Best Event Diagramming Software in 2026
Event diagramming software turns a room and a guest count into a to-scale floor plan your venue, caterer, and AV team can all build from. We compared the nine tools worth knowing — what they cost, which handle production gear, and where the hidden per-seat fees live.
See the comparisonTools Compared
9
Price Range
$0 – $149/mo
Best Overall
EventDiagram
Last Updated
September 2026
The short answer
The best event diagramming software in 2026 is EventDiagram for most planners, venues, and AV teams. It is the only tool in this comparison that includes unlimited free collaborators on every tier — including its free plan — and its object library covers production gear (truss, LED walls, front of house, distro) rather than stopping at tables and chairs. Pricing runs from free to $18/month for small teams, or $149/month per property for venues.
Cvent Event Diagramming (formerly Social Tables) is the better choice for hotels and enterprises already running Cvent, starting at $49/month. Vectorworks Spotlight is the right tool if you need CAD-grade rigging, lighting, and cable plots. Prismm (formerly AllSeated) shuts down on December 31, 2026 and should not be adopted.
What event diagramming software actually does
Event diagramming software creates to-scale floor plans for events. You place tables, chairs, staging, and AV equipment into a room at accurate dimensions, and the software calculates capacity, manages seating assignments, and produces a plan you can share with clients, venues, and vendors for approval.
That's the definition, but it undersells what the category is for. A floor plan is the one document every party to an event works from. The venue uses it to set the room. The caterer uses it to place service stations. The AV production team uses it to position the stage, screens, and front of house. When those four parties are working from different versions of the same drawing, the mistake shows up at load-in — and by then it's expensive.
The better tools in this category do five things:
- Hold real scale. Objects are dimensioned in feet and inches, so a 72-inch round takes up the space a 72-inch round actually takes up.
- Calculate capacity live. Occupancy, aisle spacing, and seat counts update as you move things, instead of being counted by hand afterward.
- Handle room configurations. A divisible ballroom should produce every airwall combination with its own capacities.
- Render in 3D. Clients approve what they can picture. A 3D view closes the gap between a drawing and the room.
- Share without friction. Everyone who needs the current version should be able to see the current version.
The feature that actually decides it
If more than three parties touch your floor plan, the deciding factor isn't 3D or the size of the object library — it's whether sharing the plan costs money per person. Per-seat pricing is what pushes teams back into emailing screenshots, and a screenshot is how a room gets set wrong.
What changed in 2026
For most of the last decade this category ran on two names: Social Tables and AllSeated. Both are now owned by Cvent, and neither still trades under the name you knew.
- 2018 — Cvent acquires Social Tables. It is now sold as Cvent Event Diagramming.
- 2023 — AllSeated rebrands to Prismm and pivots toward immersive 3D venue experiences.
- April 2025 — Cvent acquires Prismm.
- 2026 — Cvent retires the standalone Prismm platform. It goes view-only on October 1, 2026 and shuts down entirely on December 31, 2026.
The practical effect is that the two most recognizable products in event diagramming are now one product from one vendor, sold on one contract. If you're inside the Cvent ecosystem already, that consolidation is convenient. If you're not, the independent options are worth a genuine look — several have improved materially in the last two years, and they price very differently.
Event diagramming software compared
Pricing verified September 2026 from published vendor pricing. Where a vendor doesn't publish rates, we've marked it as quote-based rather than estimating.
| # | Tool | Starting Price | 3D | AV / Truss Objects | Free Collaborators | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | EventDiagram | Free, then $9/mo | Yes (Pro) | Yes | Unlimited, all tiers | Most planners, venues, and AV teams |
| 2 | Cvent Event Diagramming | $49/mo | Yes | Limited | No — seat-based | Hotels and enterprises already on Cvent |
| 3 | Vectorworks Spotlight | Quote | Yes (CAD-grade) | Best in class | No — per-license | Rigging plots and lighting design |
| 4 | EventDraw | Quote | Yes | Limited | No — seat-based | Mid-market venues |
| 5 | Merri | $29/mo | Yes | No | Limited | Design-forward weddings and social events |
| 6 | 3D Event Designer | ~$30/mo | Yes | No | Limited | Budget 3D visualization |
| 7 | Floorplans by Tripleseat | Bundled | Yes | No | Within account | Venues already running Tripleseat |
| 8 | Planning Pod | Quote | Basic | No | Seat-based | All-in-one event management |
| 9 | Prismm (AllSeated) | Discontinued | Yes | No | — | Retiring December 31, 2026 |
The 9 best event diagramming software tools
What it is: A browser-based event diagramming tool that produces to-scale 2D and 3D floor plans with a guest and seating layer on top, built on the premise that everyone who needs to see a plan should be able to see it without paying for the privilege.
