A registration allotment is a fixed number of registrations you buy up front, usually for a year, and draw down across your events. Cvent sells Attendee Hub this way. A per-head fee, like Eventbrite's or Humanitix's, bills each ticket as it sells. The allotment makes you forecast and settle later. Both still meter your attendees.
If you have ever been handed an order form with a number in a box marked "registrations" and wondered what happens when reality disagrees with it, this is for you. Here is what the meter counts, what happens either side of it, and how to read the clause before you sign.
What exactly is a registration allotment?
It is a contracted volume of registrations bundled with a platform licence for a fixed term. Cvent's own community guide to Attendee Hub licensing, published in May 2026, describes the price as three parts: an annual platform licence, a registration allotment you can spread across events in that term, and optional add-on bundles priced separately.
You will not find the allotment on Cvent's public pricing page, which lists Professional and Enterprise tiers, a "15 user logins" limit on Professional, and not a single monetary figure. The allotment lives in the order form, which is exactly where the guide tells you to look.
How is that different from a per-head fee?
A per-head fee has no forecast attached. Eventbrite's UK fee schedule charges 6.95% plus 59p per sold ticket, and Humanitix's UK pricing page charges 4.67% plus 46p per paid ticket before VAT. Sell ten tickets, pay for ten. Sell ten thousand, pay for ten thousand. There is nothing to overrun and nothing left on the table.
An allotment turns the same meter into a bet. You pay for a volume before the first registration opens. Guess high and you have funded registrations nobody used. Guess low and you are in the overage conversation. In both models the bill still rises with attendance. The allotment just moves the moment you find out how much.
What happens when you go over?
You negotiate, on terms you agreed earlier. Cvent's guide lists three routes: buy more allotment before you run out, agree an overage or true-up with your account team, or amend the contract. It says the exact mechanism, whether pre-purchased blocks, a per-registration overage fee or an amendment, is set out in your order form.
To be fair to Cvent, the same guide promises no disruption to live events, so registrations keep flowing while the commercial side is sorted out. That is the right promise. It also means your most successful event is the one most likely to produce a second invoice, which is an odd reward for selling out.
The overage clause is in here somewhere · credit: Ron Lach / Pexels
What happens if you come in under?
That depends on your contract, and the public documentation is quiet on it. The Cvent guide explains how to handle going over, but it does not say whether unused registrations roll into the next term. So ask, in writing, before you sign: does an unused registration expire at term end, carry forward, or reduce next year's price? If nobody can answer, assume it expires.
Compare that with Ticket Tailor's prepaid credits, which are the closest thing to an allotment in the self-serve world. Its pricing page sells credits from 22p each plus VAT, minimum 100, and states there is no time limit to use them. When the balance hits zero you drop to pay-as-you-go at 60p a ticket. That is an allotment with the two sharp edges filed off: nothing expires, and running out simply switches you to the standard rate.
How do the metering models compare?
The table below compares mechanics rather than totals, because the question here is what each vendor counts and what happens at the edges. Figures are from each vendor's own public pages, read on 29 September 2026.
| Platform | What is metered | When you commit | If you go over | If you come in under | Published price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cvent Attendee Hub | Registrations against a contracted allotment | Up front, for the licence term | More allotment, overage fee or contract amendment, per the order form | Not stated in public documentation | No figures published |
| Eventbrite (UK) | Every paid ticket sold | As tickets sell | Not applicable | Nothing to waste | 6.95% + 59p per ticket |
| Humanitix (UK) | Every paid ticket sold | As tickets sell | Not applicable | Nothing to waste | 4.67% + 46p per ticket, ex VAT |
| Ticket Tailor | Paid tickets, one credit each | Up front for credits, or pay as you go | Falls back to pay as you go | Credits do not expire | From 22p per credit prepaid, 60p pay as you go, plus VAT |
| Swoogo Professional | Users and custom domains, not registrations | Annual | No registration cap | Not applicable | USD 11,800 a year |
| eventcloud Team | Users only | Monthly or annual, per user | No registration cap | Not applicable | GBP 95 per user per month or GBP 950 per user per year |
Read down the second column and the market sorts itself. Four of the six count attendees in some form. Two count people on your team instead, and those two are the ones where a bigger event does not change the bill.
What Would Zero Booking Fees Save You?
eventcloud charges a flat subscription, not a cut of every ticket. Compare it with what your current platform takes.
Why do vendors like allotments?
Because they turn uncertain usage into booked revenue. An allotment gives the vendor a committed number at signature, a natural upsell moment when you approach the ceiling, and a renewal conversation anchored to last year's peak. None of that is sinister. It is the same logic as a mobile phone contract with a data cap.
It does shift the forecasting risk onto you, though. Your attendance numbers are the least predictable line in the budget, and the allotment asks you to price them a year early. Cvent's own guide pitches the model as predictable costs up front. The honest version is predictable costs until you are wrong.
How do you read an allotment clause before signing?
Seven questions will tell you whether the number in the box is a ceiling or a trap.
What counts as a registration? Ask whether cancelled, refunded, complimentary, speaker, staff and duplicate registrations all draw down the allotment.
Is it pooled or per event? The Cvent guide says the allotment can be shared across events in the term. Check your order form says the same.
What is the overage rate? Get the per-registration price in writing, not "to be agreed".
When is the true-up? Monthly, quarterly and end-of-term true-ups have very different cash-flow consequences.
Do unused registrations roll over? If not, what you did not use is simply gone.
Does renewal reset to your peak? A record year can quietly become next year's minimum commitment.
Which add-ons also scale with registrations? The guide notes add-on pricing can depend on your volume and allotment, so one meter may be driving several lines.
Who this is not for
eventcloud does not do virtual or hybrid events. If a large share of your programme happens on a screen, Cvent, Swoogo or Bizzabo are built for that and we are not.
eventcloud does not do attendee matchmaking. If one-to-one meeting scheduling between delegates is central to your event, a platform with that module will serve you better, allotment and all.
And if you sell a few hundred paid tickets a year, a flat seat is not your cheapest option. At Ticket Tailor's 60p pay-as-you-go rate plus VAT, one eventcloud annual seat at GBP 950 buys roughly 1,300 tickets' worth of Ticket Tailor fees. Below that, Ticket Tailor wins, and you should use it.
Where eventcloud fits
eventcloud meters one thing: the people on your team who log in. Events, tickets, registrations and attendees are unlimited on every plan, so the price is the same whether you register 500 people or 50,000, and there is no allotment to forecast, overrun or waste. That is the same structural choice Swoogo made with its unlimited registrations, which we looked at in our Swoogo pricing breakdown, at a different price point.
The edges, stated plainly: you pay per user, from one. White-label is an Enterprise capability, not part of the Team plan. Payments run through your own Stripe account, so card processing is a separate cost you pay Stripe directly. And it is an in-person platform only.
If you are comparing an allotment quote right now, our eventcloud and Cvent comparison sets the two models side by side, and the pricing page has the whole price on one screen, no order form required.
