROI through the platform’s robust multi-touch marketing attribution models. Through real-time reporting, event marketers can quickly assess the performance of a recent campaign in terms of pipeline and revenue genrated. BrightFunnel makes it easier for event marketers to prove ROI to senior managers, and to identify the events that made the biggest impact on generating revenue.
• Engagio Dash – Account based marketing is a relatively new marketing strategy. Rather than focusing on attracting leads by offering valuable content (the inbound marketing approach), or targeting contacts through cold calling (the outbound approach), marketing and sales teams work together to identify target accounts. Then the marketing team works to engage those accounts in a meaningful way, once engaged, the accounts are passed to the sales team. Engagio Dash is a marketing attribution platform designed to provide marketers practicing an ABM strategy with insights related to campaign effectiveness. This is a particularly valuable tool for event marketers who use live events to nurture existing leads in order to accelerate them down the funnel.

Email Marketing Tools

• MailChimp – They call themselves the world’s biggest “marketing automation company.” With millions of customers and billions of automated emails sent, one can see why. MailChimp is an email marketing platform that makes it simple for event marketers of all levels to develop successful email campaigns. The platform integrates with a variety of tools (including Bizzabo) making it a good solution for event organizers interested in motivating existing contacts to sign up for an upcoming event.
• CampaignMonitor – Develop automated email marketing campaigns that feel like 1-to-1 personalized messages with CampaignMonitor. The platform, which is used by Adidas, HuffPost, and RipCurl, is designed to help marketers of all stripes to build beautiful emails that can be trigged by a contact’s behavior. This makes it easy to event marketers to nurture existing event contacts through segmented email campaigns.
• Bizzabo – As part of Bizzabo’s all-in-one event success platform, Bizzabo offers an extensive email marketing. Event professionals can write emails for every step of the attendee (and stakeholder) journey by picking from our selection of email templates or by creating an email from scratch using our drag-and-drop email builder. Using Smart Lists, event professionals can easily segment and save audiences based on industry, job function, sessions attendended and more.

back to the top

Social Media Tools

• Facebook: With over 2 billion average monthly users, Facebook is the largest social media platform on the web. Event professionals can tap into this vast network through several methods. Business and event pages that can be used to reach attendees and potential attendees on a platform they are most likely active on. Meanwhile, Facebook Ads will help you greatly expand the reach of your event brand.
• LinkedIn: Dubbed the professional social network, LinkedIn is an ideal social media platform to utilize in order to generate buzz surrounding an event geared toward professionals. With active communities, and an internal blogging platform, LinkedIn is a powerful platform for event planners.
• Twitter: Love it or hate it, Twitter is one of the most popular social media platforms for discussion. Event marketers can use hashtags and event handles to create and track discussion around their events. Some event management platforms will have social media integrations that measure these placements and draw insights from them for you. Creating Twitter chats before events is another innovative use of the network.
• Instagram: Instagram, owned by Facebook, now rivals SnapChat as the go-to visual social media platform. The key to using Instagram for events is to create compelling organic content. Sharing images of speakers, attendees, or well designed quotes are good examples of good event related content to share. For organizers hoping to quickly boost brand awareness or even event registrations, turning to Instagram ads might be a good option. Just like in SnapChat, event marketers can create unique geofilters for their events.
• Snapchat: Snapchat is one of the most popular visual platform used on mobile devices. While Snapchat has recently lost some ground to Instagram, it is still a social media force to be reckoned with (and leveraged). Event professionals can leverage Snapchat Geofilters as an inexpensive advertising option to increase event buzz by harnessing the power of event attendee’s Snapchat communities.

