Conference Registration Setup: A Checklist from Ticket Groups to Badges

Set up conference registration in this order: one ticket group per audience, one form per group, price windows and promo codes, capacity, confirmations, payments, badge design, then a check-in rehearsal. Each step feeds the next, because answers on the form end up on the badge and ticket numbers end up at the door. Here is the checklist, with the reasons.

Who Are You Registering, and Does Each Audience Get Its Own Ticket Group?

Yes, and this is the decision that makes everything else easier. A conference rarely has one audience. It has paying delegates, speakers who should never see a price, exhibitor staff, sponsors, press, students and the occasional VIP whose assistant will register them. Give each its own ticket group with its own form.

Speakers, exhibitor staff and members can sit in private ticket groups that are reachable only by a secret link, so the public form never shows them. That keeps the delegate page clean and stops somebody's cousin registering as "keynote speaker". If you are tempted to build one giant form with questions that only apply to some people, the piece on showing different questions to different attendee types explains why a separate form per group is tidier.

What Should Each Form Ask?

Ask only what you will use on the badge, in the programme or at the door. Forms take text, dropdown, single and multiple choice, date, time, country, phone, address, a Terms agreement, section headings and page breaks, with validation as people type. Answers flow to badges, PDF tickets, emails, the attendee list and the Excel export, matched by question, so renaming or translating a question later does not break any of them.

That matching is the quiet hero of the whole setup. Decide the badge fields first (name, organisation, job title, perhaps a country), then write the questions that feed them, then add the extras you genuinely need, such as dietary requirements. Every extra question lowers completion, and nobody has ever finished a form and thought "that was too short".

How Should Prices and Promo Codes Behave?

Let them change themselves. Stacked price windows switch from early bird to standard to door without anyone logging in on the deadline, and a sold ticket keeps its amount and VAT treatment. Promo codes can be restricted to named email domains (handy for a partner company's delegates), scoped to tickets, add-ons or paid sessions, and set to skip group rates when you do not want them stacking.

For companies sending a team, group rates let you set up to six "from N tickets, X each" breaks per paid price window, counted per pass per order. One order line takes up to 99 of a ticket type. If you have an existing list from a spreadsheet or another platform, you can import attendees from Excel or CSV once the event is published: every row is checked before anything is written, and emails go out only if you choose.

What Does Capacity Need to Say?

Set a capacity per ticket type and for the event as a whole, and give each bookable session its own. Sessions can be free or paid, included with chosen ticket types, closed by a booking cut-off and protected by clash refusal, and delegates pick them on a Sessions step at checkout, one card per named attendee. A waiting list for tickets not yet on sale emails everyone the moment they open.

Coming soon: a registration close date as its own setting. Need it for your conference? Tell us how your registration works at eventcloud.io/contact.

What Do People Receive After They Register?

Everyone whose details were filled in gets their own confirmation and ticket, and the person who booked gets an order confirmation with the order summary and totals, listing who each ticket went to. It is an order confirmation, not an invoice. Each ticket carries a nine-digit ticket number on the PDF and in the email, and an optional Code 128 barcode element is available for your designs. Order confirmations include calendar files (.ics) for the event and each session held.

When a ticket asks for attendee details, each person needs their own email address, which is a gentle way of making sure the badge belongs to the person who will turn up. Emails, PDFs and form labels follow the attendee's language across five production languages (UK English, US English, Spanish, German and French), with up to five languages in total for an event. One catch to remember: a new ticket group's confirmation starts in English until you publish a version per language.

How Do Payments and VAT Fit In?

Payments run through Stripe's hosted checkout, settled straight into your own Stripe account. Card, Apple Pay and Google Pay show on supported devices, there is no commission from eventcloud (Stripe's own fee still applies), and each event uses one currency. Set your organisation-level VAT as inclusive or exclusive and it is frozen onto every order. On a published event, even free registrations need a connected Stripe account, so connect it early rather than at 11pm the night before launch.

What Should Be Decided About Badges Before Anything Is Printed?

Which fields go on the badge, in what size, and how badges get printed on the day. The badge and ticket designers work in real millimetres with live data from any registration question, so what you see in the designer is the size that comes out of the printer. Badges can print in the primary language or, with a switch, in each attendee's language, and you can print any attendee's badge from the dashboard, one per action, through the print dialog.

For arrivals, the self-service Badge Kiosk is a laptop with a printer beside it: visitors type their ticket number, check the badge, correct their name or printed details if you allow it, and print, which also checks them in. Silent printing runs through Edge, Chrome or Firefox kiosk mode on Windows. The badge printing page has the commands and the layout options. Coming soon: batch badge printing from the dashboard. Need it for your conference? Tell us how many badges you print and when.

How Will the Door Work?

Staff open one link on any phone or tablet and enter a four-digit PIN, then find a ticket by scanning the QR code or typing a code, including the nine-digit ticket number. The screen shows name, email, phone, company, ticket and pass type, flags repeat scans, and refuses refunded, unpaid and (on a published event) test tickets. Neither the attendee list nor the Excel export shows who checked in at the entrance; Insights shows totals, such as the check-in rate and arrivals by hour. The check-in page covers session scanning too.

What Should the Platform Not Be Counting?

Anything that grows when your conference does well. Ask each vendor what the bill follows, because registration software usually meters one of seats, registrations or add-ons. The table shows what three well-known tools say on their own pages.

Sources: Bizzabo pricing, RegFox pricing and Eventcombo pricing. These pages change without notice, so confirm the current terms before you shortlist.

When Should You Rehearse?

Before you publish, while it is still free to experiment. The free trial lets you build and rehearse the whole event, then you subscribe to publish. Register yourself as a delegate, a speaker and an exhibitor, print each badge, and scan the tickets on the check-in link with a colleague holding the PIN. Attendee import needs a published event, so it is not part of the trial.