I tested the 7 best event registration software tools for 2026

Events are essentially information exchanges — and it’s a lot of information. From the first signup to the last feedback survey, there are countless meeting materials, name badges, presentations, and email notifications in between. I can’t imagine what planning an event must have felt like before event management tools existed.

More than just a form builder, an event registration app makes it dead simple for attendees to sign up (and potentially pay) for a seat at your function, while also giving you a way to store, transform, and work with that data. These platforms can handle social and professional events, small and large, in-person and virtual, itinerary-driven and freeform. I tested several of these tools and selected the seven best event registration apps for this list.

How I tested these event registration platforms

Community meetups are different from academic conferences. Concerts are different from tradeshows. Every event is unique and it would take months to test every platform for every use case. Instead, I focused on evaluating how each tool handled event registration workflows that span virtually every type of function or gathering you might be planning, including

• Building responsive, modern-looking event pages that are adaptable to your brand or event details
• Creating forms with flexible input fields and conditional logic to avoid unnecessary questions or data collection
• Inviting, reminding, and confirming attendees via customizable emails
• Accepting registration payments and transferring them to a connected bank account
• Storing, searching, transforming, and exporting attendee data for post-event follow-ups and outreach
• Hosting virtual and hybrid sessions to open up more registration and sales opportunities
• Planning both one-off and annual events so you don’t feel locked into a platform you rarely use

This isn’t the first time we reviewed this category of software tools. Several of the platforms on this list were included in earlier versions of this article, but a few are newcomers to the event registration category. The point is, even if apps come and go faster now than they ever have before, the basic flow of signing people up to your event won’t change much in the future and should be the primary driver of which tool you end up picking. 

7 best event registration tools — at a glance

Tool	Best for	Plans/pricing
Jotform	AI-generated event pages, forms, and agents	Free plan available, paid plans start at $34 per month (billed annually)
Eventbrite	Event marketing and awareness campaigns	Free plan with 3.5 percent and $1 per ticket sale
Cvent	Massive, multi-day events	Contact Cvent for information on plans and pricing
Whova	Event portals with social networking for attendees	Contact Whova for information on plans and pricing
RSVPify	First-time event planners and organizers	Paid plans start at $39 per month or 1.95 percent plus $0.90 per ticket sale
Eventleaf	Badge customization and printing	Free and paid plans with ~3 percent transaction fees
WildApricot	Recurring events for membership groups	Paid plans start at $63 per month and 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per ticket sale

1. Jotform

After testing countless “generate X from an AI prompt” tools, for this article and others, this is unquestionably one of the best AI tools for event planners. With Jotform, you can build an event portal with a single-sentence prompt, linking its CTAs to forms and AI agents (which are also created via plain language descriptions), and pipe data from both the portal and form responses into the included database tool, Jotform Tables. Best of all, the AI outputs from Jotform are often usable without changes, drastically reducing the time it takes to collect registrations, create documents, and send updates.

How to use Jotform 

For event planning, I recommend starting with a registration form. Go to your Jotform Workspace, click the + Create button in the upper left corner of the screen, and hit the Formtile. Next, describe what you need in the prompt window, start from scratch, or select from the list of over 3,000 event registration form templates. If you want to add payment fields, click Add Element and open the Payments tab, maybe even adding a Form Calculation or Terms & Conditions from the Widgets tab if needed.

Clicking on the paint roller icon will let you add your logo to the form. You can also pick from premade themes, or add custom CSS before setting up email notifications and app integrations in the Settings tab. Once everything is finalized, you can send your event registration form as an email to a list of attendees, get an embed code for your website, or click Create AI Agent to convert the form into a chatbot that gathers necessary info through conversation rather than form fields.

The next step would be to go back to your Workspace, only this time creating an event page or portal with Jotform Apps. Although setup is almost identical to form creation, the app builder has a different list of page elements and widgets. You can add a navigation bar to the top or bottom of the screen, along with countdowns, RSS feeds, scrolling text, and other features. For particularly big events, you might want to create a Jotform Report based on signup data or throw together a Jotform Boards to track planning progress. No matter what you build, events in any Jotform tool can trigger actions elsewhere — giving you a wholly customizable, no-code event management suite.

