Events500 vs Velsa

Events500 is browser-based venue management software for sales, operations, and finance teams. It is presented for UK venues handling conferences, weddings, sports hospitality, meetings, and private events. The event diary shows activity by day, week, or month. Booking data can produce online proposals and contracts for customers to review and sign. A drag-and-drop table planner stores guest names, menu choices, and dietary requirements. A customer portal shares selected documents, seating plans, and files. Customers can pay invoices through the venue’s chosen payment provider. Online bookings can be embedded on a venue website or connected to Venue Directory’s Instant Book. Events500 includes more than 40 reports and configurable dashboards. Listed integrations include QuickBooks, Xero, Sage Finance, Stripe, Worldpay, Global Payments, Microsoft 365, Azure SSO, Gmail, Rezlynx, Artifax, Venue Directory, WedPro, Venue Performance, Meetings Intelligence, and Two Circles. Its REST API can read booking and event data, check room availability, and create bookings, events, and contacts. Pricing is available on request.

Velsa combines venue bookings, contracts, event operations, exhibitor management, and fund accounting in a web or self-hosted system. Booking tools cover partitioned spaces, holds and stages, ranked space suggestions, contracts and addenda, payment schedules, and sales forecasting. Operations features include run-of-show schedules, floor plans, work orders, a multi-venue calendar, staff assignments, and equipment inventory. Accounting covers invoicing, payments and refunds, budget variance reporting, configurable ledger exports, and financial statements. DocuSign can be used for contract signatures; card payment adapters include BluePay, Stripe, and CardPointe. The maker describes TLS in transit, AES-256 encryption at rest via AWS KMS, role-based access controls, and audit logging. It says SOC 2 Type II is on the roadmap. The free Community Edition is self-hosted, community-supported, and has no SLA. Cloud Starter is $199 per month for one venue and five users; higher tiers vary in venue, user, and support limits. Full self-service account export remains on the roadmap, although scoped exports are available. Velsa is aimed at convention and civic centers, campuses, fairgrounds, expo halls, and trade-show operators, with particular suitability stated for government and nonprofit venues.