The DIY stack
Most expos are still run on a spreadsheet and a WordPress site.
It works right up to the edition where two people sell the same stand and nobody can tell an exhibitor what their leads were worth.
The DIY stack is not a bad decision — it is an accumulation of reasonable ones. Each tool was right when it was added. The cost is the seams between them.
What Spreadsheets and WordPress is good at
It is cheap to start, everyone can use it, and nothing has to be approved. For a first edition with thirty exhibitors, a spreadsheet is genuinely the right call, and a WordPress site is a fine place to announce a date.
The job underneath the show
The stack breaks on scale and on time. Stand holds live in someone's head, the plan in the deck is a week behind the plan in the sheet, the site never ranks because it was built as a brochure, and the exhibitor's lead report is a weekend of copy-paste — arriving long after they decided whether to rebook.
Side by side
What changes.
The same jobs, handled by Expola and by Spreadsheets and WordPress's category.
| The job | Expola | The stack most shows actually run on |
|---|---|---|
| The floor plan | One live plan that takes payment and expires holds by itself | A spreadsheet, a PDF and a slide, all slightly different |
| The website | Built to rank, with the directory and program generated from your data | A brochure that search engines ignore |
| Exhibitor questions | A portal with the manual, deadlines, badges and invoices | Four hundred emails to one inbox |
| The door | Badge printing, access control, re-entry and a live queue view | A printed list and a marker pen |
| Proving it worked | Leads, footfall and revenue by stand on the last day | A report assembled the week after |
Product names are trademarks of their respective owners. This page describes what each category of tool is designed to do, not the current feature list of any one release.
Why teams move
Three reasons it keeps happening.
01
The seams are the cost
No single tool in the stack is the problem. The hours go into moving data between them and into the errors that survive the move.
02
Search is compounding revenue
A site that ranks sells tickets every edition without a media buy. A brochure site starts from zero each year.
03
Rebooking needs evidence
Exhibitors renew on a number. If it takes a week to produce, the decision is already made.
FAQ
Switching, in practice.
What teams ask before they move off Spreadsheets and WordPress.
See Expola next to Spreadsheets and WordPress, on your own event.
A demo built around your floor plan, your ticket types and the exhibitors you already have.