Best CRM for Event Planners (UK 2026)
Updated: 2 days ago
The venue’s moved your access time. The caterer is after final numbers by Thursday, and a client has emailed to ask if twelve extra guests would be fine (it isn’t, but you’ll make it work). Buried under all that is an enquiry for a corporate event next spring. You were going to reply yesterday.
It happens to nearly every planner we speak to. The event in front of you gets the attention, and the next booking waits, sometimes for too long. A CRM can help with that, at least.
What Should an Event Planner CRM Actually Do?
A good CRM for event planners keeps enquiries, proposals and client conversations together, makes it obvious who’s dealing with each one, and reminds the right person to follow up before the client books someone else.
Which one suits you depends on what’s going wrong. We’ve met planners who are completely on top of the client admin but lose track of quotes. We’ve met others with the opposite problem.
Five CRMs Worth Comparing in 2026
We’ve picked five, and they’re quite different from each other. One of them is ours (Waggle Dance CRM), and we’ve tried not to give it special treatment. Prices and features move around, so check the current details yourself.
Dubsado is probably where to look first if contracts and invoices are eating your evenings. It handles enquiry forms, proposals, contracts, invoicing and automated workflows. Wedding planners and solo planners tend to like it, mainly because booking a client stops involving four separate documents and a fair amount of chasing. Setting it up properly takes time, and you’ll want to check how it handles UK payments and whether it plays nicely with your accounting software.
HoneyBook is newer to the UK. It officially launched here in May 2026, with sterling pricing. It does a similar job to Dubsado, taking a client from enquiry through to a signed agreement and payment in one flow. Since it’s only been here a few months, it’s worth testing the UK side properly during the trial. Look at invoicing in pounds, payment fees, VAT and the accounting integrations, and don’t assume it all works exactly as it does in America.
Pipedrive is more of a sales tool. If you run corporate events and have a lot of quotes on the go, it’s good at showing where each one has got to. Say you’ve got twelve open. A few need proposals written, some are stuck with a finance team somewhere, a couple want changes, and three or four haven’t replied at all. Without a shared view, you end up trawling back through emails on a Friday afternoon. Pipedrive puts all of that in one place. Your team needs to agree what each stage means, though. We’ve seen “proposal sent” and “proposal being discussed” used interchangeably, and they really aren’t the same. It also won’t help much with the actual event once it’s booked.
HubSpot earns its keep when enquiries come from lots of places at once, such as the website, social media, email campaigns and the odd referral. Someone might download your conference-planning guide in February, ask about venues in April, then request a proposal in June. With HubSpot, whoever picks up that June enquiry can see the history. There’s a free version and several paid ones, and what you can do varies a lot between them. Free is fine to start with. Just don’t assume it’ll stay the cheapest route.
And Waggle Dance CRM. It runs on GoHighLevel (GHL), it’s set up for UK service businesses, and it costs £149 per month + VAT. You get pipelines, contact management, client messaging and marketing automation, which in practice means your enquiries land in one place, proposals get tracked and follow-ups get scheduled. It won’t do your ticketing, seating plans or event production, so check the integrations you’d need and whether they cost extra.
That’s the software. Before you pick any of it, though, there’s another question to ask.
When Nobody Knows Who’s Following Up
This one’s a made-up example, but we hear versions of it all the time.
A small events agency in Bristol is pitching for a company’s awards night. The founder sends over the proposal on a Tuesday. On Wednesday, the client asks about adding a drinks reception, so a colleague sends back some revised prices.
Friday is spent on a different event entirely. The founder thinks her colleague has it in hand. He thinks she’ll chase it, because it was her proposal.
Monday morning, and nobody has spoken to the client.
If the enquiry had been in a CRM with one person’s name against it and a follow-up date, someone would have noticed. Would the client have booked? Maybe not. At least someone would have asked.
Why Buying a CRM Doesn’t Always Fix the Problem
Plenty of agencies in that position already have a CRM, as it happens. Which is annoying, when you’ve paid for something specifically to stop this sort of thing.
The software can only follow whatever process you’ve got. If nobody’s sure who owns a proposal, or how long to leave it before chasing, or when to give up on a quiet client, then automating it mostly gets you more reminders about the same confusion.
Start With What People Actually Do
We call our approach behaviour-led. It sounds grander than it is. We look at what your team actually does day to day, which isn’t always what the process says.
Here’s a common one. An agency sets up automatic reminders for every proposal, and everything looks organised. Three weeks on, the founder is still asking if anyone has phoned the clients back.
