Enterprise Event Platform Comparison
GuestlistOnline vs Cvent
The enterprise standard, priced by quote, vs a self-serve platform you can set up this afternoon.
Free up to 50 guests · Free plan: no credit card · Free events: no fees
Short answer
Cvent is the broadest event platform there is, sold by quote only: procurement data puts contracts between $5,000 and $95,000 a year, third parties report $7 to $12 per registrant on top, and onboarding takes weeks. For dozens of conferences a year with venue sourcing and Salesforce sync it is the standard. GuestlistOnline is self-serve, free up to 50 guests and €29 a month for unlimited events, with offline check-in and promoter tracking built in.
Side by side
Feature comparison
An honest look at how the two platforms compare.
| Feature | GuestlistOnline | Cvent |
|---|---|---|
| Costs & payouts | ||
| Free plan | Free: 1 event, 50 guests, guest list, RSVP page and manual check-in, no credit card | None. Cvent offers a pay-as-you-go trial instead, which charges a per-registration fee plus a revenue share; neither amount is published |
| Entry price | €0 free, €19.99 for a single event, €29/month or €249/year on Pro | Not published. Professional and Enterprise are quote-only. Vendr reports a median of $19,550 a year across 194 purchases, in a range of $5,133 to $94,530 (Feb 2026), a third-party estimate, not a Cvent price |
| Cost per attendee | None. Guests are unlimited on Per Event and on Pro, and the plan price is the whole price | Estimated at $7 to $12 per registrant per event by Docket (Apr 2026) and eventcloud (Jun 2026); the University of Washington rate card lists $7 per registrant per event for the Attendee Hub and app. Cvent publishes no figure of its own |
| Fee per paid ticket | 5% + €0.25 per ticket in the ticket currency, payment processing included, and no fees on free events | Not published. Cvent Payment Services charges a percentage that Cvent says varies by contract, or you bring your own gateway such as Stripe and pay its rates |
| How you buy it | Sign up with a card, brand the page and open registration the same afternoon | Quote only, through sales. Third parties report implementation at $5,000 to $50,000 on top of the licence, and one- to three-year auto-renewing contracts |
| Time to first event | Minutes. There is nothing to implement and nobody to call | Onboarding is reported to run from about five weeks to several months, with a steep learning curve and, in practice, a dedicated administrator |
| Guest list & RSVP | ||
| Guest import | CSV import with names, email addresses and mapped columns | Contact import from xls, xlsx or txt files, invitation lists, registration types and registration paths |
| Plus-ones | Plus-ones with names and your own wording on the registration page | Up to 10 guests per registrant, each with their own registration path and questions |
| Waitlist | Capacity limit that closes registration when full, plus guest approval | Event and session waitlists, approvals, group registration, early-bird pricing and capacities per event, item and session |
| Promoter tracking | Promoter links with commissions and per-promoter reporting | Not published. Registration types and paths can record which list a registrant came from, but no promoter links or commission reporting are documented |
| Check-in & door | ||
| Offline check-in | PWA scanner on iOS and Android, installed without an app store, scans with no signal and syncs afterwards | Partly. Cvent documents that OnArrival can check guests in, edit them and print badges offline once the event is downloaded, but logging in, walk-in registrations, payments and syncing all need a connection |
| Several devices at once | Multiple scanner devices on the same guest list, synced live, with door-staff access tokens | OnArrival runs on iOS and Android with a kiosk mode; Cvent publishes no device limit, and rental hardware and OnArrival 360 onsite staff can be booked |
| Badge printing | Not offered | On-demand badge printing at the door, kiosk mode, session scanning and RFID or NFC badges, with rental hardware |
| Venue sourcing | Not offered | Venue sourcing and strategic meetings management are part of the same platform |
| Branding & communication | ||
| Branding and white-label | Custom branding from Per Event (€19.99); full white-label on Enterprise | A custom URL and private domain through CNAME, custom code and a custom-branded attendee app; full branding and the API sit on the Enterprise tier |
| SMS to guests | Email invitations, reminders and templates, no SMS blasts | Email, push and in-app messaging through the Attendee Hub, and SMS alerts to planners; a Cvent community thread from June 2023 reports that Flex registration sends no SMS reminders to attendees |
| Attendee app and networking | Not offered, there is no attendee app, no 1:1 meetings and no streaming | Attendee Hub and the Cvent Events app: agenda, 1:1 meetings, messaging, AI recommendations, Q&A, polls and virtual or hybrid streaming, priced per registrant |
| Platform | ||
| Languages | 7 languages in the dashboard, the emails and the registration pages | 18 event languages, 30 in the attendee app and 24 in OnArrival; the planner interface itself is English-centric |
| Data location | Hosted in the EU, GDPR-compliant, with no ISO or SOC certification claimed | EU customers hosted in Frankfurt and Dublin, with ISO 27001 and ISO 27701, SOC 1 and SOC 2 Type II, PCI Level 1 and GDPR |
| Team access | 6 roles, up to 5 team members on Per Event and 50 on Pro | 15 user logins on Professional and unlimited on Enterprise, with roles, SSO and MFA |
| API and integrations | REST API and webhooks on Enterprise; Stripe Connect for payouts | REST API on Enterprise, plus Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, Dynamics, Eloqua, Pardot, NetSuite, Concur, Zoom, Webex and Teams. No Zapier |
| Export | CSV export of guests, RSVPs, answers and check-in status | CSV and Excel export |
| Best for | Organisers, venues, clubs and small teams who need a guest list, tickets and a door without a procurement cycle | Corporate and association teams running dozens of events a year with venue sourcing, CRM sync, hybrid streaming and badging at scale, on a five-figure budget with a dedicated admin |
Facts verified on 2026-09-17. Sources are listed at the bottom of this page.
