By Claire Gaskell, Creventa. Published 8 July 2026.
Renewal is the one moment in the year when a venue holds all the leverage over its software, and most teams let it pass with an auto-renew. Before you sign for another year, put these ten questions to your current platform, and to yourself.
About the season you just ran
1. How many hours did the team spend retyping guest information? If choices, allergies and seating still travel through spreadsheets around the platform, you are paying for software and doing the work yourselves.
2. Could you produce an allergen audit trail for any event in one click? If the answer involves searching an inbox, that is a risk you are renewing.
3. What did guests actually experience? Logins, clunky forms and third-party branding all cost response rates. For reference, guests respond to well-designed branded pre-order invitations at rates above 99% in Creventa.
About the money
4. Did the platform grow revenue, or just record it? Drink pre-orders, upgrades and extras sold before the event are the difference. A Holiday Inn hotel using Creventa reported a 251% uplift in wet spend from drink pre-orders.
5. What is the all-in cost? Licence plus commissions plus the hours in question 1. Compare that with published per-venue pricing.
About the year ahead
6. What shipped last year? If you cannot name a feature that arrived because venues asked for it, the product is standing still.
7. Does it cover the whole journey? Enquiry to proposal, pre-orders to event day, feedback to repeat booking. Every gap is a spreadsheet waiting to grow back.
8. Who owns your guest data if you leave? Get it in writing.
9. Will it handle your biggest night? Ask for proof at your scale. Creventa runs events from 4 to 2,500+ guests and processed over 2 million festive dishes at Christmas 2025.
10. If you were choosing today, would you choose it again? If the honest answer is no, renewal time is exactly when to look. Start with the switching checklist or the comparison hub.
Book a demo and put the same ten questions to us.