Event registration forms and RSVPs

What to ask on an event registration form

An online registration form has two audiences: the person filling it in, who wants to be done, and you on the morning of the event, holding a badge printer and a catering spreadsheet. Ask for the things that change what you do on the day. Here is the set that earns its place, with the Upform question type for each.

• Name. The Full Name type. It prints on the badge and it is what you search when someone turns up not on the list, so do not settle for a box holding "Sam + partner".
• Email. The Email type, validated as they type. It is the only channel for joining links, directions, schedule changes and the follow-up, so it is the one field you cannot make optional.
• Ticket type. Single Choice for three or four options, Dropdown once the list is longer. Ask it early: it decides which of the later questions anyone sees.
• Dietary needs. Multiple Choice for the common ones (vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, halal, kosher, no dairy, no nuts), plus one Short Text for anything else. Caterers need counts, and a free-text-only field gives you sixty variations to hand-tally.
• Accessibility needs. One optional Long Text: "Is there anything we should know to make the day work for you?" Open-ended beats a checklist, because a wheelchair space, a quiet room and a BSL interpreter have very different lead times.
• Session choices. Multiple Choice with a maximum selection count set to the number of slots. It sizes the rooms before you book them and tells you which track to run twice.
• Plus-ones. A Number question for how many guests, capped at your limit, then a branch showing guest name and dietary fields only when the answer is more than zero.

That is seven questions, nine if you add company and job title for a B2B event. Nine stacked fields on one page look like a tax return; in a conversational form they are nine quick screens with a progress bar, finished on a phone on the train.

Be honest about payments: Upform does not take money

There is no payment field in Upform and no card processing anywhere in the product. If the money has to change hands inside the form, a ticketing platform is the right tool, and we would rather you found that out here than four screens into building.

For a great many events it is not the question at all. Meetups, webinars, open days, community workshops, internal all-hands: none of them need a checkout. When there is a fee, separate the two jobs: take the registration in Upform, where the questions and the branching live, and hand payment to whatever already handles your money.

• Redirect from the Thank You step. Point it at your checkout, payment link or invoice page. The registration is saved before the redirect fires, so a dropped payment still leaves you a lead rather than silence.
• Invoice from the row. Every registration appends a row in Google Sheets or lands in HubSpot, which is the list your finance person was going to ask for anyway.
• Ask about invoicing on the form. A Yes/No for "do you need a PO or an invoice?" branching to company name and billing email saves a week of email for corporate attendees.

What you keep is a form people finish, with logic, uploads and every integration on a plan that costs nothing. What you give up is one screen of checkout, which your payment provider does better anyway.