Audience Engagement Tools

• TINT – TINT makes it easy for event organizers to display social media content on the web, or on a display at your event in order to bring your target audience closer to what’s happening online. Some event management software, like Bizzabo, integrate with TINT so you can easily post social walls to your event website.
• Catchbox – Ready to get active? Catchbox is the world’s first throwable microphone. It not only gives attendees the ability to make their voice heard, it also makes participating in a conversation fun. Perfect for encouraging reluctant attendee to speak.
• Crowdmics – While Crowdmics also boasts polling and texting services that engage attendees, the most revolutionary aspect of the software is how it empowers your attendees to contribute to the conversation by turning their phones into wireless microphones. CrowdMics also boasts analytics and reporting features.
• Speecheo – Based out of France, Speecheo brings your event content straight to the phones of your attendees. Through collaborative features, attendees can discuss event content via the app long after the event is over. Event organizers can then review how attendees interact with their content and draw insights about must-have topics and duds.
• Crowdsight – Crowdsight fills a unique, yet valuable niche compared to other event apps on this list. It helps event professionals replace ads with advocacy, leveraging net promoters to create clickable social content that generates higher return on investment. Rather than faciliate communication among attendees, Crowdsight incentivizes them to share meaningful content about your event.
• Estimote – More of a system than an application, Estimote leverages the power of the internet of things (IoT) to create responsive, reflexive experiences for attendees. Estimote SDK can be embedded into mobile apps, which can then use signals from built-in sensors or nearby beacons to estimate the context and micro-location of an event. Event professionals can use estimote to create interactive sponsorship opportunities, event content and more.
• Glisser – Glisser is an award-winning audience response system that shares presentation slides to smartphones in real-time and uses polling and Q&A to make events interactive. Beyond Q&A nad slides, Glisser features live polling, a Twitter wall, event feedback and more.
• Slido – Slido is an audience interaction tool for meetings, events and conferences. It offers interactive Q&A, live polls and insights about your audience. Through replies, downvotes and multiple “rooms”, attendees can interact with your event like never before. 
• Visme – More than just another presentation tool, Visme can build all sorts of custom presentations, reports and sales decks. What makes it great is that it stores your work in one secure place, allows users to easily edit graphs and infographics, and has a wide array of share options. VisMe also boasts analytics and lead tracking features that are perfect for sharing slides after a presentation.
  
• Google Slides – If you haven’t tried Google Slides, go try it after you finish reading this article. Google slides works similarly to Keynote and Microsoft PowerPoint, but it allows for cross-device collaboration and seamlessly integrates into Google’s Cloud saving platform, called Drive.
• Prezi – rezi ofers the opportunity to get rid of normal slides à la PowerPoint and start using a cool, flowing, non-linear conference presentation tool. This is a highly visual program that has a customizable zooming lens. It allows event presenters to hone in on certain aspects of a presentation for emphasis.
• Keynote – Keynote is a great app for Apple products that works with iCloud. It has easy drag and drop capabilities, interactive charts, and impressive visual tools. Keynote is great for conference presentations because it helps users stay on schedule with a built in timer. It also provides users with the ability to preview the upcoming slide before it goes on the big screen.
• Powerpoint – The old standby for all of your presentation needs. Integreates with Microsoft OneDrive, so you can access your presentations from anywhere.

back to the top

Event Streaming Tools

• Livestream – Livestream is one of the most popular platforms for video streaming events. With Livestream, event professionals can distribute high-quality video to their website, apps, Over-the-Top platform, and social channels. In brief, Livestream ensures your live and archived video reaches your audience in the highest quality, no matter where they watch.
• Facebook Live – With Facebook Live, any person or Facebook page can live stream an experience for up to four hours. Meanwhile, the audience has the ability to share reactions and comments in real-time. For event professionals, Facebook Live can be used to drum up pre-event buzz with behind-the-scenes footage or it can be used to livestream presentations.
• Highfive – Hailed as the “All-in-one video conferencing hardware and software”, Highfive is a streamline platform for holding virtual meetings. No pins or codes are required. Instead, attendees can join a meeting by simply clicking a link. Room and event spaces can even be outfitted with Highfive video conferencing equipment for a seamless video experience. Perfect for event professionals running virtual events or looking to hold meetings with key stakeholders.
• GoToWebinar – If you’re hosting an online event, chances are you will likely use a platform on which you can easily host a webinar, such as GoToWebinar. With some event software, you can even create an integrations so that each registration on an event website can automatically be uploaded to the webinar attendee list.

back to the top

Check out more event resources by clicking the button below!