An exhibitor asks for a larger booth three weeks before the show. Moving a line on the floor plan takes seconds. Working out what that change means for the neighbouring stand, the aisle and the approved layout takes more care. This is where event floor plan software has to earn its place in your team’s workflow.
The plan serves several people at once: the sales team allocates booths, operations agrees the layout with the venue, and visitors use the map to find exhibitors. All need a current version they can trust. This guide explains the two main types of software, the tasks to test in a demo, the costs involved and how meeting scheduling fits alongside the plan.
What is event floor plan software?
Event floor plan software is a tool for creating a scaled layout of an event space and keeping it current while the event takes shape. For trade shows and exhibitions it usually goes further: booths carry a status and a price, exhibitors can reserve space directly on the plan, and the published plan becomes an interactive map for visitors.
You will find two main types of product under this name. The right starting point depends on whether you are arranging a room or managing exhibition space.
| Family | Built for | Typical jobs | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| Diagramming tools | Banquets, conferences, venue setups | Tables and seating, stages, 3D views, sharing layouts with the venue | Cvent Event Diagramming (formerly Social Tables), Prismm, SmartDraw |
| Exhibition floor plan platforms | Trade shows and expos with booths to sell | Booth inventory, price zones, reservations, exhibitor search, wayfinding | ExpoFP, Map D, Map Your Show, EXPOCAD |
The first family answers “how many round tables fit into Hall 3?”. The second answers “which booths are still free, what do they cost, and where is exhibitor X?”. If you run a gala dinner alongside your trade show, you may need both. If you sell floor space, a diagramming tool alone will not carry you.
One plan, three jobs
Once you sell space, the plan stops being a picture and becomes a working document. It has three jobs, and each job has a different owner in your team.
Job 1: selling space
For your exhibitor sales team, the plan is the product catalogue. Every booth needs a size, a price zone and a status: available, reserved or sold. Corner and island booths usually carry a premium, and returning exhibitors expect first refusal on last year’s spot. Exhibition platforms handle this on the map itself. Map D, for example, lets organisers pre-price corners and islands, shows each booth as available, reserved or sold, and keeps an audit trail of who changed an assignment (vendor information, 2026).
Keeping sales status in a spreadsheet and the plan in a separate PDF means updating both after each booking. Miss an update and the same booth could be promised twice. A shared record helps your team avoid that awkward conversation with an exhibitor.
Job 2: getting the layout approved and built
For your operations lead, who has to sign the final layout off with the venue, the plan is a compliance document. In the United States, the International Fire Code (2021 edition, Section 322) requires exhibition plans to be submitted to the authority having jurisdiction for approval before any exhibit is set up, and it limits the travel distance inside a booth to the nearest exit access aisle to 50 feet (15 metres). In Germany, the state regulations for assembly venues require aisles of at least three metres between exhibition areas. The rules differ from country to country, but the pattern is the same: once the plan is approved, aisles, exits and booth depths are not up for negotiation.
That makes version history a real requirement rather than a nice feature. When an exhibitor asks for two extra metres three weeks before the show, your operations lead needs to see what the approved version looked like, what changed since and who changed it. Without history, every late change becomes archaeology.
Job 3: guiding visitors
For your visitors, the plan is the map they use to decide their day, and most of them use it before they arrive. Research by CEIR (Center for Exhibition Industry Research), published in 2024, found that 90 per cent of attendees pre-plan their visit and that 64 per cent search for specific exhibits to visit while doing so.
How visitors use the plan
The route is planned before the doors open
For your floor plan, this means it has to be published early, and on the web, not only in the app. In the same report, CEIR’s research lead pointed out that exhibitors see more attendee use of show website features than of app features, most likely because the website goes live sooner. A searchable plan on your event website three weeks before the show does more work than a perfect map inside an app that visitors download on the morning of day one. The last figure shows the other gap: on site, exhibitors see interactive wayfinding screens heavily used, yet only one organiser in five offers them. If your venue can host a few screens at the hall entrances, that is one of the cheaper ways to stand out.
What to check before you buy
The three jobs translate into five checks. Run them in every demo with your own hall and your own last minute changes, not the vendor’s sample show.
- One source for booth data: Do booth number, size and exhibitor name come from your exhibitor records, or does someone type them into the plan by hand? Every manual transfer is a future error.
- Status and history: Can you see at a glance which booths are free, reserved and sold, and who changed an assignment and when?
- Publishing: Can the plan be embedded on your event website and update live, without re-exporting a PDF after every change?
- Real venue complexity: Several halls, levels, irregular booth shapes and outdoor areas. Test with your most difficult hall, not the easiest one.
- Export: Can you hand the plan and the booth list to your stand builder and the venue in a format they can open?
Before the demo ends, ask to follow one change from the exhibitor record through to the published visitor map. That reveals where your team would still need to update information manually.