• Key features
  • Huge library of event-specific templates for AI agents, apps, and forms
  • Send emails, extract data from uploads, and personalize meeting materials with Jotform Workflows
• Pros
  • Jotform’s various tools are incredibly flexible, easy to connect to each other, and cheaper per submission than almost every other tool on this list — especially when you consider that it doesn’t charge any fees on top of what your payment processor of choice will charge
• Cons
  • There are no built-in video conferencing tools, which can be a dealbreaker for large, online-only gatherings (although Jotform does have Zoom and Google Meet integrations)
  • Events with spotty internet connections might cause issues when accessing cloud-based data
• Plans/pricing:
  • Starter (free): Up to five event forms, 100 submissions, and 10 payments per month, plus unlimited apps and workflow runs
  • Bronze ($34 per month, billed annually): Up to 25 event forms, 1,000 submissions, and 100 payments per month, with the option to remove Jotform’s branding and the same unlimited apps and workflow runs as Starter
  • Silver ($39 per month, billed annually): Up to 50 forms, 2,500 submissions, and 250 payments per month
  • Gold ($99 per month, billed annually): 100 forms, 10,000 submissions, and 1,000 payments per month
  • Businesses can also negotiate custom plan limits by contacting Jotform directly

2. Eventbrite

Almost every feature that Eventbrite offers is designed to get more eyeballs on your event page, and none of them feel overwhelming or unapproachable. It’s a breeze to create your event, add keywords and tags that will help people find it in Eventbrite’s Marketplace, share the link via social media, and email leads with premade marketing assets. 

How to use Eventbrite

The first things you’ll see after creating a new Eventbrite account are Create event, Create with AI, and Set up your organizer profile. If you’re hoping some of your attendees will find you via the Eventbrite Marketplace, you’ll probably want to start with that last one, uploading a profile picture, writing a bio, and connecting your social media profiles. Doing this first will prevent any empty or missing fields when publishing your first event.

Event pages, whether created from scratch or with AI, are fairly templated. You can add a header image or video, title and summary, date and time, location, detailed overview, FAQs, and an agenda or lineup. When you use Eventbrite’s AI event generator, you still need to provide most of those details, but it’ll take care of the header image and event summary. Based on my tests, it’s fine for small, low-pressure events but nowhere near viable for more serious gatherings.

After hitting publish, you’re immediately dropped into the Marketing tab. There you’ll find email campaigns, management for paid social ads, a workflow for creating a Facebook event without leaving Eventbrite, and social sharing options autopopulated with your event’s details. Marketing is also where you can add tracking pixels, event links for affiliates, and promo and access codes to encourage more signups. Finally, it’s a little buried, but Marketing > Reporting > Event Reports > Traffic and Conversion is where you can see how many people found your event via the Eventbrite Marketplace.

Beyond creating and marketing events, there’s an Order Management tab for listing purchases across your entire account as well as a Finance tab that covers mostly the same thing with some additional bank and payment processing settings.

• Key features
  • Eventbrite Marketplace for surfacing your event to new people, intuitive venue map and reserved seating tools
• Pros
  • Eventbrite is set up so that you can publish an event page that’s on par with some of the best pages on the platform in less than 10 minutes
  • If you aren’t charging for admission, you’ll have access to several free event marketing and analytics tools
• Cons
  • For some, the design options for event pages will feel far too limited — you can’t change theme colors, alter page layouts, or add custom segments
  • The discoverability aspect of the platform feels like SEO — if you’re not using the right keywords in your organizer profile and event descriptions, you might not show up in search
• Plans/pricing
  • If you’re not charging for attendance to your event, having people register through Eventbrite likely won’t cost you anything
  • With paid events, however, the platform will charge you a service fee per ticket sale and possibly a payment processing fee on order totals, depending on which country you live in
  • Service fees range from 3.7 percent, plus $1.79 per ticket sale and 2.9 percent on order totals
  • There’s also an Eventbrite Pro plan ($15 per month) if you need to send more than 2,000 event emails per day

3. Cvent

Several years ago, I worked for a large membership-based organization with two full-time event planners. Whenever I collaborated with them, the majority of our time was spent on contract negotiations and paperwork — things that would have been so much easier with Cvent’s Supplier Network, venue diagramming tools, and custom registration portals. 

