How to host an expo

Host an Expo asks for the basics — name, date, venue and timezone. Once it exists you land in the workspace, and the Booths tab is where the floor gets built.

• Create booth tiers first (Gold, Standard, Food Stall…). A tier carries its price and any perks, such as meal or drink coupons.
• Then add the booths themselves and assign each one a tier. Exhibitors pick from what is still free.
• Optional: turn on the floor plan and draw the hall. Place each booth on a grid alongside the entrance, stage and aisles, and exhibitors pick their own stand from the map.
• Set the timezone on the event, not in your head. Every date a guest sees is printed from it.

Price the tiers before you share the exhibitor link. Changing a price after someone has paid means issuing a refund.

The workspace tabs run along the top: Booths, Vendors, Visitors, Invitations, Share, Schedule, then More for the rest.

Booths and badges are sold by card through Stripe. Connect Stripe payouts first — until you do, a paid tier cannot be sold.

• Card sales carry a booking fee — Stripe’s processing plus EventVidia’s 2.5% (minimum $0.50). You choose whether the buyer covers it or you absorb it.
• A booth is confirmed the moment the payment clears, and the exhibitor gets their tier’s coupons and lead scanner straight away.
• Settled with an exhibitor offline instead? Mark them paid from your expo workspace and they arrive in exactly the same state as a card sale.

We can’t see, confirm or refund a payment made directly to you. Settle those with the person who paid.

A corner by the entrance is worth more than a stand behind a pillar, and the floor plan is how you charge for that — but you never price a booth directly.

• Make a tier for the good positions — a Premium Corner at $700 — then place it on the corners. Price belongs to the tier, so premium is something you position rather than something you type.
• The map is coloured by tier, so it doubles as your price map: you can see at a glance whether your expensive stands are actually in the good spots.
• You can move a sold booth — halls get rearranged. You cannot change its tier, because the tier carries the price and the coupons that exhibitor already paid for.

Picking a booth holds it for 30 minutes while the exhibitor pays; it only becomes sold once the money arrives. An abandoned checkout puts the stand back on sale by itself.

The Share tab holds two public links, and they do different jobs. Send the right one to the right audience.

• Recruit exhibitors — the booth registration page. Vendors pick a tier and a booth and pay.
• Invite visitors — the attendee registration page. This is the one that mints badges.
• Share from the buttons in the app rather than copying the address bar, so visits are attributed to the channel you sent them through.

Exhibitors do not need an EventVidia account to register. Never make that a requirement of attending.

Each link has Copy and Share buttons beside it.

The Vendors tab tracks who has registered, who has paid and who still owes. You can add exhibitors yourself, upload a spreadsheet, or copy the list from a previous event.

• Bulk upload accepts CSV, TSV and Excel. A row needs a company name and either an email or a phone.
• Copy from a previous expo brings across last year’s exhibitors and visitors so you are not retyping them.
• Invitations and Messages reach the people already on the list; Share reaches everyone else.

Every visitor who registers gets a QR badge. One code, three readers: the visitor’s own pass, the door, and any exhibitor’s booth scanner.

• At registration a visitor chooses whether booths may have their email and phone. It is optional — declining still gets them a badge and still gets them in.
• When they decline, a booth that scans them sees their name and city, and nothing else.
• An exhibitor only ever receives visitors who let that booth scan them. There is no list of everyone.

Scanning the same visitor twice at one booth updates the rating and note. It never creates a duplicate.

The volunteer scan link opens a scanner on any phone — no login, no app install. Share it with whoever is working the entrance.

• Each exhibitor gets their own separate lead-scanning link from their portal, to hand to their booth staff.
• Both work offline-ish in the sense that a failed scan can simply be retried; nothing is lost by scanning twice.

The scan link is the credential. Anyone holding it can check people in, so regenerate it after the event.

A laptop webcam will read a badge held up to it, but a phone is far quicker on a door.

Off by default, because most expos do not need them. Turn on only what you will actually use.

• Floor plan & booth map — draw the hall and let exhibitors choose their own stand. Off keeps the plain tier list.
• Liability waiver — visitors sign at registration and the exact wording they agreed to is stored.
• Food & bar scanner — redeem the meal and drink coupons that come with a booth tier.

Exhibitors export their leads from their own portal. You keep the visitor list, the schedule and the documents in the workspace.

• An exhibitor who later signs up for EventVidia can claim their booth and bring those leads into their account. It is matched on the email and phone they registered with — and when only the email matches, they can ask you to confirm it and you approve from the Vendors tab. There is a full walkthrough in Adding a vendor, and getting them their leads.
• Payouts release after the event ends plus five business days. Refunds issued from the app return our fee; ones issued from the Stripe dashboard do not.