Seats.io is excellent at reserved seating for ticketing; ExpoFP is built for selling booths and guiding attendees around an expo floor.
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For attendees
Seats.io is a leading reserved-seating platform. It gives ticketing companies and venues a floor plan designer for drawing seating charts, an embeddable renderer for seat picking on desktop and mobile, real-time holds that prevent double bookings, best-available seat selection, 3D charts and "view from seat". According to its website it handles millions of bookings a month for ticketing platforms and venues around the world. If you sell tickets to theaters, stadiums, gala dinners or comedy clubs, it's a strong, mature choice.
Some event organizers also use seating-chart tools to sell trade show booths: each booth becomes a bookable object, and exhibitors "pick a seat". That works for the transaction itself. But a booth isn't a seat. After the booking, the booth needs an exhibitor profile with logo and description, a searchable exhibitor directory, categories, turn-by-turn wayfinding for attendees, kiosks on the show floor, sponsorship placements and analytics on who looked at which booth. A seating chart also usually lives inside a ticketing checkout, so you need a ticketing platform or your own developers around it.
This page is for organizers who sell booths with a seating chart tool and are looking for a Seats.io alternative for trade show and expo floor plans. One of them, Trading Card Game Con, put it this way:
"We have used Seats.io in the past, but I will shift everything new to ExpoFP!" — Trading Card Game Con
| Feature | ExpoFP | Seats.io |
|---|---|---|
| Primary purpose | Interactive floor plans for trade shows, expos, conferences, fairs, festivals, corporate events and venues | Reserved seating charts for ticketing platforms and venues |
| Typical user | Event organizers, sales and marketing teams | Ticketing companies, developers, venue owners |
| Drawing / editing | FP Designer: drag, drop, merge and resize booths; changes go live instantly | Browser-based floor plan designer for seats, sections, tables and areas; no coding required |
| Import an existing plan | Upload a file/image and the ExpoFP team builds it, or draw it in FP Designer | "Scan a chart" turns a floor plan image into an interactive chart (per Seats.io's site) |
| Live availability | Yes, live booth availability on the map | Yes, real-time availability with holds |
| Prevent double bookings | Booth reservations managed and approved in one place | Yes, real-time holds and booking validation |
| Booth reservations | Exhibitors reserve directly on the map; organizer approves and tracks | Bookable objects can represent booths; booking flow runs through your ticketing platform |
| Online payments | Credit card payments on the map (option on DIY, Standard, Pro); invoicing | Handled by the ticketing platform you integrate with (check with Seats.io) |
| Exhibitor profiles & directory | Yes: logo, description, contacts, categories, searchable directory | Not a core feature (seating-focused) |
| Exhibitor self-service | Personal auto-login link; organizer approves updates | Not a core feature |
| Attendee search & filters | Search by company, booth or category; filters; bookmarks | Seat selection and best-available search, not exhibitor search |
| Wayfinding / routes | Turn-by-turn, accessible routes across floors, buildings and area map | Not a core feature |
| Kiosks & positioning | Kiosks with "you are here" and offline mode; blue-dot, GPS and QR positioning available | Not a core feature |
| Mobile experience | Browser-based, mobile-ready; no app, no sign-in | Strong mobile seat picking |
| 3D | Not claimed on this page | 2D-to-3D charts and view from seat |
| Embedding & API | Embed in websites and event apps; JSON API and developer docs; custom URL | Embeddable renderer, white-label designer, REST API and docs |
| Sponsorship / monetization | Sponsored listings, featured placements, banners, logos in booths, booth extras, packages | Ticket pricing tiers; no expo sponsorship tools |
| Analytics | Included: searches, booth views, routes, exhibitor activity, per-kiosk | Booking-oriented reporting (check current features) |
| Pricing model | DIY $149/mo; one-time plans from $990 (≤100 booths, scales with booth count); 7-day free trial | Usage-based, reported as per booked seat; free testing account (check current pricing) |
On paper, a booth is just a bookable spot, so a seating tool seems like a fit. The trouble starts after the booking. An exhibitor buys booth 412, and now you need their logo, description and contact details on the map. In a seating-chart setup, that usually means collecting assets by email, tracking them in a spreadsheet, and building or buying a separate exhibitor directory. Attendees then use one tool to find exhibitors and another, often a static PDF, to find their way.
The second cost is integration. Seats.io is designed as a component for ticketing platforms, so it shines when a developer wires it into a checkout. If you're an organizer without that stack, you're stitching together a ticketing tool, a seating chart, a directory, a map PDF and a payment flow, and keeping all of them in sync every time a booth is merged, split or reassigned.
The third cost is missed revenue. Expo floors earn money beyond booth rent: featured exhibitors, sponsored listings, banner placements, logos on booths and sponsor trails. Seating tools aren't built to sell those.
| Step | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Model booths as seats in a seating chart and sell them through a ticketing checkout. | Exhibitors see live booth availability and reserve or pay by credit card directly on the expo map. |
| 2 | Chase exhibitors by email for logos and descriptions. | Each exhibitor gets a personal auto-login link to update their profile; you approve. |
| 3 | Publish a separate exhibitor list and a static map PDF. | One map with search, categories, bookmarks and turn-by-turn wayfinding. |
| 4 | Sponsorship sold offline in a separate deck. | Sponsored listings, featured placements, banners and logos in booths live on the map. |
| 5 | Rebuild the chart and lists for next year. | Copy last year's map and exhibitors into the new event. |
Explore the live demo at https://demo.expofp.com, or start a free 7-day trial, no credit card required.
Save your current chart or venue plan as an image or file, and export your list of booths and exhibitors.
Draw it in FP Designer on the DIY plan, or upload your file and let the ExpoFP team build it (Light, Standard and Pro).
Add exhibitors and send each one a personal auto-login link to complete their profile.
Turn on reservations and, if you need it, online payments so exhibitors can reserve or buy booths on the map. Add sponsorship packages and booth extras.
Share your custom URL (yourevent.expofp.com), embed the map on your event website or app, and set up kiosks for the show floor.
Seats.io remains the right choice for reserved seating. If your event includes a seated keynote, a gala dinner, a concert or any ticketed session with assigned seats, Seats.io's best-available logic, holds, season tickets and 3D view-from-seat are purpose-built for that job. Ticketing companies that need a white-label seating component inside their own checkout are its core audience. Many organizers can reasonably use both: a seating chart for ticketed seated sessions, and ExpoFP for the exhibition floor, booth sales and attendee navigation.
You can model booths as bookable objects in a seating chart, and some organizers do. It handles the booking itself well. What's missing for expos is everything around the booth: exhibitor profiles, a searchable directory, wayfinding, kiosks and sponsorship tools, which ExpoFP provides on the same map.
Start free with a 7-day trial, no credit card, or book a demo to see how ExpoFP handles booth sales, exhibitors and wayfinding.
Information on this page is based on publicly available product materials and may change over time. Seats.io 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.