How to use Cvent

Because what’s included with each account is based on sales negotiations, it can be hard to describe what to expect. Usually, you’ll start by hitting the Create Event button from your dashboard. You can reuse details from a previous event, work from a template, or start with a blank slate.

Creating an event will generate an event dashboard with menus for things like marketing, reporting, and integrations. To build an event page, go to General > Website and click the + Add button, then open the site designer from the Website sidebar. From there, you can add your logo, brand colors, dynamic blocks like countdown timers, and other content types.

Back in your event dashboard, you might also want to add a list of speakers and their resources, exhibitor registration portals, hotel reservation trackers, or one of Cvent’s many other widgets. Similarly, the Registration, Marketing, and Attendees menus have a ton of customizations for shaping the software to fit any event marketing plan.

For niche or add-on features like RFP and contract management for venues and room blocks, click the apps icon in the upper right corner of the screen (it’s a 3×3 grid of squares), and select the corresponding app. 

• Key features
  • Drag-and-drop event page builder with dynamic content blocks, in-app venue sourcing and management
• Pros
  • Even the best Cvent alternatives can’t match its dizzying number of tools and platform integrations
  • It’s also not limited to event registration, with enterprise-level features for mid- and post-event management
• Cons
  • It should go without saying that this is one of the most expensive picks on the list
  • Cvent can also be pretty difficult to master on account of both the volume and complexity of what’s on offer — mocking up room layouts and furniture placement in 3D space, for example
• Plans/pricing
  • All of Cvent’s plans are based on plan negotiations and require a sales call to determine the limits and features specific to your account

4. Whova

Although Whova looks fairly dated design-wise, it does a superb job at creating what are essentially miniature social networks for your events. From the Whova mobile app, registered attendees can view profiles of and message other people at the event, post to public and private group chats, and submit questions during panels or sessions.

How to use Whova

There’s a steep learning curve with the Whova interface. You’ll probably want to start with Event Content from the ribbon along the top of the screen. That will open a sidebar with dozens of menus and submenus for customizing event details, editing event agendas, uploading event documents, and storing sponsor details. 

Next, head over to the Tickets tab to set ticket pricing, limits, and tiers before creating registration pages and widgets. Payment gateways and collections are managed separately in the Pay tab, for some reason. Then, for more general event pages, you’ll have to jump over to the Marketing tab to build and customize content for venue, speaker, and sponsor details. 

If your account includes mobile app access for attendees, the Engagement tab is where you’ll find settings for in-app notifications, forums, gamification, and networking for anyone who has it installed. 

• Key features
  • Attendee matchmaking, many parts of the mobile app work offline for attendees
• Pros
  • When you compare Whova vs Eventbrite or other registration software, its ticketing fees (3 percent plus $0.99) are almost reason enough to choose this tool over others
  • While the event administration software is tough to master, attendees genuinely do seem to love the mobile app for event networking
• Cons
  • The biggest issue with Whova, to me at least, was figuring out where everything is in the crowded app interface
  • That, along with a dire lack of notification options and settings, are not problems you want to be dealing with in the middle of a packed event
• Plans/pricing
  • Whova tailors its pricing to every account
  • To receive a quote, you must submit a form describing the types of events you typically hold as well as their duration, size, and frequency

5. RSVPify

I think RSVPify does an excellent job at guiding you through the process of creating an event website and signup form. The onboarding is narrowly scoped and focused, your dashboard is always nudging you back into the app’s suggested setup process, and the website and form builder take care of several tedious tasks for you. If you don’t have an event planning checklist, RSVPify makes for an excellent stand-in.

How to use RSVPify

Start by customizing your event page in the Website Builder tab. Simply drag content blocks onto the canvas, add your text or images, format paragraphs and headings by highlighting either with your cursor, reorder blocks from the list on the left, and click on the gear icon for any settings specific to that section. Also, make sure to toggle the mobile view at the top of the screen, as some of my content was covered up by the default CTA button.

