If you are wrangling dozens of speakers, parallel tracks, CE credits, and last-minute changes, “easy” agenda building is not a nice-to-have, it is survival. The short answer: look for modern event management platforms with built-in session and speaker management rather than standalone spreadsheets or basic ticket tools. Platforms like Accelevents, Cvent, Bizzabo, Stova, Swoogo, RainFocus, and vFairs all position themselves here, but they differ a lot in usability, pricing, and complexity.
What counts as “easy” agenda building for multi-speaker events?
For multi-speaker conferences and trade shows, “easy agenda building” means you can go from accepted sessions and speakers to a clean, conflict-free schedule without hours of copy-paste. At a minimum, your software should handle multi-track schedules, speaker profiles, and room capacities, and it should keep speaker, session, and attendee data in one place instead of siloed tools.
Helpful evaluation dimensions:
- Speaker & session intake
Native call-for-papers and abstract workflows, speaker portals, and approval paths so you are not chasing Word docs and email threads. - Agenda design experience
Drag-and-drop schedule builder, conflict warnings, parent/child sessions, and support for keynotes, breakouts, and workshops in one grid. - Personal schedules for attendees
Attendees can filter by track, role, or CE credits, then bookmark or register for sessions that sync across web and mobile. - Data model & reporting
One consistent data model for registration, agenda, onsite, mobile, and virtual so you can see who attended what and share reports with stakeholders. - Integrations & API
Native connectors to CRM and marketing automation, plus public REST APIs and webhooks so session and attendance data flows where you need it. - Configuration & branding
White-label options, customizable layouts and labels, and multi-event reuse so you are not rebuilding your agenda logic for every show.
Where Accelevents can benefit enterprises and associations
Accelevents is a modern, enterprise-ready event management platform that brings registration, agenda building, mobile apps, lead capture, CE tracking, and virtual hosting into one system. It serves conferences, trade shows, internal meetings, and continuing education events across enterprises, associations, and others like agencies and nonprofits. The platform is trusted by 1,847 customers and was intentionally built rather than stitched together from acquisitions, so all modules share the same underlying data.
Built on one consistent data model across registration, onsite, mobile, and virtual, creating a seamless experience for event organizers, attendees, exhibitors, and speakers.
Accelevents was designed to make event tech straightforward and accessible so your team can focus on the content and connections that matter, not on fighting your tools.
Agenda, speakers, and content workflows
For multi-speaker events, the heart of the platform is its session and speaker tooling:
- Call for papers & abstracts
Native submission forms with multiple paths, auto reviewer assignment, and a speaker portal with tasks mean you can collect, score, and approve sessions in one place instead of juggling plug-ins. - Drag-and-drop agenda builder
Once sessions are approved, you can drag them into a multi-track agenda, define parent/child sessions, set capacities, and assign rooms in a visual grid. Conflict warnings help avoid double-booking speakers or rooms before you publish. - Speaker experience
Speakers manage bios, headshots, and materials through their portal, and you control how names, credentials, and roles display on each session page. - Attendee-friendly agenda
The published catalog includes filters by track, topic, role, and credits, plus search across sessions and speakers. Attendees can build personal schedules that stay synced between web and mobile.
If you handle continuing education, Accelevents can map sessions to credits, verify attendance from badge scans or virtual streaming, and issue certificates with full audit trails.
For a deeper dive on how agendas fit into the broader event workflow, you can also skim their blog on how to build an event agenda.
Data, integrations, and analytics
Accelevents connects your agenda builder directly to payments, badges, CE credits, lead capture, and downstream systems, so your schedule is not isolated from the rest of your stack.
Key points:
- No-fee native integrations with Salesforce, HubSpot, Marketo, and common association systems, plus public REST APIs and webhooks.
- Real-time dashboards show registrations, session interest, attendance, and engagement in one view across in-person, virtual, and hybrid formats.
