Planning events and conferences can be very rewarding. Nothing like the thrill of happy attendees, speakers and sponsors enjoying your work! But the road towards a successful event can be exhausting and stressful, with many hours spent working on small details.

At every stage of organizing a conference, there are tools to help you out. In this post, we'll look at the best software and services to help with conference planning, and streamline your event.

Quick Reference

Planning Stage — Preparation and Picking a Date

The planning stage is when the seed of your conference is planted. In this stage, you will usually rely on tools like Google Docs, AirTable, Notion and more to describe the initial idea, audience, venue needs, catering, etc.

Another important aspect is picking the date for your conference. Will you organize the conference on a weekday, or during the weekend? And are you sure the date doesn't coincide with a holiday?

For regional conferences, you typically know about office holidays. If you cater for an international audience, we found these two websites useful to check for holidays:

• timeanddate has a per-country overview of holidays, and whether they are national, local, or not observed. They also provide a list of upcoming dates, and the countries and regions where this date is a holiday.
• OfficeHolidays provides a handy calendar of worldwide holidays. Unfortunately it doesn't always list all countries when many of them observe a holiday on a given date. Luckily, they also have per-country calendars available.

Call for Speakers — Building an Agenda

When you want to invite external speakers to your conference, you may want to organize a Call for Speakers (CfS) or Call for Papers (CfP). Both words are used, and boil down to inviting speakers to send in the topics they can talk about. Tools exist to collect this data, and to evaluate topics that were submitted.

These are the tools we have used ourselves when organizing a conference:

• Sessionize is the de-facto CfP tool, especially in Europe. Most conference speakers list their talks on Sessionize, and when you open a CfP you can expect many talk submissions. Free for community events, $499/event for commercial events. They have great support, and volume pricing for organizations running many events. Sessionize also exports to Excel, which integrates directly with SpeakerTravel for travel booking.
• Pretalx is conference management software for organizing your call for papers. Speakers submit sessions, you evaluate and schedule. Pay-as-you-go billing based on expected attendee count and ticket price. Can be self-hosted if you need full control over your data.
• Google Forms is free and spartan. You have to manually create all fields and handle evaluation yourself. The upside: since there's no "Google Forms profile," speakers can't one-click submit their standard talk to 50 events. You may get fewer but more deliberate proposals.

When you have gathered a list of talks, the time comes to evaluate which talks you want to have at your conference. Both Sessionize and Pretalx come with tools to evaluate and rank talks using a variety of approaches, including blind voting by your program committee. Both tools also have an integrated scheduling option, and an API to integrate this schedule in your event website later on.

One thing to look out for with these tools is the ability to export data. Organizing a conference is juggling many tools, and an easy export to Excel or a Comma-Separated Values (CSV) document is priceless.

Travel — Getting your Speakers There

For local conferences, speakers may get to your conference by car or with public transport. When you have international speakers, you will need to arrange flights, trains, and hotels.

We're tooting our own horn here, but there's currently only one tool that lets you manage this with ease:

• SpeakerTravel lets you invite speakers into a self-service portal to search flights and trains. Speakers find their preferred travel, you approve within budget, and tickets are issued directly. No reimbursement, no email chains. Supports importing speakers from Sessionize, setting per-speaker budgets, and auto-approval for bookings within budget. Pay-as-you-go pricing.

Alternatively, you can gather travel options from your speakers and find and book flights using Google Flights or Kayak. A travel agent can also assist you with this task.

For hotels, it's often best to contact a hotel nearby your conference venue directly. If you need many rooms booked, they typically offer special rates and discounts.

Tip: Spell out your travel policy, and make it clear what parts of travel the conference will cover. This avoids discussion and potential nasty surprises.

Ticketing — Letting your Attendees in

The conference venue has been booked, speakers are coming, we're ready to go! Ticketing software will help to sell tickets to your attendees. Several options are available:

• Pretix is our personal favorite. Extensive options to set up a cloud-hosted or self-hosted ticket shop for free and paid events. They have a marketplace with many integrations, including payment gateways like Stripe. Pretix charges no fee for free events, and 2.5% of the ticket price for paid events.
• Tito is popular with tech conferences for its clean design and straightforward setup. Free for free events, paid plans start at $0.50 + 2% per ticket. Good API and webhook support if you want to integrate with other tools.
• Eventbrite provides a cloud-hosted ticket shop with built-in event discovery. Their pricing ranges from 3.5% + $1.59 per ticket down to 2% + $0.79 per ticket depending on your plan.

Keep in mind that payment processing fees apply on top of platform fees.

Feedback — How was the Experience?

Both during and after your event, feedback is a great instrument to improve the experience of all stakeholders: attendees, speakers, sponsors, and organizers. Some tools that help:

• Google Forms again, lets you create questionnaires. A tip: don't overdo the number of questions (people get bored quickly). To get enough meaningful responses, raffle a small prize between respondents.
• Slido lets you do live polls, quizzes and free-format Q&A during sessions, and collect feedback after the event. Free for smaller audiences, paid plans for larger conferences. Now part of Cisco Webex.

Ready to go!

Every stage of organizing a conference comes with its own challenges, and usually there is a tool that can help you out.

Keep in mind that no two events look exactly the same, and your mileage with these tools will vary. To organize a great event, find the software and services that work for you!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best CfP tool for conferences? Sessionize is the most widely used, especially for tech conferences. It's free for community events, $499 for commercial ones, and most speakers already have profiles there. Pretalx is a good alternative if you want self-hosting or pay-as-you-go billing.

How do I handle speaker travel for my conference? SpeakerTravel lets speakers self-book flights and trains within your budget. You approve with one click and tickets are issued directly. No reimbursement paperwork, no email threads about itineraries.

What ticketing platform should I use for a tech conference? Pretix and Tito are both popular with tech conferences. Pretix is more flexible and can be self-hosted. Tito has a cleaner UX and strong API. Eventbrite adds event discovery but takes a larger cut.