About Planning Pod

Streamline how you manage events, grow revenues and save 62+ hours/month of busywork with Planning Pod's all-in-one venue and event management platform. Call 877-266-3882 for more information. Featuring 20+ online tools, our cloud-based software transforms how you track event bookings, leads, clients, billings, communications and hundreds of other event details. How? By automating everyday tasks and giving you business insights in real-time. Our venue and catering management software platform is perfect for meeting and event centers, hotels, reception and wedding halls, restaurants, caterers, golf clubs, wineries/breweries, museums and any other venue that rents out event space or provides catering services. It includes integrated tools for managing food-&-beverage items/packages, menus, BEOs (FOH, kitchen, client, delivery), booking calendars, event CRM, leads, proposals, contracts, e-signatures, invoices, payments, email communications, forms and floor plans/room designs. Our event management software platform is great for event planners and firms, wedding planners, corporate event managers, non-profits and businesses that are looking for a better way to manage their events. It includes integrated tools for managing timelines, budgets, task lists, attendee lists, registrations and ticketing, RSVPs, forms/questionnaires, leads, proposals, e-contracts, invoicing, payments, communications and floor plan designs.
Planning Pod Software - At-a-glance dashboards provide users with a snapshot of important business updates including upcoming events, to-do's, appointments, leads, and more.
Planning Pod Software - Use our event CRM to track leads as they move through your pipeline as well as clients and their contact details, payment methods and account history.
Planning Pod Software - Easily create proposals, collect electronic signatures and turn them into invoices in a single click. Collect payments online and create payment reminder schedules so you always get paid on time.
Planning Pod Software - Add your food-and-beverage items, including pricing, description and images. Then create custom packages for your clients and easily calculate pricing.
Planning Pod Software - Build custom BEO layouts and easily create BEOs for every event with data that's already been entered.
Planning Pod Software - Create event floorplans and room layouts and save them as a template for recurring use. Plus use timesaving tools like auto-format to instantly create grids of tables or chairs.
Planning Pod video
Planning Pod Software - At-a-glance dashboards provide users with a snapshot of important business updates including upcoming events, to-do's, appointments, leads, and more. - thumbnail
Planning Pod Software - Use our event CRM to track leads as they move through your pipeline as well as clients and their contact details, payment methods and account history. - thumbnail
Planning Pod Software - Easily create proposals, collect electronic signatures and turn them into invoices in a single click. Collect payments online and create payment reminder schedules so you always get paid on time. - thumbnail
Planning Pod Software - Add your food-and-beverage items, including pricing, description and images. Then create custom packages for your clients and easily calculate pricing. - thumbnail
Planning Pod Software - Build custom BEO layouts and easily create BEOs for every event with data that's already been entered. - thumbnail

Planning Pod pricing

Planning Pod does not have a free version and does not offer a free trial.

Starting Price:
Not provided by vendor
Free Version:
No
Free trial:
No

Alternatives to Planning Pod

Planning Pod Reviews for UK Users

Feature rating

Value for Money
4.4
Functionality
4.1
Ease of Use
4.3
Customer Support
4.4
5 reviews of 35 View all reviews
Heather
Heather
  • Industry: Events Services
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source
Value for Money
4
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
4
Customer Support
4

4
Reviewed on 27/02/2018

Best value for the most features

Pros

Clean layout, easy to navigate. My staff likes it, but my clients will not use the features available to them because it is too confusing/complicated. Compared to other similar programs, I feel it has the most to offer for my staff's needs.

Cons

Flexibility of PDF reports, on-screen reports, and customization. Also the calendar sync does not work properly, which makes it useless for scheduling appointments.

Response from Planning Pod

Thanks for your feedback, Heather. We do offer quite a few tools for all the aspects of managing events, but you can always limit the tools your clients see so that it's not so overwhelming for them. Also, we have recently enhanced all our PDF reports and dashboards. And I checked the electronic calendar syncing feature in your account and it is working fine now, so please let us know if you still have an issue with it.

Replied 19/03/2018
Shannon
  • Industry: Food & Beverages
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 6-12 months
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 20/10/2022

THE solution for your FOOD TRUCK catering!

Pros

The software is incredibly moldable to any caterers needs. As we are a wood fired pizza caterer, we bring our food truck on site to cook, but serve buffet style. Along with this, we have bartenders, servers, and other vendors to connect with on most any event. Being able to customize BEO's to each vendors needs is incredible. Being able to have everyone in one place is incredible. Being able to have all communications between multiple parties/family members/vendors all be linked to the one event they regard is timesaving! Being able to automate our reservation & final check in process is how we were able to DOUBLE OUR VOLUME this year. HANDS DOWN THE BEST!

