When you are running a wedding venue, catering operation, or independent event business, the software you choose touches nearly every dollar you process. Pick the wrong tool and you are either paying thousands in unnecessary processing fees or missing the operational infrastructure your team needs to run events at scale.
Maroo and Planning Pod are two platforms that often come up in the same conversation — both handle contracts, invoicing, and client payments — but they are built for very different businesses. Maroo is a financial operations platform designed for individual wedding and event professionals who want payment flexibility and contractor management. Planning Pod is a full venue and event management system built for operations teams that manage multiple rooms, create floor plans, and coordinate banquet event orders.
This comparison breaks down pricing, features, payment processing, and ideal use cases so you can match the right tool to your business — without overpaying or under-equipping yourself.
Before diving into features and pricing, the most important question is: what kind of event business are you running?
Maroo was built specifically for the wedding and event industry. Its ideal user is a solo wedding photographer, planner, florist, caterer, or small studio that sends invoices, collects deposits, pays contractors, and needs clean financial records at tax time. The platform's defining feature is its ability to pass processing fees directly to clients, which can save solo operators thousands of dollars per year on high-volume event seasons.
Planning Pod was built for event venues and catering companies — wedding barns, boutique hotels, museums, restaurants, and event planning firms that manage multiple bookings simultaneously. Its core strength is operational: room and space management, 2D interactive floor plans, banquet event orders (BEOs), and CRM tools that track leads through the entire sales and fulfillment cycle. If you have a team coordinating multiple events across multiple rooms, Planning Pod is designed for that complexity.
The short version: Maroo is for the independent event professional who needs payment power. Planning Pod is for the venue operation that needs full-stack event management infrastructure.
Maroo launched a free CRM in early 2025. It is built into every plan and handles contact management, client tracking, and communication history. It is purpose-built to connect with the invoicing and payment workflow — so when a lead becomes a client, converting them to an active job is seamless. That said, it is not a deep sales pipeline tool; it lacks workflow automations, lead scoring, or email integration.
Planning Pod offers a more robust CRM built around the venue sales cycle. It handles lead capture, follow-up tracking, proposals, and automated communications tied to the booking calendar. For a venue with a sales team working dozens of inquiries at a time, the CRM is genuinely useful. It also connects directly to the room and event availability calendar, so a sales rep can see what is booked and quote accordingly in real time.
Winner for venues: Planning Pod. Winner for solo operators: Maroo.
Both platforms support e-sign contracts. Maroo reports a 13-minute average contract signing time, reflecting a streamlined, client-friendly signing experience. On the Starter (free) plan, contracts cost $5 per document; the Business plan ($50/month) includes 20 contracts per month, with additional contracts at $3 each; the Pro plan includes unlimited contracts.
Planning Pod includes contracts as part of its core offering — e-sign is included at all tiers alongside proposals. For venues that need to bundle proposals, floor plan layouts, BEOs, and contracts into a single client-facing document, Planning Pod handles all of that in one workflow. Maroo does not have proposal functionality.
Winner for bundled proposals: Planning Pod. Winner for simple, fast contract signing: Maroo.
Maroo's invoicing is feature-rich: custom payment schedules, autopay, itemized line items, discount support, gratuity fields, read receipts, real-time payment notifications, and payment links. It supports every major card network and ACH (bank transfer), and crucially, every processing fee can be passed to the client. The platform has processed over $300M in invoices with a 94% on-time payment rate.
Planning Pod handles invoicing as part of its broader event financial management suite, which also includes budgeting tools and cost tracking. It supports multiple payment processors — PaySimple (as low as 2.39% + $0.29 per transaction), Stripe, and Square. However, fee-passing to clients is not a native feature, meaning the venue absorbs processing costs.
This is where Planning Pod separates itself entirely. It includes 2D interactive floor plans — drag-and-drop room design, table configuration, seating layouts — built directly into the platform at no extra cost. This is typically a feature that requires a separate, expensive tool (like Social Tables or AllSeated), and Planning Pod bundles it in. Venues can create, save, and share floor plan templates for different room configurations and event types.
Maroo has no floor plan or event design functionality whatsoever. This is not a gap that can be worked around — if floor plans are part of your workflow, Maroo simply is not the right tool.
BEOs — the master documents that coordinate every detail of a catered event, from setup times to menu items to AV requirements — are a Planning Pod core feature. Teams can generate, customize, and share BEOs with clients, kitchen staff, and vendors from within the platform. For venues and catering companies, this is often the single most operationally critical document they produce.
Maroo does not have BEO functionality.
This is Maroo's strongest differentiator for businesses that work with freelancers and subcontractors. Maroo handles contractor payouts with W-9 collection and 1099 e-filing built in. Payments are tracked, forms are generated automatically, and tax season becomes significantly less painful. B2B ACH transfers are free on all plans — a meaningful cost saving for studios that regularly pay second shooters, associate coordinators, or assistant planners.
Planning Pod does not support contractor payments or 1099 filing.
Maroo provides basic financial reporting on all plans, with advanced reporting on Business and Pro tiers — useful for tracking revenue by client, payment status, and tax exposure.
Planning Pod offers more comprehensive event-level reporting — booking volumes, revenue by event type, lead source tracking, and team performance metrics — designed for venue managers who need operational dashboards, not just payment summaries.
Here is a calculation worth running if you are a venue processing serious volume.
Imagine a venue doing $600,000 in event revenue per year — a relatively modest number for a wedding barn booking 50+ events annually. If clients pay by card at a 3% blended processing rate, that is $18,000 in fees absorbed by the business every year.
