Setting up your event on Confently

A step-by-step guide for organisers running their first event on Confently.

Confently handles your session booking: delegates browse your agenda on their phones, book the sessions they want, get warned about time clashes, and join a waitlist automatically when a room is full. You get a live dashboard of who's booked what.

Confently does not sell tickets or take attendee payments — keep using your existing registration platform (Eventbrite, Humanitix, a form, a spreadsheet) for that. Confently picks up from the point where someone is coming to your event and needs to choose their sessions.

What you'll need before you start:

• A web browser (everything works on a phone, but setup is easier on a laptop)
• Your email address — there are no passwords; you sign in with a link sent to your inbox
• Your agenda: session titles, times, rooms, and speaker names
• Optional: an export of your registered attendees' email addresses, if you want to limit booking to people who've registered

Allow 30–45 minutes for the whole setup.

1. Sign in

1. Go to https://confently.com
2. Click Host your event.
3. Enter your email address and click Send sign-in link.
4. Open the email and click the link — you're signed in. (No password to remember; you'll do this each time you sign in.)

Tip: always use the same email address. Your organisation, event and organiser rights are tied to it.

2. Create your organisation and event

You'll land in a five-step wizard: Basics → Streams & rooms → Agenda CSV → Branding → Publish. You can skip steps and come back later — nothing here is final.

Basics

• Organisation — create one, e.g. Acme Events. It's the umbrella your events live under; next year's event goes under the same organisation.
• Event name — what delegates see, e.g. Acme Annual Conference 2026.
• URL slug — the web address for your event, e.g. acme-2026 gives you …/e/acme-2026. Lowercase letters, numbers and hyphens; it must be unique.
• Starts / Ends — your event dates.
• Time zone — leave as Europe/London for a UK event. All session times display in this zone.
• Contact email — shown to delegates as the organiser contact. Use a monitored inbox.

Streams & rooms

• Streams are your parallel tracks (e.g. Leadership, Data & Security, Digital Delivery). Give each a colour — delegates use these to filter the agenda. Optional: skip if your event is single-track.
• Rooms are physical spaces with a typical capacity. Add the ones you know now; you can add more later while building the agenda.

Agenda CSV

Skip this step if you'd rather add sessions by hand (most first-time organisers do — see step 3). If your agenda already lives in a spreadsheet, click Download template, fill it in and upload:

Branding

Accent colour (a hex code like #2563D9), a logo URL and a tagline. All optional — delegates see these on your event's pages. Skippable and changeable later.

Publish

Don't worry about this yet — see step 5. If the publish button says a plan is required, that's expected; carry on with the steps below first.

3. Build (or finish) your agenda by hand

From My events, open your event's Admin page. This dashboard is home for everything that follows.

1. Click + Add session (top of the actions bar).
2. Fill in the title, an optional description, the type, and the capacity (how many seats the room actually has for this session).
3. Pick the Room — or choose + New room… and type a name.
4. Pick the Time slot — or choose + New time slot… and set the date, start and end time (entered in your event's timezone). Sessions in the same time slot are the ones delegates choose between — that's how clash detection knows two sessions conflict.
5. Pick a Stream, or None for sessions that apply to everyone.
6. Add speakers (comma-separated), and turn Bookable off for keynotes, breaks and lunches — they'll show on the agenda labelled "All welcome", with no booking button.

Every session gets an Edit button afterwards; changes appear on delegates' agendas within a minute. You can delete a session only while nobody's booked on it — after that, cancel its bookings first (see step 7).

4. Decide who can book

On the Admin page, find the Who can book card:

• Open (the default): anyone with your event link can sign in and book. Fine for internal or informal events.
• Attendee list only: only people whose email is on your attendee list can book. Choose this if booking should be limited to registered attendees.

For attendee-list mode: export the attendee emails from whatever registration platform you use, paste them into the box (one per line, or comma-separated — capitalisation doesn't matter) and click Add to attendee list. Duplicates and anything that isn't an email are skipped automatically. You can paste more at any time as registrations come in, and remove individual addresses.

Important: attendees must sign in to Confently with the same email address they registered with. Anyone else sees a polite "this event's booking list is managed by the organiser" message with your contact email.

5. Choose your plan

Events start as drafts and need a plan before going live. There are two routes — pick whichever fits your event:

Paid plans

For commercial, professional and corporate events.

1. Open Billing from the Admin page.
2. Pick the plan that fits your expected delegate count.
3. Pay by card via Stripe — your event unlocks immediately and can go live.

The Billing page shows current plan tiers, delegate caps and prices, and you can upgrade later if your numbers grow.

Free community access

For non-commercial community events.

1. Open Billing from the Admin page.
2. Find the card "Running a community event?"
3. Write a couple of sentences about your event — who it's for, roughly how many attendees — check the contact email, and click Request free community access.
4. The card changes to "request received". Requests are reviewed by hand, usually within a couple of days, and you'll get the decision by email.
5. Once approved, your Billing page shows a Community code badge — you're unlocked.

6. Publish and share

1. On the Admin page (or the wizard's Publish step), set the event live.
2. Share your event link: https://confently.com/e/your-slug

What your delegates experience:

• They open the link, enter their email, and click the sign-in link — no passwords, no app to install.
• The agenda shows day tabs and colour-coded stream filters. Each session shows live availability ("12 / 40 booked", "nearly full", "full — waitlist open").
• One tap books a seat and sends a confirmation email. If a session is full they can join the waitlist and see their position; if someone drops out they're promoted automatically and emailed.
• If they try to book two sessions at the same time, Confently warns them and offers to swap.
• My schedule shows everything they've booked, with cancel buttons.

7. Running the event

Everything on the Admin dashboard updates live as bookings come in:

• Totals across the top: sessions, capacity, confirmed bookings, waitlist, full sessions.
• Capacity changes: hit Cap (…) on any session to change its number. If you increase capacity on a session with a waitlist, the freed seats go to the people waiting automatically — each one gets an email.
• Find a delegate: search by name or email to see and manage someone's bookings — cancel one, promote them from a waitlist, or book on their behalf (useful at the registration desk for anyone who didn't book in advance).
• Export CSV downloads every booking (filterable by stream or time slot) for your records.
• Room sheets prints an attendance list per room per session — handy for door checks.
• Analytics shows which sessions are filling and which need a push in your comms.
• Co-organisers: in the Organisers card, invite colleagues by email. They get the same admin access.

8. Good to know

• Waitlists are automatic. When someone cancels a full session, the first eligible person on the waitlist is confirmed and emailed — no action needed from you. ("Eligible" means they're skipped, keeping their place, if promotion would clash with another session they've booked.)
• Emails delegates receive: sign-in links, booking confirmations, waitlist confirmations (with their position), promotion notifications, and cancellation notices. All automatic.
• Editing a session that has bookings is fine — bookings move with it. If you change its time slot, existing delegate schedules aren't re-checked for clashes, so mention big time changes in your comms.
• Reducing capacity below the number already booked doesn't cancel anyone — the session just shows as over capacity until numbers settle.
• Times are always in your event's timezone, whatever device or country a delegate is in.
• On the day, delegates' phones refresh availability automatically — no need to tell anyone to reload.

Stuck or something looks wrong? Email gethyn@gethynellis.com and we'll sort it out.

Confently · session booking that just works on the day.