Comparison
Excel alternative for managing your event venue
Your spreadsheet has an inquiries tab, a calendar tab, and a proposal template that does the math right. It can't see what never gets entered. Joinways handles the tracking, and everything goes back to Excel whenever you want to analyze it.
30-day free trial, no credit card. From $69 per venue per month, unlimited users.
| Feature | Joinways | Excel + Outlook |
|---|---|---|
| Inquiries read and logged automatically: email, website form, booking platforms | Yes | No |
| Proposal prepared as soon as the inquiry lands, with your templates and prices | Yes | No |
| Scheduled follow-ups until the proposal is signed | Yes | No |
| BEO built from the signed proposal, confirmed by staff and vendors | Yes | No |
Joinways and Excel: what differs for your venue
From inquiry to invoice, step by step: what Joinways prepares on its own, and what is still done by hand in Excel.
| Feature | Joinways | Excel + Outlook |
|---|---|---|
| Inquiries read and logged automatically: email, website form, booking platforms | Yes | No |
| Proposal prepared as soon as the inquiry lands, with your templates and prices | Yes | No |
| Scheduled follow-ups until the proposal is signed | Yes | No |
| BEO built from the signed proposal, confirmed by staff and vendors | Yes | No |
| Deposit and balance invoiced from the signed proposal, sent to accounting | Yes | No |
| Single calendar with double-booking detection | Yes | No |
| One version of each event, shared by the team | Yes | Partial |
| Win rate and response time calculated across every inquiry received | Yes | No |
- Yes
- Partial
- No
Comparison published by Joinways, based on public information about Excel + Outlook.
Keep your current tool and try Joinways alongside it
Connect your mailbox. For 30 days, Joinways reads incoming inquiries, logs them, and shows you the ones still waiting for a reply. Nothing changes in the tool you use today. Before the trial ends, you get a summary and compare the two on your own inquiries.
30-day free trial, no credit card.
Your mailbox, read-only
Joinways reads incoming inquiries. It never sends anything from your mailbox or changes anything in it.
Nothing goes out to your clients
Proposals are drafted, never sent without you. Your clients never see the trial.
A summary of your trial
Inquiries read and logged, duplicates caught, proposals prepared: the summary gives your own numbers, measured during the trial.
Your clients and events come with you
If you switch, your clients, contacts, and upcoming events import from your current tool's export.
No paying twice
Under contract until a set date? Joinways is free until that contract ends.
The Excel-to-Joinways switch plan, step by step
Half a day on your side, with the import handled by our team.
What doesn't import: your macros and custom formulas.
When: Day 1
Send your file
What you have at the end: Your file as is: catalog, rate sheets, contacts
Who: You
When: A few days
Import
What you have at the end: Service catalog, rate sheets, and contacts imported, with duplicates flagged
Who: Joinways
When: Two minutes
Connect your mailboxes
What you have at the end: Gmail or Outlook feeds the inbox: new inquiries come in on their own
Who: You
When: Half a day
Spaces, packages, and templates
What you have at the end: Spaces, setup times, and proposal templates ready
Who: You, with guidance
When: From day one
First inquiries
What you have at the end: New inquiries handled in Joinways
Who: The whole team
When: When you decide
Switch-over
What you have at the end: The file goes read-only and is used for analysis, fed by the export
Who: You
Your spreadsheet only knows what you've typed into it
Your inquiries arrive by email and through booking platforms. You copy them into the Inquiries tab, color in the date on the Calendar tab, and duplicate the proposal template. As long as everything goes through you, the file holds up. Here's where it gives out.
An inquiry that came in during an event isn't entered yet: as far as the file knows, it doesn't exist
With JoinwaysYour Gmail or Outlook inboxes are connected: every inquiry arrives read in the Joinways inbox, platforms included, whether or not anyone had time to handle it
The hold cell on the Calendar tab doesn't say who placed it, since when, or how long the space takes to reset
With JoinwaysThe space calendar fills in from your events: hold or confirmed, owner, and setup and teardown time counted in conflicts
Every proposal is a copy of the template: when the guest count changes, you redo the file and resend a PDF, without knowing whether it was opened
With JoinwaysThe proposal is built from your catalog, at a flat rate, per person, or tiered. An amendment follows the new guest count, the Viewed status shows it was opened, and the signature confirms the event
Follow-ups depend on a follow-up column someone has to remember to check
With JoinwaysProposal follow-ups go out by your rules and stop at signature. A hold with no change in the number of days you choose creates a follow-up task
Win rate, response time, inquiries by source: you have to rebuild them by hand, and only from what was entered
With JoinwaysReports calculate win rate by source, first-response time, and loss reasons, across every inquiry received in the inbox
Related product pages: Clients
The product, screen by screen
What you can check during the trial
On your own inquiries, alongside your current tools.