The event page’s Register will lead to a form that you can customize in the Form Builder tab. It’s an almost identical experience to the page builder, albeit with event-specific fields like meal preferences and donor information. Strangely, RSVPify automatically inserts name and email fields into registration forms but doesn’t indicate that anywhere in the builder and provides no way to customize them, so don’t worry about adding those yourself.

If you have a list of people that you want to invite directly, hop over to the Invite List and upload a spreadsheet or manually enter their contact details to send an email with signup details. It’s not exactly clear that those invite emails won’t be sent yet until you open the Email Communications tab, customize your email design, select the Invite List, and then hit the Send to X Recipients button.

• Key features
  • Sub-event (e.g., invite-only sessions or panels) management, guest segmentation and targeting
• Pros
  • RSVPify’s fees for selling event tickets are some of the lowest of any platform I tested (with one big caveat in the Cons section)
  • This is one of the better apps I came across for managing free, non-business events as it allows you to invite and email up to 100 guests without requiring a paid plan
• Cons
  • The biggest compromise to keep in mind is that all RSVPify plans, except for Enterprise, “may include third-party offers in confirmation screens and emails” — this seems to be how they keep processing fees so low
  • Beyond ads in your event emails, the other issue is that the app interface doesn’t do a great job of confirming when information is or isn’t included on a page or sent in an email
• Plans/pricing
  • RSVPify’s pricing can be pretty confusing; if you’re selling tickets, you’ll have all the features on the Professional plan but will pay 1.95 percent plus $0.90 per ticket instead of a monthly subscription; if you’ll offer free event registration for attendees, you’ll be on one of these four plans:
    • Starter ($39 per month): Up to 150 registrations per month, custom signup form questions, seating charts, and branded email notifications
    • Plus ($125 per month): Raises your monthly registration ceiling to 500 with the addition of event collaborators, event check-in, capacity limits, and password-protected registrations
    • Professional ($409 per month): Up to 1,500 registrations per month, advanced branding, conditional form logic, and advanced integrations
    • Enterprise plans require a sales call if you want to remove ads from your confirmation emails, use custom fonts or data fields in your website or form, or set up self-check-in kiosks

6. Eventleaf

I absolutely despise anything that involves working with printers, and I think Eventleaf knows I’m not alone. Most of the platforms I tested have at least a few features for creating and printing badges but none of them come close to what Eventleaf offers. There are badge variables, templates, branding, QR codes, management from mobile, and so much more, making it the best option for events that rely heavily on handing out IDs for attendees, sponsors, speakers, and vendors.

How to use Eventleaf

Setting up an event page and registration form is pretty straightforward. After creating an event in your Eventsdashboard, open the Event Info tab, then go to the General page and add any relevant details. Go ahead and do the same for the Agenda, Speakers, Exhibitors, Sponsors, and Hotels tabs, which are all self-explanatory, before navigating to the Page Design menu. That’s where you’ll add and customize a navigation bar, headers, branding, page sections, and registration CTAs to your event website.

Configuring your event’s signup flow takes place in the Registration Steps tab. Here you can define things like registration type (e.g., sponsor, attendee, exhibitor, etc.), which dates and sessions are covered by that registration type, what fields are included in your signup form, and payment options if you’re charging for tickets.

Any time you need to email a list of people about the event — whether for invites, reminders, or confirmations — you’ll head to the Communications tab. There are submenus for each type of email you can send, including invitations, reminders, notifications, surveys, and promotions. Give each email a name, add a recipient list, add your message to the Body field, and insert contacting variables from the Recipients and Event dropdown menus. Below that are options for attaching PDFs, sending a test email, and scheduling when it goes out to your list.

