Lucidchart is great for planning a layout with your team. ExpoFP turns that layout into a live, bookable, searchable floor plan for exhibitors and attendees.
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DIY from $149/mo
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For attendees
Lucidchart is one of the most popular collaborative diagramming tools on the web. Teams use it for flowcharts, org charts, process maps and network diagrams, and it also has floor plan shape libraries, a scale tool and ready-made templates such as an event floor plan and a conference floor plan example. Several people can edit the same document in real time, leave comments and share it with a link. For an event team that wants to sketch where the registration desk, stage, catering and booth rows go, Lucidchart is a comfortable and familiar place to do it.
The gap shows up once the diagram has to work as the event floor plan itself. A Lucidchart document is a drawing: booths are shapes, not inventory. It doesn't know which booths are sold, held or available, so someone has to keep that status in a spreadsheet and recolor shapes by hand. Exhibitors can't reserve or pay for a booth on the diagram, attendees can't search for a company or get a route to its stand, and every layout change means re-exporting a PDF or image and sending it out again. The result is a good internal planning document that has been asked to do the job of a sales tool, an exhibitor directory and a visitor map.
This page is for organizers who draw their floor plan in Lucidchart and are looking for a Lucidchart alternative for trade show floor plans. That might be an expo, conference exhibit hall, fair or corporate event. Below we compare the two tools feature by feature, show what the manual workflow really costs, and explain how to move to an interactive floor plan with online booth sales without throwing away the planning work you've already done.
| Feature | ExpoFP | Lucidchart |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose-built for event floor plans | Yes. Interactive floor plan platform for trade shows, expos, conferences, fairs, festivals, corporate events and venues | No. General-purpose collaborative diagramming tool with floor plan shapes and templates |
| Drawing / editing booths | FP Designer: drag, drop, merge and resize booths in the browser; changes go live instantly | Drag floor plan shapes onto a canvas; scale tool for to-scale drawings; real-time co-editing |
| Import an existing plan | Upload an existing floor plan image/file and the ExpoFP team builds it, or draw it yourself in FP Designer | Can place images on the canvas and trace over them; booths are drawn as shapes |
| Live booth availability | Yes. Exhibitors see availability on the map in real time | No. Status has to be shown manually (e.g. by recoloring shapes) |
| Booth reservations | Yes. Exhibitors reserve directly on the map; organizer approves and tracks in one place | No built-in reservations |
| Online booth payments | Yes. Exhibitors can purchase by credit card on the map (optional "Collect payments from exhibitors"; not on Light) | No |
| Exhibitor profiles & directory | Yes. Logo, description and contacts linked to each booth | No. Text labels or notes on shapes only |
| Exhibitor self-service updates | Yes. Personal auto-login link; organizer approves changes | No. Exhibitors would need edit access or must email changes |
| Attendee search & filters | Search by company, booth or category; category filters; bookmarks | No attendee-facing search |
| Wayfinding / routes | Turn-by-turn digital wayfinding, accessible routes across floors and buildings; blue-dot positioning available for suitable projects | No |
| Mobile experience | Browser-based and mobile-ready; no app download, no sign-in | Diagrams can be viewed on mobile, but the experience is a diagram viewer, not a visitor map |
| Sharing & website embedding | Custom URL (yourevent.expofp.com), embed in websites and event apps, kiosks with offline mode | Share links, publish or export (e.g. PDF, image); viewers see a static diagram |
| Updating after changes | Edit once in FP Designer; the live map updates instantly for everyone | Edit the diagram, then re-share or re-export and redistribute files |
| Sponsorship / monetization | Sponsored listings, featured placements, banner ads, logos in booths, booth extras, sponsorship packages | None |
| Analytics | Included with every plan: searches, booth views, routes, exhibitor activity, per-kiosk analytics | Document-level only; no attendee or booth analytics |
| Cost | Free to start (7-day trial, no credit card); DIY $149/mo; one-time Light $990, Standard $1,500, Pro $2,100 (≤100 booths; scales with booth count) | Free tier with limits; paid Individual, Team and Enterprise plans billed per user. Check current pricing on Lucid's website |
Here's how a Lucidchart-based floor plan usually works in practice. The layout is drawn and agreed on internally, then exported as a PDF and attached to the exhibitor prospectus. When a company asks for a booth, someone checks the spreadsheet of booth statuses, replies by email, sends an invoice and then opens the diagram to recolor the booth and type in the company name. If two salespeople answer two inquiries on the same afternoon, it's easy to promise the same corner booth twice, and the spreadsheet and the diagram drift apart.
Every change triggers the same loop: edit the diagram, export a new PDF, upload it to the website, send it to exhibitors and hope nobody is still working from version 4. Closer to the show, exhibitor logos and descriptions arrive by email in every possible format and have to be copied in by hand. The printed map for the venue goes to print weeks ahead and is out of date by opening day, because three exhibitors swapped booths and two cancelled.
None of this is Lucidchart's fault. It's a diagramming tool doing a job it wasn't built for. But the hidden cost is real: staff hours, sales slowed down by email back-and-forth, double-booking risk and a visitor experience that stops at a static image. As one ExpoFP customer put it: "We were only looking for something to draw the plan and found a system to run the entire show."
| Step | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Layout changes | Edit the diagram, re-export the PDF, re-upload and re-send. | Edit in FP Designer and the live map updates instantly. |
| Booth status | A spreadsheet plus manual recoloring of shapes. | Live availability on the map, with reservations tracked in one place. |
| Booth sales | Email inquiries, manual invoices and the risk of double-booking. | Exhibitors reserve or pay by credit card on the map and the organizer approves. |
| Exhibitor content | Logos and descriptions collected by email and pasted in by hand. | Each exhibitor updates their profile via a personal auto-login link and the organizer approves. |
| Attendee experience | A PDF or printed map that's already outdated. | A mobile-ready map with search, filters, bookmarks and turn-by-turn wayfinding, with no app needed. |
Start with a 7-day free trial, no credit card required.
Export your Lucidchart floor plan as a PDF or image. That gives you a clean reference for the hall, aisles and booth rows.
Upload the file and let the ExpoFP team build the interactive map for you (Light, Standard and Pro plans), or use it as a reference and draw the booths yourself in the drag-and-drop FP Designer on the DIY plan.
Add exhibitors and link them to booths. If you've run the event on ExpoFP before, copy last year's map and exhibitors to the new event. If you use registration, ticketing or CRM systems, ExpoFP integrations let exhibitor data flow both ways.
Turn on booth reservations (and payments if you want them) so exhibitors see live availability and book directly on the map. Send each exhibitor their personal auto-login link to complete their profile.
Publish the map on your custom URL, embed it on your event website or app, and set up kiosks with "you are here" for the show floor.
Lucidchart remains a strong choice for the collaborative planning work around an event: brainstorming the layout with your team, mapping out back-of-house areas, run-of-show flowcharts, staffing org charts and process diagrams. Many organizers keep using it for exactly that, and some keep the early layout sketch there as the internal source drawing. When the plan needs to be sold, browsed and navigated by exhibitors and attendees, move it to ExpoFP, where booth inventory, exhibitor profiles and wayfinding live on one interactive map.
Yes, in the sense that matters. Export your Lucidchart diagram as a PDF or image and upload it. On the Light, Standard and Pro plans the ExpoFP team builds the interactive map from your file. On the DIY plan you can use the export as a reference and draw booths in FP Designer by dragging, dropping, merging and resizing them in the browser.
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Information on this page is based on publicly available product materials and may change over time. Lucidchart is a trademark of its respective owner. This is ExpoFP's own comparison and reflects our perspective based on publicly available information and user-facing product research.