Your file, imported as is
Our team imports your service catalog, rate sheets, and contacts for free, straight from your Excel file as it stands.
Export to CSV or Excel
Inquiries, events, companies, and contacts export from Settings, so you can keep your pivot tables going.
Free trial, alongside your tools
The full Pro plan, unlimited users, with 3 e-signatures included. No credit card.
The venues where the gap matters
Three signs, even in a well-kept file.
Inquiries arrive through several channels
Data entry falls behind, and the Inquiries tab doesn't show what's still waiting in the mailbox.
Several people sell the same spaces
The shared file says which date is blocked and which proposal went out, as long as everyone updates it in time.
You want to know what you're losing
A win rate only means something across every inquiry received. A spreadsheet only counts the ones someone had time to log.
Go further: Events · Tool integrations
Other Excel alternatives
Four other approaches you can take instead of the spreadsheet, with the prices published on their websites in October 2026.
Google Sheets + Google Forms
- Best for
- Venues that want to keep a spreadsheet, shared online, with an inquiry form
- Price
- Included with a Google account; Google Workspace from €6.80 per user per month before tax, annual plan (European pricing, October 2026)
Anyone with a Google account can create spreadsheets in Sheets, and Google Forms responses export to Sheets for analysis. It's the step closest to Excel: a form on your website, a sheet shared by the team. The limit is still the spreadsheet's: an inquiry received by email or through a booking platform doesn't get in on its own.
Official siteAirtable
- Best for
- Teams that want to build their own tool, with no code
- Price
- Free plan; Team $20 and Business $45 per user per month billed annually (October 2026)
Airtable lets you build your own business apps with no code: a database, interfaces, and automations. Only users who edit a base are billed; form submissions and read-only collaborators aren't. You get a tool shaped to you, but designing the calendar, proposals, and follow-ups is up to you, and so is maintaining them.
Official siteHubSpot
- Best for
- Sales teams that want a general-purpose CRM
- Price
- Free for up to 2 users and 1,000 contacts; Starter from $7 per seat per month (October 2026)
HubSpot's free CRM connects to Gmail and Outlook, keeps your contacts, and offers a meeting booking link. It's a solid sales tracking tool, with no time limit on the free plan. It doesn't know your spaces, your dates, or your event proposals: you have to rebuild them as custom fields, and the calendar lives elsewhere.
Official siteTripleseat
- Best for
- Restaurants, caterers, hotels, and venues that sell events
- Price
- From $375 per venue per month, add-ons extra (October 2026)
This is the other family: dedicated venue software, such as Tripleseat or Perfect Venue. Tripleseat covers capturing inquiries, booking, event planning, and payments, with unlimited users. Its add-ons are priced separately. Perfect Venue, for its part, offers a free plan and paid plans from $199 per venue per month billed annually.
Official site
Frequently asked questions
Which Excel alternative fits an event venue?
- Inquiries enter tracking on their own, with no retyping from the mailbox
- A space calendar fed by your events, with holds, confirmations, and turnover time
- Proposals built from your packages, signed online, with a Viewed status
- Proposal follow-ups sent by your rules
- Inquiries, events, companies, and contacts you can export to CSV or Excel
Do I lose my data if I stop using Joinways?
What happens to my proposal template and its formulas?
Can my business partner stay on Excel during the transition?
How much does it cost compared to Excel?
Does importing my file take long?
When is Excel still the right choice?
At what volume should a venue move from Excel to event software?
How do you stop using Excel and email to manage venue bookings?
Do Google Sheets or Airtable work better than Excel for a venue?
Can a general CRM like HubSpot replace Excel?
Which software should replace Excel at an event venue?
Pricing is public: from $69 per venue per month depending on venue size, with a 30-day free trial. See pricing