Pricing
What each one costs
GuestlistOnline
- Free €0
1 event, 50 guests, guest list, RSVP page, manual check-in
- Per Event €19.99 one-off
Unlimited guests for one event, QR check-in, templates, branding, gift fund, 5 team members
- Pro €29/month or €249/year
Unlimited events and guests, analytics, organisation settings, 50 team members, 7-day trial
- Enterprise Custom
White-label, API and webhooks, dedicated support and SLA
Free events: no fees. Paid tickets: 5% + 0.25 per ticket in the ticket currency, payment processing included.
Cvent
- Professional Quote only
15 user logins, registration, websites, reporting
- Enterprise Quote only
Unlimited logins, Attendee Hub, OnArrival, API, SSO
No published prices. Vendr (Feb 2026): median $19,550/year across 194 purchases. Per-registrant fees of $7–$12 reported by Docket and eventcloud (2026). Free pay-as-you-go trial with an undisclosed per-registration fee.
Key differences
What sets them apart
The details that matter when choosing between the two.
Where the price starts
Cvent publishes no prices at all. What is public comes from buyers and resellers: Vendr puts the median contract at $19,550 a year across 194 purchases, in a range of $5,133 to $94,530, Docket and eventcloud estimate $7 to $12 per registrant per event on top, and implementation is reported at $5,000 to $50,000, usually on a one- to three-year auto-renewing contract. Those are third-party estimates, not Cvent figures. GuestlistOnline is free for one event with 50 guests, €19.99 for a single event of any size, and €29 a month or €249 a year for unlimited events, bought with a card.
Where Cvent wins: the entire event programme
Cvent is not really a guest-list tool, and comparing it to one flatters us. It sources venues, manages the meetings programme, builds registration with paths, sessions, waitlists and 130+ currencies, runs the Attendee Hub app with 1:1 meetings, AI recommendations and streaming, prints badges at the door with RFID and NFC and rents you the hardware and the staff to do it, and syncs the lot into Salesforce, Marketo, Dynamics or Concur, behind ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type II and PCI Level 1 with EU hosting in Frankfurt and Dublin. GuestlistOnline offers none of that: no venue sourcing, no attendee app, no networking, no streaming, no badge printing and no CRM sync.
Where GuestlistOnline wins: self-serve and promoters
You cannot buy Cvent today. Every tier is quoted through sales, the pay-as-you-go trial charges an undisclosed per-registration fee plus a revenue share, and onboarding is reported to take five weeks to several months. GuestlistOnline takes a card, opens registration the same afternoon, sells paid tickets at 5% + €0.25 each with payment processing included and no fees on free events through your own Stripe Connect account including iDEAL, and gives each promoter a link, counts who actually arrived through it and works out the commission, something Cvent does not document at all.
Both work offline, with different edges
Cvent is one of the few enterprise platforms that writes down exactly what offline means: OnArrival checks guests in, edits them and prints badges with no connection once the event is downloaded, but logging in, walk-in registrations, payments and syncing all need internet. GuestlistOnline installs a PWA scanner straight from the browser on any iPhone or Android phone, with no app store involved, caches the list before doors open, scans in a basement and syncs when the signal returns. Both survive the bad Wi-Fi; only one of them needs a purchase order first.
