Waitlist Management | Planadar Help

Waitlist Management

Everything below only applies if you've turned Enable Waitlist on in Registration Settings — it's off by default for every event, free or paid. With it off, a full/sold-out event just shows "Sold Out."

Planadar has two separate waitlist paths, depending on how your event sells tickets.

Simple (Free/RSVP) Events

If your event has an overall attendee cap (Max Attendees, set in Registration Settings) and it fills up, the public registration button switches to Join Waitlist once Enable Waitlist is on. Attendees join a single event-wide queue and see their position.

Joining works exactly like registering: they fill in your registration form and submit it, and because the event is full they're placed on the queue and told so straight away — never a false "you're registered" confirmation. You still get their form answers, so when a spot opens up you already have everything you'd have had if they'd registered normally.

Joining sends them a confirmation email with their position, and sends you a notification and email for the signup. Promotion and Auto-Promote (below) work here exactly as they do for tiers.

Tiered/Paid Ticket Events

For events with ticket tiers, capacity is tracked per tier, not event-wide. Turn on Enable Waitlist in Event Console → Sales & Registrations → Registration Settings. Once a specific tier sells out, its ticket card shows Join Waitlist instead of a dead "Sold Out" button — other tiers that still have availability are unaffected. Attendees see On Waitlist · Position #N and can Leave Waitlist at any time. Signed-out visitors can join too — they're asked for their name and email first, the same guest flow used for ticket purchase.

When someone joins, they get an in-app notification and a confirmation email with their position. You (the organizer) get an in-app notification and an email for every signup, so you don't have to keep the console open to know your waitlist is growing.

Managing the Waitlist (Organizer)

Open Event Console → Sales & Registrations → Waitlist for the event. You'll see a summary (Total, Waiting, Offered, Accepted, Declined) and a list of everyone waiting, in position order, with their ticket tier, quantity, and how long ago they joined.

• Promote Next offers a spot to whoever is at the front of the queue.
• You can also promote (or remove) any individual entry from its row menu.
• Promoting sets that entry's status to Offered, emails and notifies them, and lets their ticket page show a working purchase button for that tier (instead of just a position badge) so they can actually complete checkout.
• The spot isn't held for them — it's first-come-first-served, same as most ticketing platforms' waitlists (Eventbrite, Ticket Tailor, and Humanitix all work this way too).
• If the event or tier is currently full, promoting still works — you might be about to raise the capacity — but Planadar asks you to confirm first, because the person gets emailed that a spot opened up and won't actually be able to claim it until one does.

When an Offer Expires

An offer lasts 24 hours. If the person doesn't act on it, their entry moves to Expired and the spot passes to the next person in line automatically (assuming Auto-Promote is on) — so one unresponsive attendee never stalls your queue. With Auto-Promote off, the entry still expires and simply waits for you to promote the next person yourself.

If someone else claims the spot before the offered person does, the outstanding offer goes back to Waiting at its original position rather than being burned — they keep their place in line for the next opening.

Auto-Promote from Waitlist (a second toggle that appears once Enable Waitlist is on) does the promoting automatically: the moment a spot frees up — a cancellation, a refund, or an offer expiring — the next person waiting is promoted, with the same email, notification, and working purchase button, and no click needed from you. It's on by default and works for both waitlist paths (event-wide free/RSVP and per-tier paid). Turn it off if you'd rather review and promote people yourself.

Planadar never offers the same spot to more than one person at a time, so the Offered count won't exceed the number of spots actually available.

Undoing a Status

The row menu changes with the entry's status, so you're never stuck:

• Rescind Offer (on an Offered entry) takes the offer back and returns them to Waiting at their original position — use it if you offered by mistake. They keep their place because you withdrew the offer, not them.
• Return to Waitlist (on an Expired entry) puts someone whose 24-hour offer lapsed back in line, at the back of the queue. Letting an offer lapse forfeits your place, so they don't jump ahead of people who've been waiting the whole time.

Neither emails the attendee — they're your corrections to make quietly.

Removing an Entry

Use the row menu in Waitlist Management to remove someone from the queue — for example, if they've told you they no longer want the ticket. Unlike the two options above, this deletes the entry and their place in line. Remaining entries in that same tier are automatically renumbered.