Smart Events has been streamlining events for almost two years now! It has been used to organize events with a just a couple registrants and events with thousands of registrants. Trying to come up with a pricing plan that is a great fit for events ranging in size so dramatically has always been a challenge for us. We felt like a percentage based pricing was a great way to scale pricing based on the size and cost of events. We only collected a small percentage (1.5% or 2.5%) of any registration costs.
While this pricing structure did make sense, after 2 years of use and a great deal of talking with current and potential customers, we realized there were some potential flaws. Most of the organizations and churches that use Smart Events have budgets that are set in place for the year. With percentage-based pricing, they had a very hard time budgeting accurately. There was some other confusion as well. In addition to charging a different percentage for non-profit and for-profit companies, it wasn’t always clear that the percentage included credit card payments processed by Smart Events, and any additional cash or check payments tracked through Smart Events, too. Though we tried to explain all of this well, the questions we received when customers received their bills were evidence enough that there was enough confusion to justify exploring a simpler pricing structure.
After months of deliberation, we have come up with new pricing that we feel will be a much better fit for most of our customers. The new pricing is a set rate based on the maximum number of registrants per event. Here are the new prices:
Free: $0 / month for a maximum of 5 Registrants per event
Lite: $9 / month for a maximum of 30 Registrants per event
Basic: $24 / month for a maximum of 100 Registrants per event
Plus: $49 / month for a maximum of 250 Registrants per event
Premium: $99 / month for a maximum of 600 Registrants per event
All plans include unlimited events and unlimited users. If you need a higher number of registrants, you can contact us for a customized plan.
Most customers will actually find they will be paying less under this new pricing scheme and can choose their new plan immediately from the right side of their account settings page. The pricing transition will extend until July 1, 2012 at which time all users will need to choose from one of the new low monthly prices. Until then, you are free to stay with your current pricing. As a result of these new prices, customers using Smart Events to plan free events for free will need to upgrade to one of the new plans by July 1, or use our new free plan that allows 5 registrants per event.
Also, I’d like to add on, we just released our initial Planning Center Online integration (bring your order of service into a Smart Events Event Schedule) and also added a new Payment provider called Stripe.com that allows you to accept credit card payments for 2.9% + 30¢ per successful charge and no monthly fees. You can read more about these features at: http://wp.me/p1EgzY-S
We hope that these new monthly prices will not only give you an accurate way to budget for your events, but cost you less than you were paying before. We’re already at work getting some new features ready and look forward to a great event-filled 2012!
Thanks!
Jeff Berg
Owner/Developer
Ministry Centered Technologies
For those of you who don’t know, Smart Events is created by the same team who run PlanningCenterOnline.com, the premiere online church worship service planner. The first integration we’re announcing this week is between Smart Events and Planning Center! First, link your Smart Events account with your Planning Center account on the settings page in Smart Events. 
Then link items from any Event Schedule to specific Plans in Planning Center. Once a Smart Events schedule item is linked with a Planning Center plan, you can click the new Planning Center button to see an overview of that plan with a link to go right to the plan. Planning Center’s powerful program organization features take Smart Events schedules to a brand new level.