Pricing: Free tier (one active diagram, unlimited viewers). Solo $9/mo. Pro $18/mo for up to three editors, 3D, and the full production library. Business $149/mo for unlimited team members. Venues are $149 per property per month with unlimited event spaces and floor plan conversion included. Enterprise is custom.
Why it ranks first:
- Collaborators are free on every tier, including the free one. In most tools on this list, the caterer who needs to see where the buffet lands either buys a seat or gets a screenshot in an email thread. That's the difference between a plan that stays current and a plan that's wrong by Thursday.
- The object library covers production, not just banquets. Stage decks, LED wall configurations, truss, front of house, and distro are first-class objects at real dimensions — so the same file works for the banquet captain and the AV lead. Most tools here push you into CAD the moment something hangs or plugs in.
- Airwalls derive themselves. Draw a divisible ballroom once and every partition combination generates with its own capacity numbers. For a five-panel ballroom that's the difference between an afternoon and twenty minutes.
- Live capacity, guest import, and event-day check-in are built in, with spreadsheet import including meal and dietary tracking, and no attendee cap.
- AI-assisted drafting. Describe the event in a sentence — guest count, table style, stage position — and it generates a to-scale draft to review.
Limitations: It isn't CAD. If you need a hang plot with cable schedules, point loads, and photometrics, Vectorworks does things EventDiagram doesn't attempt. It also doesn't carry Cvent's decade of hotel RFP and sourcing integrations, so teams whose workflow runs through Cvent sourcing will feel friction leaving. And it's younger than the incumbents — a shorter track record is a fair thing to weigh.
Try EventDiagram free — no credit card, unlimited viewers on every plan.
Cvent Event Diagramming (formerly Social Tables)
What it is: The incumbent. Social Tables launched in 2011, was acquired by Cvent in 2018, and now sells as Cvent Event Diagramming. The vendor reports over 175,000 users and more than 4 million events planned on the platform.
Pricing: Standard $49/mo (15 events per year, one user). Pro $150/mo (50 events per year). Enterprise is negotiated and usually bundled into a wider Cvent contract.
Strengths: Depth and gravity. Over a decade of refinement, a 4.4-star average across 178 TrustRadius reviews, and one of the largest venue floor plan libraries in the industry — there's a real chance your hotel is already in it, drawn to scale, which saves a genuine step. If you run Cvent for registration and sourcing, the diagramming module inherits your event data instead of making you retype it.
Limitations: The event caps bite — 15 events a year is one busy month for an active planner. Collaboration is seat-based, so every vendor is either a line item or a PDF. And the meaningful functionality increasingly sits above the published tiers, behind a sales conversation.
Vectorworks Spotlight
What it is: Professional entertainment design software for lighting, rigging, staging, and AV. Not an event planning tool with a CAD feature bolted on — actual CAD with an entertainment-specific toolset.
Pricing: Quote-based subscription or perpetual license. The highest cost on this list.
Strengths: Nothing else is close for technical work. Truss and rigging libraries, cable networks, LED video wall objects, data-rich device symbols that feed directly into paperwork, photometric calculation, and 3D that's genuinely accurate rather than illustrative. It's the industry standard in production design, and recent releases have added enough seating, soft goods, and AV objects to make it usable for full event design rather than only technical plots.
Limitations: The learning curve is measured in months. It's overkill, and probably counterproductive, if what you need is a banquet layout by Friday. It's also a single-operator tool — sharing with a client means exporting, not inviting — and the cost only makes sense if someone uses it constantly.
EventDraw
What it is: A 2D and 3D event diagramming platform positioned explicitly as the alternative to Cvent for venues that want comparable capability without enterprise procurement.
Pricing: Quote-based, scaled to venue size. Generally lands below a comparable Cvent configuration.
Strengths: A large template library, clean drag-and-drop editing, solid 3D walkthroughs, and a sales process aimed at mid-market venues rather than procurement departments. Onboarding is typically faster than Cvent's.
Limitations: No published pricing, so you're on a sales call before you know whether it's viable. Seat-based collaboration. The production and AV object library is thinner than the banquet library.
Merri
What it is: A 3D event design platform focused on the visual side — how a room will look rather than how it will be built.
