Two funnels on one weekend: cars on the field, people at the gate
A show, a concours, a cruise-in or a swap meet runs two sales at once. Vehicle registration is metered per car and admission is metered per head, by separate products that rarely know the other exists, and the club still supplies the field.
What a show or club committee pays for
Almost all of it is an annual subscription bought for a weekend, and the bits that are not annual are charged by the thing you are trying to grow.
Two meters running, one weekend a year
Two funnels means two meters. Every car that rolls onto the grass is billed once as an entry, and every person who walks through the gate is billed again as an admission, by products that do not share a record. A run of fine weather raises both on the same morning. The club supplies the marshals, the cones, the field and the trophies, and the software bill is the part that moved.
Most of these subscriptions are annual and most shows are one weekend. Registration opens, runs hot for a few weeks and closes, and the plan you had to buy was sized for that fortnight rather than for the ten quiet months either side. Ballot and voting add-ons are commonly priced per event or per vote, so the better attended your show is, the more the awards cost to hand out.
The mailing list is priced by its size, which is the oddest charge of the lot. A club spends years gathering the people who bring cars, and the email tool bills more each season for holding the very thing the club exists to build. The exceptions, meanwhile, go into a spreadsheet: the late entry, the car that arrives in the wrong class, the member who pays cash at the gate.
What we rebuild for a club or show
- Vehicle entry with real classesYear, make, model, modifications and photographs against a class list you maintain, with a cap per class, a waiting list and class changes handled without an email chain.
- The field map and placementCars placed by class on a numbered map, run sheets and windscreen cards for the marshals, and pitches for vendors and the swap meet sold by the stall with power and access recorded.
- Ballots and awardsJudge sheets by class on a phone, people's choice voting open to the public for the hours you choose, tallies you can see live and an award list ready before the presentation.
- Walk-up registration in a fieldA tablet at the entrance that takes an entry, a photograph and a payment with no signal, and syncs the moment it finds one.
- Sponsors and the gateWhat each sponsor package promised and what has been delivered, alongside advance and on-the-day admission against the same show.
What we leave rented
- Insurance and sanctioningWhere a venue, a landowner or a national body requires event cover or a sanction through a particular scheme, that requirement stands and is outside the build from the start.
- Card processingEntry fees, gate takings and stall fees all pay the processor's rate, under any system.
- Enthusiast calendars and club directoriesThe listings that put your show in front of people who have never heard of it are an audience you cannot rebuild. Keep them and point them at your own entry form.
The owner list is what the club actually owns
Ask what survives a rained-off year, and it is not the trophies. It is the list of people who will bring a car next spring: what they brought, which class it ran in, whether they judged, stewarded or sponsored, and how many years running they have turned up. In most clubs that list is spread across a registration platform, an email tool and one committee member's own inbox, and whoever holds those logins is holding next year's field.
So the first question we ask is what your current platform will really export, and in how much detail. Names and email addresses are the floor. Vehicle records, class history, years attended and marketing consent are what let you invite last year's field back before entries open to everyone. When registration runs on something the club owns, that list stops being rented back to you one season at a time.
Questions car clubs and show committees ask
Can we register cars on the day in a field with no signal?
Yes. Day-of registration is built to work offline: details, a photograph and a payment taken on a tablet at the entrance, queued locally and synced when a signal comes back. That matters because walk-ups are the entries most likely to be lost, and the card leg of the payment is the one part that needs a connection.
We cap the field. Can entries close class by class?
Yes. Caps are set per class as well as overall, so the popular class closes and the rest stay open, with a waiting list that promotes the next car automatically when somebody withdraws. Your registrar can move a car between classes without cancelling and rebooking the entry.
Can spectators vote for people's choice from their phones?
Yes, with voting open only for the hours you set, one vote per person by whatever check you prefer, and a live tally visible to the committee and nobody else. Judged classes and the public vote are counted separately and both land in the same award list.
Our show is one day a year. Is this overkill?
It may well be. If your entry list is short and the committee copes with a spreadsheet, renting is the sensible answer and we will tell you so. Add up a full year first, including the annual subscriptions you only use for a fortnight, using the calculator on this site. A small number means keep what you have.
Keep reading
Send us what your show pays per car and per ticket
Entry and gate fees, the ballot and stall tools, the mailing list tier, and the size of your field.
Hiro costs about a tenth of what you pay now, quoted against your own bill. Hosting, fixes and changes included, and no per-seat fees.