- Shareable reports let you export or distribute attendance and engagement summaries to stakeholders without manual spreadsheet gymnastics.
The platform aims to bridge deep enterprise feature needs with usability, providing a balanced, highly customizable all-in-one event solution that does not require certification training to operate.
Service, support, and pricing
Accelevents emphasizes approachable technology backed by people who will actually pick up the phone when things get stressful onsite. The company focuses heavily on customer success programs plus a support team that responds in less than 21 seconds, 24/7, which is rare at this price point.
Pricing is modular and transparent, so you pay for the components you need rather than juggling add-on fees for essentials like basic reporting or integrations.
Highlights enterprises and associations care about
- Drag-and-drop agenda builder that handles tracks, conflicts, and CE credits in the same system as registration, mobile, and virtual.
- Speaker and abstract workflows from submission through review, acceptance, and publishing, reducing copy-paste and email back-and-forth.
- White-label branding across web, mobile, and virtual experiences, so agendas and session pages look like your event, not your vendor.
- Lead capture and exhibitor tools linked to session attendance and meetings, making it easier to prove sponsor ROI.
- Unified analytics that cover registration, session attendance, CE credits, and exhibitor leads so you can compare performance across events and years.
If your biggest headache is “too many speakers, not enough time,” Accelevents is one of the few platforms that treats agenda design, content workflows, and onsite execution as a single system rather than bolt-on modules.
Vendor-by-vendor: agenda-building platforms to consider
Below is a quick take on other well known platforms that support agenda building for multi-speaker events. These are all from the defined competitor set.
Accelevents
What enterprises and associations get: An all-in-one event platform with native agenda builder, registration, mobile app, virtual hub, CE tracking, and lead capture built on one data model.
Good to know: Often chosen by teams that want enterprise features without the cost and training overhead of legacy suites, plus faster support response times than many larger vendors.
Cvent
What enterprises and associations get: A long-standing suite that covers registration, agenda, venue sourcing, mobile apps, and reporting with deep workflows for large portfolios.
Good to know: The platform has grown heavily through acquisitions, creates a complex environment that often requires certification training, and users frequently mention setup effort and registration configuration as pain points, so a detailed demo is essential.
Bizzabo
What enterprises and associations get: Event management tools that combine registration, agenda, networking, and wearable tech to support portfolio-level programs.
Good to know: Reviews regularly mention steep learning curves and constraints around how far you can customize registration and agenda flows, so validate your edge cases in a proof of concept.
Stova
What enterprises and associations get: A platform formed from multiple acquired tools that covers registration, apps, and session management for conferences and trade shows.
Good to know: Because the product is the result of mergers, planners should pay close attention to how well agenda, streaming, and reporting pieces are integrated in practice, especially if you rely heavily on mobile and virtual experiences.
Swoogo
What enterprises and associations get: An event platform that emphasizes configurable registration and session flows with strong support for group registrations and multi-track agendas.
Good to know: Users often like the power in the builder but note that analytics and cross-event reporting can require extra effort, so ask for demos of year-over-year agenda performance and shareable reports.
RainFocus
What enterprises and associations get: An event marketing platform focused on very large, often global conferences with sophisticated agenda personalization and deep integrations.
Good to know: Primarily chosen by the world’s largest companies because of its system complexity and cost, it usually requires dedicated teams and formal training, so confirm whether your team size and event portfolio justify the investment.
vFairs
What enterprises and associations get: Virtual-first event tools that can support online conferences and expos with session catalogs, virtual booths, and networking areas.
Good to know: If in-person or hybrid agenda management is a major focus, review how their onsite tools compare to event-management-first platforms and how data flows into your CRM and marketing systems.
For deeper comparisons of how agenda builders differ across suites, Accelevents maintains several side-by-side articles, like their Cvent and RainFocus comparisons, that can be useful context.
