SmartDraw's templates help you draw a trade show layout quickly. ExpoFP turns that layout into a live floor plan where exhibitors book booths and attendees find them.
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DIY from $149/mo
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For attendees
SmartDraw is a long-standing diagramming tool with a very large template library, and events are one of the areas it covers well. Its examples include a trade show layout, a trade show map, trade show booth layouts, conference and banquet plans, and a dedicated seating chart maker. Its event floor plan template comes with ready-made symbols for booths, tables and chairs. You can draw to scale and import a venue's existing floor plan as a starting point. For an organizer who needs a clean, professional-looking layout fast, SmartDraw is a capable and affordable tool.
The gap appears when that drawing has to run the event. A SmartDraw trade show map is still a static diagram: each booth is a symbol, not a sellable unit with a status, an exhibitor and a price. The tool doesn't track which booths are available, take reservations or payments, host exhibitor profiles, or let attendees search for a company and follow a route to its stand. So the drawing gets exported to PDF or an image, emailed around, and re-exported every time a booth changes hands, while the real booth inventory lives in a spreadsheet.
This page is for organizers who draw their floor plan in SmartDraw and are looking for a SmartDraw alternative for trade show floor plans. That could be expos, conferences, fairs, festivals or corporate events. Below we compare the two feature by feature, walk through what the manual workflow really costs, and show how to move your layout to an interactive floor plan with online booth sales and attendee wayfinding.
| Feature | ExpoFP | SmartDraw |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose-built for event floor plans | Yes. Interactive floor plan platform for trade shows, expos, conferences, fairs, festivals, corporate events and venues | No. General diagramming tool with event templates (trade show layout, trade show map, booth layouts, seating charts) |
| Drawing / editing booths | FP Designer: drag, drop, merge and resize booths in the browser; changes go live instantly | Drag-and-drop booth, table and chair symbols; scaled drawings |
| Import an existing plan | Upload an existing floor plan image/file and the ExpoFP team builds it, or draw it yourself in FP Designer | Import an existing floor plan (e.g. PDF) as a base and draw over it |
| Live booth availability | Yes. Exhibitors see availability on the map in real time | No. Status must be shown manually (colors or labels) |
| Booth reservations | Yes. Exhibitors reserve 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 shape data only |
| Exhibitor self-service updates | Yes. Personal auto-login link; organizer approves | No. Changes are sent to the organizer and edited by hand |
| 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 | Viewers see an exported or shared diagram, not a visitor map |
| Sharing & website embedding | Custom URL (yourevent.expofp.com), embed in websites and event apps, kiosks with offline mode | Share or export the diagram (e.g. PDF, image) for printing or email |
| Updating after changes | Edit once in FP Designer; the live map updates instantly for everyone | Edit the drawing, re-export and redistribute |
| 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 | None for booths or attendees |
| 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) | Low per-user subscription (Individual, Team and Site/Enterprise tiers; introductory rates for new customers). Check current pricing on SmartDraw's website |
With SmartDraw, the drawing part is fast. You open the trade show layout template, drop in booth symbols, number them and export a polished PDF for the prospectus. The trouble starts after that. Every booth inquiry turns into an email thread: check the spreadsheet, confirm the booth, send an invoice, then reopen the drawing to recolor the symbol and add the company name. When two people sell from the same plan, the spreadsheet and the drawing fall out of sync, and double-booking a prime corner becomes a real risk.
Each change means another export. The PDF on the website, the one in exhibitors' inboxes and the one your sales team has open are soon three different versions. Exhibitor logos and descriptions arrive by email and get pasted in manually. The printed show map goes to the printer weeks before opening, so it's out of date the moment a booth is swapped or cancelled. Attendees on the floor get a static image with no search and no route to the stand they came to see.
SmartDraw isn't doing anything wrong. It's a diagramming tool, and a good one. But the hours spent keeping a drawing, a spreadsheet and an inbox in sync add up, and the static output leaves booth sales and sponsorship revenue on the table. One organizer who switched to ExpoFP said: "I understood your system in 7 days better than I understood our previous system in 7 years."
| Step | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Layout changes | Edit the SmartDraw file, re-export the PDF, re-upload and re-email. | Edit in FP Designer and the live map updates instantly. |
| Booth status | A spreadsheet plus manual recoloring of booth symbols. | Live availability on the map and reservations tracked in one place. |
| Booth sales | Email inquiries, manual invoices and double-booking risk. | Exhibitors reserve or pay by credit card on the map and the organizer approves. |
| Exhibitor content | Logos and descriptions collected by email. | Exhibitors update their own profiles 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.
Save your trade show layout as a PDF or image. It becomes the reference for the hall outline, aisles and booth numbering.
Upload the file and let the ExpoFP team build the interactive map (Light, Standard and Pro plans), or draw the booths yourself in the drag-and-drop FP Designer on the DIY plan, merging and resizing booths as needed.
Add exhibitors and link them to booths. For a repeat event, copy last year's map and exhibitors. If you use registration, ticketing or CRM systems, integrations let exhibitor data flow both ways.
Turn on reservations (and credit card payments if you want them) so exhibitors book directly on the map. Send each exhibitor a personal auto-login link to complete their logo, description and contacts.
Publish on your custom URL, embed the map on your website or event app, and set up on-site kiosks with "you are here" and offline mode.
SmartDraw is still a great fit for layouts where nothing is sold and no one needs to navigate: banquet and gala seating charts, wedding table plans, classroom or meeting-room setups, and furniture or staging plans for setup crews. It's also a convenient place to keep a to-scale reference drawing of a venue. Many organizers keep SmartDraw for those jobs and use ExpoFP for the exhibitor-facing floor plan, where booth inventory, exhibitor profiles, sponsorship and wayfinding have to live on one interactive map.
Yes. Export your SmartDraw layout 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 yourself in FP Designer, 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. SmartDraw 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.