There is a wide range of new, cool, simple, and beautifully designed collaborative event planning apps available for iOS and Android.

These apps are quickly proving themselves to be essential in event planning, management, and networking.

Kaikso

Some event planning apps help you organize small gatherings with friends (dinners, weekend getaways, and parties). These apps will work with your smartphone or tablet calendar to help you prevent scheduling problems. Kaikso is one such app. This app will let your invitees suggest and vote on the place and time for the gathering. It lets you chat around an event, see who’s been invited, and who’s coming. Apps like these are excellent for a close-knit group of friends. Kaikso is available for iPhone and Android for free.

MangoApps

Other collaborative event planning apps are built more for professional use. For instance, MangoApps has a comprehensive and fully featured app that lets you do a number of things that make event planning easier than ever:

• Create and manage as many events as you want without any restrictions.
• Invite unlimited guests to your events, track RSVPs, and keep guests informed about news & updates
• Collaborate with your event attendees before the event. The event wall feature lets attendees talk with one another before the event, share files, and tell each other about changes
• Invite external guests to your event with just an email address
• Get at an at-a-glance view of what’s going on in your network

Podio

Podio is online event management for free. You can use the website to collaboratively organize events and manage your list of attendees. It is fully customizable so you can use it for any event.

Podio is open to all planners, managers, and stakeholders in your event. You can coordinate all your options and get decisions made in an expedited way. You can manage the responsibilities, deadlines, and decisions much easier, and you can also get an at-a-glance overview of the budget. Collaborative event planning leads to better decisions and more seamless event management.

In addition, Podio webforms give you a way for everyone to sign up for your events, giving you hard data on how many people are coming. You can easily manage your attendees and have every piece of data stored in a single place, so following up with your attendees after an event is easy.