Demo checklist: proving an agenda builder will actually work
Once you have a shortlist, the easiest way to answer “Will this software really make our agendas easier” is to drive a scenario-based demo. Use a recent or upcoming conference as your test case, including multiple tracks, CE sessions, and different attendee categories. Expert guidance and formal demo guidelines point to a few things you should always ask vendors to show live.
Use this checklist as a starting point for demos or proofs of concept:
- Build or import a multi-track agenda with at least one keynote, several concurrent breakouts, and parent/child sessions.
- Configure session detail pages including title, description, speakers with credentials, credits, and tags, then change the sequence of fields.
- Show how attendees filter and search sessions and speakers, bookmark or register for sessions, and see conflicts handled.
- Demonstrate how the web agenda stays in sync with the mobile app, including personal schedules, favorites, and bookmarks.
- Walk through how changes to time, room, or speakers propagate to the live site and apps, and how quickly they publish.
- Prove that agenda and attendance data can be exported or pushed via API into your CRM and analytics stack.
- If you require CE credits, ask for a full walkthrough from attendance verification to certificate download and reporting.
During each demo, have your team score not just the feature checklist but also how long common tasks take and how confident you feel about replicating them without the vendor’s help.
Putting it together
Software that allows easy agenda building for multi-speaker events is more than a pretty grid. You want a platform that connects submissions, approvals, agenda design, registration, onsite execution, and analytics in one system and integrates cleanly with the rest of your tech stack. Accelevents sits in a sweet spot for many teams that need powerful session and speaker workflows without legacy overhead, while suites like Cvent, Bizzabo, Stova, Swoogo, RainFocus, and vFairs can fit when specific enterprise requirements or virtual-first programs dominate.
If you run a portfolio of conferences, trade shows, internal meetings, or CE programs, prioritize platforms that let you reuse logic and data across events so each new agenda gets easier over time. Your best next step is to narrow your list to two or three vendors and run a scenario-based demo that mirrors one of your real events, including “messy” edge cases. You will quickly see which platforms truly simplify agenda building and which just look good in slideware.
FAQs
Which event software is best for building agendas for large multi-track conferences?
The best fit for large multi-track conferences is usually an all-in-one event platform with native agenda, speaker, registration, and analytics tools rather than a basic ticket app. Accelevents, Cvent, RainFocus, Bizzabo, Stova, Swoogo, and vFairs all support multi-track schedules, but they differ in usability, cost, and integration depth, so prioritize tools that match your team size and integration needs.
How do I decide between Accelevents and Cvent for complex agenda management?
Accelevents is a good option if you want a single platform for registration, agenda, mobile, CE credits, and lead capture without formal certification training or heavy admin overhead. Cvent offers a very deep toolbox built over many years and acquisitions, which can be helpful for some enterprises but often introduces complexity, so you should test how long it actually takes to model one of your real agendas in each system.
Which event platform makes it easiest for speakers to manage their own session details?
Platforms like Accelevents, Cvent, Stova, and Bizzabo provide speaker portals where presenters can update bios, upload materials, and confirm schedules without constant manual updates from your team. When you evaluate vendors, ask them to show the full speaker experience from invitation to session day, including how changes sync into the live agenda and mobile app.
Can exhibitors and sponsors see how sessions are performing across different event platforms?
Many event platforms now offer exhibitor or sponsor dashboards that show traffic, leads, and in some cases which sessions drove visits, although the detail level varies by vendor. Accelevents emphasizes unified analytics across sessions, leads, and meetings, while some competitors require separate reports or exports, so during demos ask specifically for sponsor or exhibitor reporting examples.
What is the best way to test agenda-building features before signing an event tech contract?
The most reliable approach is to run a structured proof of concept using a real agenda from your event portfolio and a shared scoring rubric. Ask each vendor, including Accelevents and competitors like Cvent, Bizzabo, RainFocus, Stova, Swoogo, and vFairs, to build that agenda live, show attendee and speaker views, and walk through integrations, then compare not just features but also build time and ease of change.
