Event Marketing and Management Platforms

Using comprehensive event technology is a necessity for marketers to effectively reach event audiences and deliver engaging experiences. Use this research to match your business requirements for virtual and in-person events and select technology vendors to deliver high-value event experiences.

Market Definition

Gartner defines event marketing and management platforms as tools that enable B2Bmarketers to execute virtual and/or in-person events for external audiences. These platforms provide native capabilities to engage and communicate with prospective attendees, registrants and sponsors, manage logistics, deliver content and enable attendees to engage with other participants. Out-of-the-box integrations with sales force automation and marketing automation platforms are provided to track engagement. Features and capabilities are provided in a self-service model, with some platforms offering managed service support to run the technology when preferred. The event technology market does not include webinars or internal meeting-specific solutions.

Event marketing and management platforms help B2B event and marketing teams to create events, tradeshows, conferences, roundtables and field marketing events for engaging prospective buyers, customers and partners via in-person and/or virtual formats. To support this effort, event technology platforms offer capabilities to manage the end-to-end development and delivery of event experiences across multiple use cases.

Use cases are specific to external audiences and multiple-session or in-person event formats rather than meetings with internal audiences and/or webinars.

Common use cases include:

Hosted Conferences with Exhibitors — This use case includes first-party-hosted, large-scale events, delivered in person with hundreds or thousands of attendees, with multiple tracks and concurrent sessions. The event is typically an organization’s annual flagship conference. For this use case, the platform includes website, mobile-application and agenda capabilities to support the event, registration and payment processing for attendees, and on-site badge printing and check-in support. The platform includes sponsor management to support tiered sponsorships, exhibit hall management and lead capture.

Hosted Conferences/Roadshows — This use case includes first-party hosted events, typically with hundreds of attendees, and may include multiple tracks and concurrent sessions. This scenario may be delivered in person, or virtually using live, “simulive,” or on-demand models. For this use case, the platform includes website and mobile-application access to the agenda, along with content development and distribution to support the event and attendee registration.

Hosted Field Marketing Events — This use case includes first-party-hosted, smaller events to support sales prospecting and/or customer retention and growth initiatives. They typically include fewer than 100 attendees and are held in-person with single or concurrent sessions. The attendees are often high-value target audiences, including prospects and existing customers. For this use case, the platform includes website, mobile-application and agenda capabilities to support the event and registration processing for attendees, in addition to agenda management.

Report 2025

Here is a summary of the vendors featured in the Gartner magic quadrant 2025 report.
For the full analysis and detailed insights, you can read the report here and view the magic quadrant graphic here.

Market Status	Market Vendor
Leader	RainFocus
Leader	Cvent
Leader	Bizzabo
Leader	vFairs
Niche Player	Swoogo
Niche Player	Stova
Niche Player	EventMobi
Challenger	SpotMe