What event floor plan software costs
The five checks narrow the field; the price narrows it further. Pricing in this category is more transparent than in most event technology, and the range is wide. The table shows published list prices as of September 2026; all figures are vendor information.
| Option | Model | Published price | What is included |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cvent Event Diagramming | Free plan | 0 US dollars | Up to three events, two diagrams per event, attendee lists of up to 150 |
| ExpoFP DIY | Monthly subscription | 149 US dollars per month for up to 100 booths | You draw the plan yourself; booth reservation included |
| ExpoFP Light | One-off fee | 990 US dollars at 100 booths | Plan built by the vendor, one month of hosting, no booth reservation |
| ExpoFP Standard and Pro | One-off fee | 1,500 and 2,100 US dollars at 100 booths | Built by the vendor, booth reservation, six or twelve months of hosting |
| Map Your Show, EXPOCAD | Quote | Not published | Booth sales and floor plan for large recurring shows |
Two observations help with the budget. First, the drawing itself is cheap; what you pay for is hosting, booth sales and support across the whole sales cycle. Second, the floor plan is rarely bought on its own. Many organisers get it as part of an exhibitor management suite, and whether that is the better route depends on how much of the contract and service order work you want in the same system. We compare those suites, including their floor plan scope and published price anchors, in our exhibitor management software comparison. If your suite already includes a plan, the question is not which floor plan tool is best, but whether the included one passes the five checks.
Which system should own the booth number?
As soon as the plan is connected to other systems, one design decision matters more than any feature: which system owns the booth number. On a typical trade show, at least four tools use it.
| System | Uses the booth number for | Should it own it? |
|---|---|---|
| Exhibitor management | Contract, invoice, service orders | Usually yes |
| Floor plan software | Inventory, map, wayfinding | Yes, if booths are sold on the plan |
| Event website and app | Exhibitor search, “you are here” | No, it reads the number |
| Meeting scheduling | Where a booked meeting takes place | No, it reads the number |
Agree where booth numbers are maintained. If exhibitors buy space directly on the plan, it can pass the number to the exhibitor record. If bookings originate in your exhibitor management system, the plan can take its numbers from there. Either approach can work, provided changes start from one reliable source and reach every connected view.
What a floor plan cannot do
An accurate map gets a visitor to booth B12. Meeting a particular person there still requires an appointment: will they be available at two o’clock? Dedicated meeting areas can also help. In the same CEIR research, 71 per cent of exhibitors who used meeting space outside their booth rated it effective.
Visitors who research exhibitors before a show may also welcome the chance to book a conversation. That needs requests and confirmations, available time slots and a clear location, whether at a booth or in a meeting area. Our guide to trade show matchmaking software explains the process from visitor profile to confirmed appointment.
Converve adds meeting scheduling alongside your floor plan. Exhibitors maintain their profiles, booth staff and location details in the exhibitor portal. You define which groups may meet through the meeting matrix, and confirmed appointments are scheduled without clashes, with a booth or table assigned to each. Floor plans and space sales stay in your dedicated tool, connected by the shared booth number. Our trade show solution page explains the setup.
Frequently asked questions
What is event floor plan software?
Event floor plan software creates a scaled layout of an event space and keeps it up to date. For trade shows it usually adds booth inventory with prices and status, booth reservations by exhibitors and an interactive, searchable map for visitors. Diagramming tools for banquets and seating are a separate category.
Is there free event floor plan software?
Yes, with limits. Cvent Event Diagramming (formerly Social Tables) has a free plan for up to three events with two diagrams each, which suits seating and room layouts. Map D lets you build an exhibition floor plan free of charge before buying, and ExpoFP offers a free trial. Once booths are sold on the plan and it has to stay online for months, expect to pay (vendor information, September 2026).
What is the difference between a floor plan and an event diagram?
An event diagram shows how a room is set up: tables, chairs, stage, catering. A trade show floor plan shows booths as sellable units with a size, price and status, and it is published for exhibitors and visitors. Diagramming tools are built for the first job, exhibition platforms for the second.
How much does trade show floor plan software cost?
Published prices range from free diagramming plans to a few thousand US dollars per show. ExpoFP, for example, lists 149 US dollars per month for a self-built plan with up to 100 booths and one-off fees of 990 to 2,100 US dollars for vendor-built plans at that size (ExpoFP pricing page, September 2026). Platforms for large recurring shows usually quote individually.
Can exhibitors book booths directly on the floor plan?
On exhibition floor plan platforms, yes. Exhibitors select a free booth on the map, reserve it and in many tools pay directly, while the organiser approves and tracks the booking. Diagramming tools do not offer this.
Does Converve offer floor plans?
No. Converve focuses on exhibitor relationships and one to one meetings: exhibitor portal, meeting matrix, meeting scheduling without clashes including booth or table assignment, check-in and lead capture. For the floor plan, organisers use a dedicated tool or the plan inside their exhibitor management system.
Conclusion: buy for the three jobs, not the drawing
Test floor plan software against the work your team actually does: allocating booths, checking changes against the approved layout and publishing a current map well before the show. A demo using your own hall is a useful way to see whether the tool fits. Agree where booth numbers are maintained and how changes reach the other systems.
If you also want to plan the conversations taking place at those booths, get in touch with Converve. Our B2B matchmaking page shows how booked meetings can fit into your trade show schedule.
