For a conference, especially one that aims to run year after year, it’s vital to actually collect and manage a certain amount of data. Each attendee’s badge pick-up information at the very least- their name if nothing else. Ideally, email addresses and/or mailing addresses would accompany that so that we can notify them of changes and reach out when the following year’s registration is available.

Between the personal data and the payment processing, there are security concerns that naturally arise. An annual conference probably shouldn’t try to get into merchant services accounts and card processing and all that. Well, maybe 10,000-person conferences should, but not a small one like us. That means finding a registration service provider- someone like Eventbrite.

Similarly, there are good reasons to use an email communications provider like Mailchimp– to minimize your risk of getting thrown in the spam bucket if nothing else!

All of these services cost money, of course.

Eventbrite charges a fee for each ticket sold. We’d have the option of wrapping the fee into the cost or passing it to the attendee on top of the registration cost. For example, if the registration costs $50, the processing fee might be $5. This would make the actual cost to the attendee $55 if passed on, or make the actual income from the registration $45. Either way, it’s a balancing act. From what I’ve seen, the other providers are pretty similar.

It’s worth saying that WordPress plugins can do some of the same things, but that means dedicating a lot more time to site administration.

On the other hand, Eventbrite’s default is to hold payouts until after the event, which will simply not work in this case. They have a system for rolling payouts ahead of the event, but you have to apply for that- so it’s not a sure thing.

I also considered crowdfunding services like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Sadly, they don’t have any sort of CRM systems from what I’ve seen. Also, their track record for funding conferences is abysmal.

In an ideal world, we’d also be able to register attendees for individual events- for instance Session A or B at 3pm. Obviously, this requires having the schedule nailed down, but it makes it easier to plan which sessions need the bigger rooms! Eventbrite doesn’t appear to have such a system, nor did the other services I saw. So whatever solution we go with might still require a bunch of manual data entry.

Do you know of a better (and cheap) solution or service provider?

-In Deos Confidimus

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