Pricing: Professional from $29/mo, All Access $39/mo, Venue from $150/mo.
Strengths: The best-looking renders on this list at this price. For a wedding or social planner selling a vision, that's most of the job. Strong decor and styling libraries.
Limitations: Presentation over production. Thin on AV, rigging, and technical objects, and the capacity math isn't built for a 900-person general session.
3D Event Designer
What it is: An affordable browser-based 3D floor plan and event design tool.
Strengths: Genuinely inexpensive 3D, a reasonable object library for the money, and quick to learn.
Limitations: Scale accuracy and capacity handling are less rigorous than the tools above it, and collaboration is limited. Not something a hotel banquet team is likely to accept as a working document.
Floorplans by Tripleseat
What it is: A 2D and 3D floor plan module attached to Tripleseat's venue sales and catering CRM.
Strengths: The layout lives on the booking record. For a venue already running Tripleseat for BEOs and catering sales, attaching the diagram to the event removes a whole class of version-control problems.
Limitations: Only makes sense as part of Tripleseat. Judged on its own it's mid-tier — fine for a private dining room, thin for a ballroom.
Planning Pod
What it is: A broad event management platform — invoicing, contracts, timelines, BEOs, registration — with floor plan tools as one module among many.
Strengths: Real breadth. If you want one system for contracts, payments, timelines, and layouts, it covers more ground than anything else here.
Limitations: The classic all-in-one trade-off — the diagramming module is adequate rather than strong. Basic 3D, limited object library, not built for technical production.
Prismm (formerly AllSeated)
What it is: Formerly AllSeated, one of the two dominant names in event diagramming for most of the last decade. Rebranded to Prismm in 2023, acquired by Cvent in April 2025.
Status: Discontinued. Accounts go view-only on October 1, 2026, and the platform shuts down entirely on December 31, 2026. It is no longer onboarding customers, and templates, favorites, and object groups do not transfer automatically to Cvent Event Diagramming.
Why it's still on this list: Because it still turns up in comparison articles and software directories that haven't been updated, and planners are still starting trials of a product that will be gone before most Q1 2027 events load in. If a 2026 roundup recommends Prismm without mentioning the retirement, treat the rest of its advice with suspicion.
How much does event diagramming software cost?
Event diagramming software costs $9 to $30 per month for individual planners, $18 to $150 per month for professional and small-team plans, and around $149 per month per property for venue plans. Enterprise agreements are negotiated and commonly run several thousand dollars a year.
- Free — $0. Usually one active diagram, watermarked exports, limited AI or 3D. Genuinely useful for testing whether a workflow fits before you spend anything — EventDiagram's free plan is the most capable of them.
- Individual — $9 to $30/mo. One editor, unlimited events, watermark-free exports. Right for a solo planner or a small rental company.
- Team / Pro — $18 to $150/mo. Multiple editors, 3D, fuller object libraries, branding and version history. The widest price spread on this list, and where per-seat versus flat-rate starts to matter a lot.
- Venue — around $149/mo per property. Unlimited spaces at the property, floor plan conversion, unlimited staff. If you're a hotel, compare this against per-seat pricing multiplied by your actual banquet and sales headcount.
- Enterprise — custom. SSO, audit logs, API access, multi-property rollups, dedicated support.
Where the real cost hides
Per-seat collaboration. A $49/month plan where four vendors and three internal stakeholders each need a login is not a $49/month plan. Before comparing sticker prices, count everyone who will realistically need to open the file — then price each option against that number.
How to choose the right tool
Per-seat pricing across a banquet and sales team gets expensive fast. Look at EventDiagram's venue plan, or Cvent if your property is already drawn in their library.
You need truss, LED, front of house, and distro as real objects. EventDiagram for speed and sharing; Vectorworks when the drawing has to be built from. Plenty of shops run both.
Stakeholders, caterer, AV, and venue all need the current version. The moment sharing costs money per person, people start emailing screenshots.
Merri if you're selling a look; EventDiagram's 3D if you're also coordinating a build and need the plan correct as well as pretty.
Frequently asked questions
Related resources
Live Event Production
Full-service staging, audio, lighting, and video for corporate general sessions and galas.
AV Rentals
Staging, LED, audio, and lighting inventory available for your next event.
Custom Scenic Fabrication
Branded environments and custom-built scenic elements designed around your floor plan.
Free Run of Show Template
The companion document to your floor plan — download our production schedule template.