Usually the reminders aren’t assigned to anyone in particular. Or there are so many notifications that people have stopped reading them. Quite often, nobody has said what a follow-up call should actually cover, so it gets put off because it feels awkward.
Dates are another trap. Someone enquires in October about a June wedding, and it feels like ages away. In the meantime, they’re comparing you with two other planners and visiting venues. If the only date in your system is the wedding itself, you could lose that booking months before anyone notices. You need the event date and a follow-up date, kept separately.
It’s worth sorting out the basics before you add any features. Decide who looks after each enquiry and how soon they chase. Decide what gets written down, and when an opportunity is officially dead. For corporate clients, find out early who signs off the budget, because it’s often not the person who asked for the quote.
The Handover Nobody Planned For
Think back to school sports day and the relay. The baton almost never got dropped mid-sprint. It went at the changeover, when one person assumed the other had it.
Bookings go the same way. The agreement is signed, and the deposit’s in. Then your operations manager asks which version of the proposal the client approved, and you realise you’re not completely sure.
Guest numbers have changed twice since. The client added AV and agreed a different catering setup over the phone, and we’d bet nobody wrote that down. Some of it’s in email. Some is in a WhatsApp chat. The rest could be in a notebook on the passenger seat of someone’s car.
Cue a wasted morning working out what was agreed.
Before anything moves into delivery, put what’s been agreed, who’s involved and what’s still outstanding into one record. You can plan the event in whatever tool you like. The CRM just needs to be where that record lives.
How to Choose the Right CRM for Your Events Business
You don’t need to sit through endless demos. Take a real problem from your own business and see how each platform deals with it. These four steps fit around a normal free trial.
Look at Your Last Ten Enquiries
Go back through them. How quickly did each one get a reply? Were the proposals followed up? Did any just go quiet without anyone knowing why?
Often the enquiry stage is fine, and things fall apart after the quote goes out. If that’s you, it changes what you should be looking for in a CRM.
Run the Same Booking Through Every Trial
Use one realistic example for every platform you try. Say a corporate client wants an event for 80 people. They ask for a proposal, change the date and then need their finance director to approve it.
See if you can log those changes and set a follow-up easily. Then check whether a colleague could find what was agreed without hunting through emails. If that’s fiddly during a trial, it won’t get easier in your busy season.
Hand It to a Colleague
Ask someone else to add an enquiry, update a proposal and book in a follow-up, without you standing over them explaining.
If they get stuck, either the setup is too complicated or the platform is. Either way, it’s better to find out now.
Check the Costs and the Data
The monthly fee is rarely the whole cost. Ask about setup, extra users, messaging charges, integrations and payment processing fees.
Data matters too. Planners often hold guest details like dietary requirements, and some of those relate to health conditions. Make sure only the right people can see that information, and check the supplier’s data-processing terms support your UK GDPR obligations.
Today's Deep Dive
What to Do Next
If enquiries are going missing, look at how you handle them now before buying anything new. You might not need a different CRM. Sometimes a clearer pipeline and a named person on each enquiry, with a few automations on top, sorts most of it.
If you do want a new system, Waggle Dance CRM is £149 per month + VAT. There’s also a £499 per month + VAT bundle with the CRM and fortnightly business coaching, for owners who want help with the wider sales side.
The coaching isn’t really about software. We look at where your enquiries come from and how your team handles them week to week. We also look at whether the people doing the work have what they need. Mostly, it’s about making the business a bit easier to run while you’re busy with events that are already booked.
FAQs
What is Waggle Dance CRM?
It’s a CRM built on GoHighLevel and set up for UK service businesses. You can use it to manage contacts, pipelines, enquiries, follow-ups and client messages.
How much does Waggle Dance CRM cost?
£149 per month + VAT for the CRM on its own. The bundle with fortnightly business coaching is £499 per month + VAT. Ask about implementation and any usage charges before you sign up.
Can a CRM replace event-management software?
Not really. A CRM looks after enquiries, proposals and client relationships. For ticketing, seating plans, suppliers and production, you’ll probably still want specialist software, so check the two can share information.
Can Waggle Dance help if we already have a CRM?
Yes. We do setup and optimisation on other platforms too, and fixing what you’ve already got is often the better option.
If you’re not sure where things are going wrong, book a free Clarity Call with Waggle Dance. Bring along a real example, like an enquiry that went cold or a booking that turned into a headache. We’ll go through what happened with you and help you work out what to change.
