A Few Good Event-Registration Tools

The venue for your upcoming event has been booked. Your speakers are lined up, and your marketing campaign is kicking into high gear. Now all you need to do is sit back and watch the registrations roll in. But wait — these days, most event participants expect to register online, meaning you'll need a tool that can both accept online payments and help you manage attendee information.

Fortunately, there are many software tools that can help you accept and manage registrations online. There are so many options, in fact, that choosing one can be overwhelming. There are scrappy, affordable tools that handle just event registration; generalist packages that can process many different types of payments; powerful feature-rich software that can take registrations and help you manage the rest of the conference as well; and more.

To understand more about the types of software that might be useful in accepting online registrations for paid events, we asked 11 nonprofit technology professionals what tools have worked well for them. We then combined their thoughts to come up with a set of solid tools that might also work for you.

What Are Your Registration Priorities?

Event registration means different things to different organizations. It's important to decide what it means to you before choosing a tool. In particular:

• Do you simply need a quick, inexpensive, and easy credit-card registration tool? If you don't run many events, you may not need all the bells and whistles of a more complex system.
• Are you planning to run complex conferences or events? Some sophisticated event-registration tools will help you manage lodging, a conference Web site, name tags, signups for multiple sessions within the same event, and much more. Is this functionality important?
• Are you going to need to take other kinds of online payments as well? If you are planning to support online donations, sell items, or take other online payments, it's worth considering tools that will support all your online payment needs.
• Is integrating the registrants into your database a key concern? If you are conducting a lot of events and the attendees are key constituents for your organization, it's critical to think through how you will get the registrants into your database. In this case, consider integration methods or even packages that support not just event registration but all your constituent-management needs.

Let's talk through the tools that might make sense for each of these options.

No-Frills Registration Tools

These tools allow you to set up a basic registration form that you can link to from your Web site, collect credit-card and other registration information, processes the credit-card charges, and then view (or export) a list of people who have registered. If you only run small, infrequent events, or you have large events where few attendees fit the characteristics of promising constituents (like large festivals), these more inexpensive tools can be just what you need.

PayPal

As with most types of online payments, if you're just looking for something inexpensive and solid and don't need any elaborate features, PayPal might work well for you. At an approximately 2.5-percent transaction fee, it's one of the most inexpensive ways to take online payments. It doesn't, however, integrate seamlessly into your Web site (when viewing the registration form, it's clear to registrants that they have left your site for PayPal's), and doesn't offer event-registration features like the ability to cap the number of signups. You'll also need someone with some HTML skills to help you set it up or to update event pricing.

Eventbrite

Formerly known as Mollyguard, Eventbrite offers some nice event-registration functions that extend PayPal's or Google Checkout's payment functionality. Eventbrite functionalities include the ability to cap the number of attendees; discount codes and ticket levels; simple attendee surveys; easy posting of your events to other sites such as Eventful or Google Calendar; and a limited ability to tailor a registration form to match your site and your needs. Payment is less integrated; the registrant is taken to the PayPal or Google Checkout site to finish the credit-card transaction. In addition to PayPal's fees (about 2.5 percent of the transaction) or Google Checkout fees (2 percent, plus $0.20 per transaction starting in January 2008), Eventbrite bills your organization for an additional 2.5 percent of the registration price, with a minimum of $0.99 and a maximum of $9.95 per registration. The tool is free for free events.

Brown Paper Tickets

Brown Paper Tickets is getting some buzz in the nonprofit community as a “fair-trade ticketing service.” While the company specializes in performance-type events with assigned seats and physical tickets, it also supports registration for “general admission” events for which no tickets are issued. The functionality is simple, but clean and effective, and includes nice features such as multiple pricing levels, a 24-hour phone registration line, and support for multiple dates for the same event. Brown Paper Tickets has no upfront setup charges or per-event fees, and offers an affordable and clear-cut pricing scheme, at $0.99 plus 2.5 percent of registration. Like EventBrite, the tool is free to use for free events.

Several of our contributors also recommended Sporg, another popular basic event-registration tool. Unfortunately, Sporg is no longer accepting new customers, as its parent company is instead focusing on alternative products.

For More Complex Events and Conferences

While the no-frills tools listed above may work great when managing straightforward events, nonprofits planning conferences will likely need additional functionality. There are a number of tools that combine event registration with tools to help you track and report on all the details of a complex event. For example, these tools may allow registrants to sign up for specific tracks or workshops within a session; support complex discounts such as early-bird pricing or discount codes; offer sophisticated reporting that lets you to automatically generate attendance lists by session or print nametags; allow one person to pay for someone else's registration; and more.

Acteva

Acteva falls between the more basic options identified above and the high-end event-management tools listed below with some additional functionality — such as support for workshops and sophisticated discount codes — at a mid-level price. You can brand your registration form with your colors, but it's not as flexible as some of the higher-end tools. Acteva uses a complicated pricing structure that results in charges of $1 to $2 per participant for events under $50 or so, and 4.5 to 7 percent for events that cost several hundred dollars or more.

