Start with SeatLayer when buyers must select live, purchasable seats. Choose Cvent Event Diagramming, formerly Social Tables, when teams must plan a room, place known attendees, coordinate meals and registration, or present a photorealistic design.
Discuss transactional seating →Honest boundary: SeatLayer is not a guest-list, meal, BEO, or photorealistic planning system. Social Tables' documented Cvent integrations are real strengths. Both products can support enterprise customers; their primary jobs differ.
A “seating chart” can arrange guests, sell inventory, or simply document a room.
Only need to create and share a non-transactional chart? Use the free seating chart maker. It owns free, printable, wedding, classroom, and simple maker intent.
SeatLayer separates reusable venue geometry from event seat state, then carries both into buyer and operator surfaces.
Venue intent remains structured, reusable, and ready for different events.
Explore Venue Designer →Operational decisions and buyer availability stay connected to one event.
See box-office operations →Seven server SDK families, REST/OpenAPI, webhooks, and real-time inventory support the browser path. Hosted reserved seating remains a separate secondary path.
Compare event ticketing platforms →Current official product, pricing, integration, and learning pages were reviewed 5 Sep 2026. “Not presented” describes only those reviewed public surfaces.
| Decision | SeatLayer | Social Tables / Cvent Event Diagramming |
|---|---|---|
| Primary job | Buyer-facing reserved-seating infrastructure, led by an SDK inside another booking product, with a separate hosted path. | Collaborative event diagramming and known-attendee planning for planners, venues, and hospitality teams. |
| Who gets placed | Public buyers choose available inventory during a booking journey. | Planning teams place named attendees they already know. |
| Venue authoring | Reusable structured venue geometry with sections, levels, rows, tables, booths, GA, categories, publishing, and embeddable Designer. | To-scale event-space diagrams, 700+ objects, collaboration, source-plan upload, attendee placement, and venue-planner workflows. |
| Buyer transaction | Stable JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Vue, and Angular SDKs put selectable seats inside a host-controlled booking flow. | The reviewed pages document attendee management and Cvent Registration integration, but not Event Diagramming itself as a public transactional seat-picker SDK. |
| Live inventory and holds | Event-specific free, held, sold, and blocked state shared in real time across authorized buyer and operator surfaces. | Not presented in the reviewed pages as buyer-purchasable free, held, sold, and blocked inventory. |
| SDK, API, and events | Four stable web paths, seven server SDK families, and four production mobile SDKs, plus REST/OpenAPI and signed webhooks. | Deep Cvent ecosystem integration is documented; the reviewed public pages do not present an external transactional seat-picker SDK. |
| Checkout and channels | Keep checkout in your product, or use SeatLayer's hosted event, Box Office, Control Room, ticket, and door-tool path with organizer-connected Stripe or Razorpay. | Cvent Registration, OnArrival, and Badges integration can connect planning, registration, assignments, and onsite operations. |
| 3D purpose | Optional chart-derived interactive buyer 3D adds live selection and venue orientation while the complete 2D path remains available. | Photorealistic 3D helps planners, venues, and clients visualize and present an event-space design. |
| Entry pricing | 100 free Platform/SDK credits every month, then $50 for 500 confirmed-sold-seat credits at $0.10 each, with no subscription or minimum commitment. | Planner plans reviewed 5 Sep 2026: Free; Standard $49/month; Pro $150/month; Premium $320/month; Enterprise custom. |
| Unused value | Purchased credits never expire. If no seats sell, no sold-seat credits are consumed. | All paid plans have a 12-month commitment. This is a licensed planning plan, not a prepaid seat-credit bucket, so “credit rollover” is not a like-for-like claim. |
| Enterprise and integrations | Enterprise terms, SDK/API deployment, released sales channels, and embeddable control surfaces are available. | Enterprise plans, training, advanced features, unlimited plan allowances, and Cvent ecosystem integrations are documented. |
| Best fit | Platforms and organizers selling selectable live inventory with product ownership or a specialist hosted seating path. | Planners and venues designing events, assigning known attendees, managing meal details, and presenting room layouts. |
| Deliberate boundary | No guest-list-to-table assignment, meal or BEO workflow, or photorealistic planning walkthrough. | Not positioned in the reviewed sources as a specialist external transactional seating engine. |
Every link here points to SeatLayer-owned product evidence or SeatLayer's public GitHub repositories.
Pricing in plain terms: Social Tables licenses event-planning software; SeatLayer meters confirmed sold seats, so the prices describe different jobs. Official Cvent sources are linked below.
SeatLayer does not claim to import a Social Tables account or synchronize its guest list. Build the buyer-facing seating flow explicitly.
Start from a released template or author the structure in the Designer. Verify sections, categories, accessibility, and commercial view metadata.
Attach event-specific free, held, sold, and blocked state without changing the reusable venue chart.
Embed JavaScript/TypeScript, React, Vue, or Angular; create a hold; take payment in your system; and book from your trusted server SDK or API.
Keep planning where it fits: using Social Tables for internal guest or room planning and SeatLayer for public seat sales can be a valid coexistence model. No automatic data synchronization is implied.
SeatLayer's 3D is transactional buyer context; Social Tables' 3D is event-planning and venue presentation. SeatLayer adds live selection and orientation while the complete 2D picker remains available. Neither purpose should be confused with the other.
Review stable web SDKs, seven server SDK families, REST/OpenAPI, webhooks, and source.
3D PEERCompare chart-derived 3D with a bespoke venue-twin visualization layer.
FREE CHARTFor printable, wedding, classroom, and simple non-transactional chart intent.
AUTHORING DEPTHSee reusable venue geometry, editing tools, levels, and publishing controls.
Keep Social Tables for known-guest planning if it fits. Evaluate SeatLayer with the transaction it is actually built to power: live reserved-seat selection.
Discuss the integration →