Fair is fair
When Cvent is the better choice
Teams running a year-round programme of large conferences will get value from Cvent that a guest-list platform cannot offer.
- Venue sourcing and strategic meetings management in one contract
- Salesforce, Marketo, HubSpot or Concur integration is required
- Hybrid or virtual streaming with an attendee app and networking
- Onsite badging at scale with rental hardware and onsite staff
Migration
Switching from Cvent
Cvent exports registrants and reports to CSV and Excel, and Enterprise contracts add a REST API. Pull the registrant file, then import it into GuestlistOnline and map the columns you want to keep. Check your contract first: one- to three-year auto-renewing terms are widely reported, so the notice date matters more than the export does.
- Registrant names, email addresses and phone numbers
- Registration type and the custom question answers you map on import
- Check-in history, as the exported record of who arrived and when
- Venue sourcing, the meetings programme and supplier data
- Attendee Hub sessions, agendas, 1:1 meetings and streaming recordings
- Badge templates, RFID and NFC hardware profiles, and the Salesforce, Marketo or Concur syncs
Common questions
Frequently asked questions about GuestlistOnline vs Cvent.
How much does Cvent cost?
Cvent does not publish a price. Professional and Enterprise are both quote-only, so the only public numbers come from buyers and resellers: Vendr recorded a median of $19,550 a year across 194 purchases in February 2026, in a range of $5,133 to $94,530; Docket (April 2026) and eventcloud (June 2026) estimate $7 to $12 per registrant per event on top of the licence, and the University of Washington rate card lists $7 per registrant per event for the Attendee Hub and app; implementation is reported at $5,000 to $50,000. Treat all of those as third-party estimates, not Cvent figures. GuestlistOnline publishes everything: €0 free, €19.99 for a single event, €29 a month or €249 a year.
Does Cvent have a free plan or a trial?
There is no free plan. Cvent offers a pay-as-you-go trial, where you build and run an event without a licence and pay a per-registration fee plus a revenue share, but Cvent does not publish either amount, so you find out what it costs by asking. GuestlistOnline has a free plan with one event and up to 50 guests and no credit card, a €19.99 one-off price for a single event with unlimited guests, and Pro at €29 a month or €249 a year with a 7-day trial.
What does Cvent charge per ticket?
It does not publish a rate. Cvent Payment Services takes a percentage that Cvent itself describes as varying by contract, and the alternative is to connect your own gateway, Stripe among them, and pay that gateway directly. Either way the number lives in your contract rather than on a pricing page. GuestlistOnline publishes one rate: 5% + €0.25 per paid ticket in the ticket currency, with payment processing included, and no fees on free events, payouts land in your own Stripe Connect account, iDEAL included.
Does Cvent work offline at the door?
Partly, and Cvent is unusually clear about where the line falls. Once the event is downloaded to the device, OnArrival can check guests in, edit registrations and print badges with no connection. Logging in, registering walk-ins, taking payments and syncing back to the account all need internet, so a device that has not been prepared before doors open is not much use. GuestlistOnline runs a PWA scanner you install from the browser on any phone without an app store; it caches the list, scans with no signal and syncs afterwards, but it prints no badges and registers no walk-ins.
What does Cvent do better than GuestlistOnline?
Almost everything an enterprise programme needs beyond the list. Venue sourcing and strategic meetings management have no equivalent here. Neither does the Attendee Hub app with 1:1 meetings, AI recommendations, Q&A, polls and hybrid streaming, nor onsite badge printing with RFID and NFC, rental hardware and OnArrival 360 staff, nor CRM sync into Salesforce, Marketo, Dynamics, Eloqua or Concur, nor SSO, MFA, ISO 27001, ISO 27701, SOC 2 Type II and PCI Level 1. Registration logic is deeper too: paths, sessions, waitlists, 130+ currencies. If any of that is on your requirements list, GuestlistOnline is the wrong tool and we would rather say so.
Sources
Where these facts come from
- cvent.com Cvent pricing and tiers
- cvent.com Cvent pay-as-you-go trial
- cvent.com Cvent security and compliance
- support.cvent.com Cvent support, does OnArrival work without internet
- community.cvent.com Cvent Community, CPS percentage charging
- community.cvent.com Cvent Community, planner discussions on Flex SMS and registration
- vendr.com Vendr marketplace, Cvent contract data (Feb 2026)
- docket.io Docket, Cvent pricing research (Apr 2026)
- finance.uw.edu University of Washington, event solutions rate card
Spotted something out of date? Email go@guestlistonline.com and we will correct it.
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