Cons

I have zero complaints. This product is fantastic. Even their customer support rocks!

Alternatives Considered

Flex Catering, Aisle Planner and Prismm

Reasons for Switching to Planning Pod

Much more customizable. Being a food truck and mobile, it is hard to find a good product that can either be adaptable or easy to use for food truck catering.
Jennifer
  • Industry: Entertainment
  • Company size: Self Employed
  • Used Daily for 1-5 months
  • Review Source
Value for Money
3
Functionality
2
Ease of Use
1
Customer Support
1

2
Reviewed on 09/01/2023

The struggle is real!

Negative. The customer service reps seem to not know the platform very well, or will answer questions and tell you that you can or can not do something but forget to tell you what steps to take to do it, lastly the chat customer service reps will not provide any help to get you through the modules and tell you that you need to watch the videos and take the test or that you should email with any questions that you have.

Pros

I like the ability to be able to have a platform to work from for each individual event and connect templates and forms to individual events.

Cons

There are sooo many glitches that I couldn't actually get much work done because of the huge learning curve. There are pre-made templates that I was told would be able to be erased after I signed up and then after signing up for a paid membership was told that I would not be able to delete these pre-made templates. Under the invoices section, there is no clear way to delete an amount or invoice. Every time I send an email from the system it populates in my main planning pod "inbox" as a new email. I would love to be able to watch a module on this and the other issues that I'm dealing with but in order to learn anything through the academy videos you must watch the videos in the order they have set up and answer test with a score of 100% before you can move to the next module. This means if you don't need one of the features of the system and don't need to learn about it, you will still have to watch the video and take a test in order to get to the information that you do need to learn about.

Response from Planning Pod

We're sorry to hear your experience did not meet your expectations. Below we address your concerns:

-We have not experienced any system issues/glitches
-The email templates allow you to customize automated communications; they are required for notifications to work
-The CRM tool will not replace your external email inbox.
-Planning Pod Academy lays the groundwork for successful use of our platform; you were enrolled at your request, and the answers needed to pass knowledge checks are in the videos/text of each module and our Help Center. Chatting and insisting that our agents answer each question in the Academy course so you can bypass the learning modules defeats the very purpose of the learning process.
-All of your support inquiries were answered promptly/accurately, including links to resources.
-Our staff is knowledgeable about all functionality; you can always expect to competently assisted by an expert.

We recognize we are not a fit for everyone and wish you the best!

Replied 13/01/2023
Andrea
  • Industry: Events Services
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
5
Functionality
5
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
5

5
Reviewed on 26/07/2022

The Lifeline of Our Business

We are so glad we stumbled upon this software when we did. I have used Dubsado, Honeybook, TripleSeat and done demos with a few others and none compare to Planning Pod. It had everything our organization was looking for- integrated invoices, proposals, calendar (syncs with Google), lead forms (integrates to our website), questionnaires and floor plans. We eliminated 3 other softwares we were using and streamlined it all into one. Our team uses it everyday and it is the lifeline of our business. The aesthetically pleasing BEO's, floor plans and timelines are printed and hung up on our bulletin board for every event! We are so glad this product exists!

Pros

It is very user friendly and the onboarding was quick and easy. The support team at Planning Pod is quick to respond and friendly. We loved the communications feature that wasn't available on other platforms as well as the ability to use with multiple team members. The invoice feature is great as well as proposals. The floor plan feature is a game changer!

Cons

I wish I would've found it sooner and didn't have to switch from my other software.

Alternatives Considered

Dubsado, 17hats, Tripleseat and Caterease

Reasons for Choosing Planning Pod

Our original booking software Gather was bought out by Tripleseat. It did not have the functionality we were looking for. Lacking the communications aspect which is critical in our business. We also tried Honeybook for several months along with Aisle Planner for timelines and All Seated for floor plans.

Switched From

HoneyBook, Aisle Planner and Tripleseat

Reasons for Switching to Planning Pod

None have the functionality of an all-in-one booking software. It is meant specifically for venues with multiple users. We considered others like Honeybook, Dubsado and 17 Hats but none were robust enough for our team.
Josh
  • Industry: Events Services
  • Company size: 2–10 Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source
Value for Money
2
Functionality
3
Ease of Use
5
Customer Support
1

4
Reviewed on 07/07/2024

Planning Pod Review

Pros

I like the proposal and invoice features the best.

Cons

Planning pod doesn’t have a great floor building element.

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