With Maroo's fee-passing model, the venue could shift that cost to clients entirely. Even if a portion of clients choose ACH to avoid card fees, the savings are substantial. On Maroo's Pro plan with 1.0% ACH, a client paying a $10,000 invoice via ACH would pay $100 in fees — a fraction of what the same invoice costs the venue to absorb under a card-only model.
Planning Pod does not currently offer native fee-passing. If processing cost control is a priority, this gap is worth factoring into the total cost of ownership comparison.
That said, Planning Pod's core value proposition is not payment optimization — it is operational efficiency. The floor plans, BEOs, and room management tools save venue teams significant time and reduce costly event-day errors. The ROI calculation there is about labor and risk, not just processing fees.
In the interest of a fair comparison, here is what Maroo currently lacks:
- No workflow automations
- No scheduling or appointment booking
- No forms or questionnaires
- No email marketing integration
- No mobile app (web-based only)
- No in-person or POS payments
- No floor plans or event design tools
- No BEOs or venue space management
- No AI-powered tools
- Limited international payment support
- No buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) options
For solo wedding professionals, most of these gaps are workable — they can be filled by purpose-built tools like Calendly (scheduling), Typeform (questionnaires), or Mailchimp (email). But for a venue operation that needs everything under one roof, these are real limitations.
Equally, Planning Pod has meaningful gaps for certain users:
- No fee-passing to clients
- No contractor payment processing
- No W-9 collection or 1099 e-filing
- No B2B ACH transfers
- No public API for custom integrations
For a venue that employs full-time staff rather than freelancers, the contractor payments gap is irrelevant. For an independent planner who regularly pays subcontractors, it matters a great deal.
- A solo or small-team wedding professional (planner, photographer, florist, DJ, caterer, coordinator)
- Processing significant payment volume and want to pass fees to clients to protect margins
- Working with freelancers and subcontractors who need to be paid and issued 1099s
- Looking for a free starting point that still handles professional invoicing and contracts
- Needing API access to build custom integrations with your existing tech stack
- A wedding venue, event barn, hotel, museum, or restaurant managing event bookings
- Running a catering company or event planning firm with multiple simultaneous events
- Needing floor plans, BEOs, and room management as part of your core operations
- Managing a sales team that tracks leads through a pipeline tied to room availability
- Looking for a single platform that replaces the combination of a CRM, floor plan tool, and event ops system
Some venues are already exploring a hybrid approach — using Planning Pod for the operational layer (floor plans, BEOs, room management, team coordination) while using Maroo for the financial layer (fee-passing, contractor payouts, 1099 filing). The Zapier integration that both platforms support makes it possible to connect them, syncing client data across tools without double entry. This approach costs more, but for venues doing high payment volume with a freelance workforce, the fee savings from Maroo can more than offset the additional subscription.
Is Maroo free to use?
Yes. Maroo offers a free Starter plan for businesses invoicing under $5,000 per month. It includes card and ACH payments, contracts, CRM, and integrations. Contracts are billed at $5 each on the free plan. Paid plans start at $50/month.
Does Planning Pod have a free plan?
No. Planning Pod does not offer a permanent free tier, but it does offer a free trial. Paid plans start at approximately $74/month for the Planner tier (up to 10 events, unlimited users). Venue-tier plans have custom pricing.
Can you pass credit card fees to clients with Planning Pod?
Not natively. Planning Pod integrates with PaySimple, Stripe, and Square, but fee-passing (surcharging) is not a built-in feature. Maroo, by contrast, makes client-facing fee-passing a core part of its product.
Which platform is better for wedding venues?
Planning Pod is purpose-built for venues and offers features — floor plans, BEOs, room management, booking calendars — that Maroo does not have. For full operational management of a venue, Planning Pod is the stronger choice.
Which platform is better for independent wedding planners?
Maroo is generally the better fit for independent wedding planners who need invoicing, contracts, client payments, and contractor payouts in a single tool. Its free plan makes it accessible for newer businesses, and the fee-passing capability protects margins as volume grows.
Does Maroo have floor plan tools?
No. Maroo does not include floor plans, event design tools, or room management features. For floor plans, consider Planning Pod, Social Tables, or AllSeated.
Does Planning Pod support contractor payments and 1099 filing?
No. Planning Pod does not handle contractor payouts, W-9 collection, or 1099 e-filing. Maroo is one of the few event-industry platforms that handles all three.
Can Maroo and Planning Pod be used together?
Yes. Both platforms integrate with Zapier, making it possible to sync data between them. Some venue operators use Planning Pod for event operations and Maroo for financial management and contractor payments. The viability of this approach depends on your volume and workflow complexity.
Maroo and Planning Pod are not really competing for the same customer — and that is actually useful information.
If you are a solo or small-team event professional focused on getting paid faster, paying contractors cleanly, and keeping more of every dollar you earn, Maroo's payment optimization and financial toolset are hard to beat. The free plan removes the barrier to entry, and the fee-passing capability alone can recover its subscription cost many times over.
If you are running a venue, catering operation, or multi-event firm that needs room management, floor plans, BEOs, and a sales CRM built around event availability, Planning Pod delivers a purpose-built operational platform that would otherwise require three or four separate tools.
Know your business model, prioritize the features that map to your actual workflow, and you will make the right call.
Looking to learn more about Maroo? See how Maroo handles event payment processing or compare Maroo to HoneyBook.
Want to see how event professionals are managing processing fees? Read our guide to the best payment software for wedding pros.
