RFP questions for event tech
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Event Tech Notes RFP questions for event tech
An RFP is not a form to fill; it is an instrument for making vendors commit to checkable claims in writing. These questions are chosen for what the answers expose.
Most event-tech RFPs ask for feature checklists, and vendors answer feature checklists with "yes." A useful RFP asks questions whose answers are hard to fake, expensive to fudge, and revealing when evasive. Below, grouped by what the answer tells you. Put the answers in the contract by reference, so the RFP response becomes a commitment rather than a brochure.
Questions that reveal data practices
- "Provide a complete export from a representative event: every field, every record type, with documentation of the format." A vendor confident in its export sends a file. A vendor that sends a screenshot of the export button has told you something else.
- "What data can we export ourselves, without a support ticket, during and after the contract term? What is excluded?" The exclusions are the answer. Scan logs, edit history, and payment records are the commonly missing pieces, as covered under registration platforms.
- "What do you do with our attendee data beyond delivering the service? Cite the contract clause." Aggregate analytics, benchmarking, and marketing use hide here, and this is where your privacy notice either stays honest or quietly becomes false.
- "What is your data retention default after event close and after termination, and how is deletion evidenced?"
Questions that reveal product boundaries
- "Here is our most complex registration path [attach it]. Configure it and show us, or state what cannot be done." This converts the sales call into a fitting session. What comes back as "handled in professional services" is the true edge of the product.
- "Which configuration changes can our own staff make during a live event, and which require you?" The answer predicts your event-week autonomy.
- "List the three most requested features you have declined to build, and why." Vendors with a real product philosophy answer this easily. Evasion here predicts a roadmap driven by the largest prospect in the pipeline.
Questions that reveal integration reality
- "For each integration we name [name them], state whether it is native and real-time, scheduled file transfer, or via a third-party connector; the sync direction; and who maintains the field mapping when either side changes." Every term in that sentence is doing work; the integrations page explains why each one matters.
- "Describe the last integration outage affecting a customer event and how it was detected." "We have never had one" is not a good answer. It means they were not looking.
Questions that reveal support reality
- "What is your support model during our event dates specifically: hours, channel, response time by severity, and escalation path with named roles?" Then: "Attach the SLA you will sign." The gap between the prose answer and the attachable document is the negotiation.
- "How many events do you support concurrently on a peak weekend?" You are asking whether your show day is also everyone else's show day.
Questions that reveal commercial behavior
- "State the price for years one, two, and three, and the maximum annual increase you will contractually cap." The uplift question, asked before the discount conversation starts, per the buying guide.
- "Exactly which records are billable? Cancellations, imports, staff, exhibitors, no-shows?" Per-registrant pricing lives or dies in this definition.
- "What are the notice period and process for non-renewal, and what happens to our data on the day the contract ends?"
Reading the responses
Score evasion, not eloquence. A short concrete answer with an attachment beats a page of confident prose. Watch for the passive voice ("data can be exported") where you asked who, when, and how. And keep every response: the vendor's own RFP answers, incorporated into the contract, are the cheapest protective clause you will ever draft, because the vendor wrote them for you.