• Key features
  • Every event badge feature under the sun, flexible API and above-average integration list
• Pros
  • This is a platform that accommodates two users at two extremes — its web interface is super simple and requires zero technical knowledge and very little event planning experience, but at the same time it has one of the best APIs of any of the picks and lets developers build entirely customized signup workflows
• Cons
  • While plenty of people will appreciate Eventleaf’s minimalist take on event registration, its feature list is on the short side — that can be particularly hard to stomach if you’re also using their incredibly expensive in-house credit card processing
• Plans/pricing
  • Eventleaf separates its ticket sales pricing from its app pricing; if you’re connecting PayPal, Stripe, or Authorize.net to process credit card purchases, you’ll pay 3 percent per transaction if your yearly total is less than $100,000 (or less if your total is more); interestingly, you can skip a third-party processor and use Eventleaf’s credit card processing at 6 percent per transaction for yearly totals under $100,000 (or less if your total is more); regardless of all that, however, you’ll also have to choose one of these platform tiers:
    • Starter (free): Up to 100 attendee registrations per year with unlimited events and users, plus an event website and event registration
    • Basic ($1 per attendee): Same as Starter but good for 500 registrations
    • Professional ($2 per attendee): Ups the registration ceiling to 1,000 while also adding attendee certificates, live polls, gamification, and event networking features inside a mobile app for attendees
    • Ultimate plans have custom pricing, premium integrations, and priority support if you’re willing to jump on a sales call

7. WildApricot

The WildApricot interface definitely takes some getting used to — the tools to build your member website and event pages look dated compared to platforms like Jotform. But it’s clearly built by people who understand member and community management and who prioritize developing niche features for those use cases over user interface and user experience design.

How to use WildApricot

Because this app includes way more than just event registration, or even event management as a whole, there’s a lot you can ignore. Start by opening the Events tab and clicking the Create new event button. You’ll have to choose between “Simple” events (which don’t have registration forms or itineraries) and “Advanced” events (which are required for paid ticketing, multi-session agendas, and signup forms). 

When customizing an Advanced event, you can add details, build a very basic registration form, create ticket types, and edit drip announcement and reminder emails. But since WildApricot is for building full-blown portals and intranets, that doesn’t create an event page. It just adds an event listing on your account’s Events page, which is one tab in the navigation of a website that also has About Us, Store, and Directory tabs. There are a ton of customization options for your website, some quite technical, in WildApricot’s Website sidebar.

If you’re focused solely on event registration, you can add a list of people you want to invite in the Contacts tab, connect payment gateways and bank accounts in Finances, and set up a mobile app or web-based conference interface in the Apps menu. 

• Key features
  • Integrated community- and membership-based event tools, custom CSS for member portals and event pages
• Pros
  • WildApricot doesn’t have any plan tiers, instead charging based solely on the number of contacts you manage and one- and two-year plan discounts — that drastically simplifies pricing and grants you access to a massive feature set that extends well beyond event registrations
• Cons
  • Although all non-event features will be a positive for some users, the fact that many of them can’t be turned off or hidden can be an insurmountable issue for event-only use cases
  • I got a “Not available in your country” error, despite living in a country that was not on WildApricot’s restricted list, so keep that in mind if you’re outside of the U.S., Canada, or the E.U.
• Plans/pricing
  • If you plan to accept registration and event payments via WildApricot, you can expect to pay 2.9 percent plus $0.30 per transaction on Visa, MasterCard, and Discover cards, or 3.5 percent plus $0.30 on American Express cards; beyond transaction fees, platform costs scale based on the number of contacts you manage:
    • $66 per month for 100 contacts
    • $82 per month for 250 contacts
    • $154 per month for 500 contacts
    • $265 per month for 2,000 contacts
    • $485 per month for 5,000 contacts
    • $584 per month for 15,000 contacts
    • $992 per month for 50,000 contacts

Choosing the right event registration software matters

Even if you’ve been hosting the same event for years, every iteration is different. Venues change, attendee expectations evolve, and communication channels have to adapt. That’s why, in my opinion, flexibility and customizability are the most important variables when choosing any new software. 

Jotform, with its suite of data collection and publishing tools, is the most open-ended and freeform platform on this list. You can create apps for your event pages, forms to collect registrations and payments, event AI agents to chat with attendees, workflows to automate event emails, and tables to store data — all while adding your branding at every step along the way. 

Best of all, Jotform costs a fraction of what the other tools on this list charge and works just as well for solo creators as it does for enterprises. Sign up for a free account to give Jotform a try today.