123Signup

123Signup is tailored to the needs of those managing large events or conferences, with the ability to set registration limits for each session within a multi-track event; the ability for one person to pay for someone else's registration; sophisticated discounting; the ability for attendees to preview and approve their badge; and more. The company also offers a basic set of association-management tools (including a constituent database and email functionality), which might be useful for organizations that have few programs other than events. Many of 123Signup's clients are trade associations, and the functionality is geared in their direction. 123Signup charges 3.5 percent per registration, with a minimum charge of $1, in additional to standard credit-card fees of about 2.5 percent.

RegOnline

Like 123Signup, RegOnline is focused on those managing large events, with a similar or even more sophisticated set of features. RegOnline has all the features that 123Signup offers and in addition supports some of the more "back-end" or operational event-management processes, such as invoicing. RegOnline charges a fixed price per registrant — either $4.75 per registrant, or $150 per event and $3.50 per registrant, in addition to standard credit-card fees of about 2.5 percent, making it a very expensive choice for low-ticket-price events but attractive for events charging hundreds of dollars or more.

Cvent

A sophisticated online event-management software tool that includes event-registration functionality. The software includes support for multi-day, multi-track events; seamless integration with your Web site; and the ability to export data or create a programmatic feed from Cvent to your database. As Cvent typically has a substantial setup fee to get started, this option makes more sense for those looking to invest in a long-term solution rather than a small, one-time event.

Other event-registration tools that are targeted toward organizations running large, complex events include Certain Registration (formerly Register123) and eShow 2000.

Online Payment Generalists

In addition to the tools above that specialize in online event registration functionality, there are a number of packages that support a variety of types of payments, such as donations and online store sales, in addition to events. If you're hoping to collect payments for more than one transaction type, it can make sense to consolidate these functions into a single vendor. For instance, consider ClickandPledge, AuctionPay, QGiv, GiftTool, MemberClicks. or Contribute.com. (For more considerations when thinking through these kinds of tools, see Idealware's article A Few Good Online Payment Multitaskers.)

Integrating Registration with Other Constituent Functions

Organizations that offer events for their core constituents will need to think carefully about how to integrate the registration data with other information about their constituents, such as who has donated or volunteered. Nearly all registration options provide the ability to manually export data (for instance, via an Excel spreadsheet), but exporting data by hand and then manually importing it again can be time-consuming.

There are a number of packages that support many different constituent functions, including event registration, all wrapped into one system. If you're already using one of these tools, then certainly start by evaluating what event-registration functionality it can provide. If you're conducting a lot of events, or want to ensure a clear 360-degree view of how constituents are involved with your organization, one of these generally more expensive integrated packages can be worth the investment.

For instance, the vast majority of online membership and association-management systems — like Tendenci, Avectra NetForum, or GoMembers — support online event registration. For more information on these types of systems, see Idealware's article A Few Good Databases for Membership Organizations.

The integrated e-communications packages — such as DemocracyInAction, Kintera, and Convio — also provide event-registration functionality. In particular, both Kintera and Convio support group fundraising events and pledge-based event models (to provide online support for walkathon pledges, for instance) that may be hard to find in other types of systems. Salesforce.com might also be worth a look for those who are willing to invest some time into tailoring their event-registration needs within a sophisticated CRM platform.

Finally, those using an open-source content-management system — such as Joomla, Drupal, or Plone — should take a look at the add-on modules that will support event registration. They're not likely to be as feature-rich as the most sophisticated event-management tools above, but they may be a straightforward and fully integrated addition to your Web site.

How to Choose

There are a lot of options. How should you decide? Start by understanding how many events you are planning per year, and approximately how much the registration fee will be for each. A tool that has very affordable fees for a $40 event could be unreasonably expensive for a $400 conference.

Then think through your needs. Do you just need to get some basic online registration capability up and going, or do you have more sophisticated requirements? For instance, do you need to seamlessly integrate the registration form with your Web site? Allow registrants to register for multiple tracks or workshops within an event? Tailor complex discounts for particular audiences? Copy events or event templates to support frequent similar events? Do you want a package that can not only facilitate registration, but help you manage your event?

Keep in mind that many of these tools have free evaluation periods. This can not only give you a clear picture of the features offered, but also a much better sense as to how usable a tool is for your organization, and how accessible and helpful the vendor is when answering your questions.

Finally, as with pretty much any constituent tool, consider how you'll integrate the registrant information with the rest of your data. Is your volume low enough that you can manually import and export? Should you consider a package that will handle more than just event registration, or a registration tool that will allow you build an automated connector to your database?

At the end of the day, there are a lot of reasonable options for online event registration. With the right tool in place, you should be all set to let your event be the star, and your software a way to just watch the RSVPs roll in.