How to build your event registration page for free, in 5 minutes
Step by step to publish your meetup or talk page with email registration, a QR ticket and an automatic reminder. No card, no app.
Before you start: what the page has to solve
A registration page has three jobs: people understand what the event is in ten seconds, they can sign up without friction, and you know who is coming. Everything else, the design, the domain, the integrations, is secondary. If your page does those three things, it fills up.
Most small organizers solve this with a Google Form and a WhatsApp group. It works, but it has three hidden costs: the form tells the guest nothing (no calendar entry, no reminder), the group exposes everyone's phone number, and on the day nobody knows who is who.
This guide uses the Circli free plan, which solves all three and adds a fourth: a portal for your guests with the agenda, the directory and AI matchmaking. It is free forever and asks for no card.
Step 1: create your account (1 minute)
Go to circli.app and pick Create your event, free. It asks for an email and a password, or you sign in with Google. No sales call and no contact form: the account is created and you go straight to setup.
Step 2: fill in the basics (3 minutes)
Setup has three screens: Basics, Brand and Agree.
- Basics: event name, date and time (in your time zone, so every guest's calendar entry lands right), venue and description. If you already published it on a compatible platform, paste its public link and Circli pulls in the name, date, venue and description.
- Brand: your logo, colors and cover. If you have no cover, Circli generates one from the name and the date.
- Agree: the organizer terms. Accept them and the event exists.
From the dashboard you can add the agenda (talk by talk, with speaker and room), a gallery and an FAQ. And set a capacity: past that number, latecomers join a waitlist.
Step 3: publish and share (1 minute)
Your event gets a public link like circli.app/ir/your-event and a PNG QR code you download from the dashboard. The QR goes on the poster, the Instagram story or the invitation email; the link goes anywhere.
People land on the page and sign up with their name and email. No user to create, nothing to install. They instantly get a confirmation with a Google Calendar button and an .ics file. The day before, an automatic reminder arrives, and with it their QR ticket.
What happens on the day
At the door, the host scans the ticket from their phone and the check-in is logged to the second. You watch from the dashboard who came in and who has not.
And here is what a form cannot do: every registrant has access to the event portal. They see the agenda, the directory of who is there, the chat, and the AI suggests who to meet and why. It is the same portal a 10,000-person fair used; the free plan includes it.
What you export afterwards
The guest list with their answers, as a CSV. Who came in and who did not. Where they arrived from (the poster link, the Instagram one, the email one). With that you plan the next event knowing which channel worked.
The three mistakes that repeat most
Publishing without a time zone on the date. The most common and the most expensive: if the zone is wrong, the calendar button loads the wrong hour into every guest's calendar, and people arrive late to an event that was organised perfectly. It is fixed in Basics, and it is worth checking twice.
Setting the capacity last. Capacity is not a restriction, it is information: with the number set from the start, the page shows how many seats are left and latecomers land on a waiting list instead of bouncing. Adding it once you are already overwhelmed arrives too late.
Sharing the link without the QR. The link covers everything digital; the QR covers everything else — the poster in the venue, the screen in the room, the back of the flyer. Same destination, one click to download from the dashboard. Organisers who use it can see where each signup came from, because the QR and the link are counted separately.
Nothing to download, on either side
Worth saying plainly, because it is the question that comes up most: neither you nor your guests install an app. No store, no download, no pending update. The event page and the portal are web addresses that open on the phone the person is already holding — which is exactly why the "sign up" step does not lose people along the way.
When to move to a paid plan
When you need sponsors and speakers on the page, exhibitors, the venue map or the additional notice channels. The same event moves up a plan at a flat price per event, never per attendee. It is all on Plans, and the full picture of what the platform does is in Circli Events.