One family pays once. The software still counts everyone on the booking.
A household books places for the whole family. A church sends a dozen students with one leader and one payment. Registration platforms are priced per registrant, so the way your people actually sign up is the way the bill grows fastest.
What a church, camp or conference office rents
These pieces rarely came from one decision. Registration arrived for one event, the database for the roll, and giving from somewhere else entirely.
Per person, when your payer is a household
Registration platforms count registrants because that is what most events are made of. Yours are not. A family is one payer and one conversation. A church sending a group of students is one relationship, one invoice and one leader you will actually speak to. Household and group sign-ups are the thing you want more of, and per-registrant pricing charges you hardest in exactly the place your growth comes from.
The calendar is the second squeeze. A summer camp may open for a few weeks and a conference for a weekend, but the licence runs all year and the system sits quiet for most of it. Registration for next summer opens while this one is still being tidied away, so a camp adding a second week or a winter retreat adds another set of per-registrant fees rather than using capacity it has already bought.
Then the same household exists twice over. They give monthly through one product and registered for camp in another, and nothing joins the two, so the office cannot see that the family asking about a scholarship has been giving quietly for years. Matching the two up at month end is done by hand, and the scholarship figure has to be kept off any list a volunteer might open.
What we build around a household
- Household and group registrationOne payer with many attendees, a group leader who reserves a number of places now and adds names later, and a per-person form attached to each place without sending anyone back through checkout.
- Cabin, room and session assignmentBeds by age and group, friend requests and the separations you were asked to keep, leaders allocated to each cabin, and a board you can move a name on when a family arrives a day late.
- Scholarships and sliding-scale pricing, kept privateAn application, an amount decided by your own rule, applied at checkout, and visible only to the people who set it. It never appears on a roster, a cabin list or a volunteer's screen.
- Consent, medical and volunteer recordsParental consent, allergies, medication and photo permissions collected before arrival, a plain list of who is still missing what, and the expiry date of every volunteer's background check held beside their name.
- Giving and registration on one recordRecurring gifts, one-off donations and event payments against the same household, so the same family is not thanked twice, asked twice, or treated as two unrelated people.
What we do not replace
- Background-check providersChecks on staff and volunteers are carried out by accredited providers and must stay with them. We record the reference, the date and the expiry, and tell you who is about to lapse. We do not run the check.
- Card processingGifts, deposits and registration payments are charged by your payment processor at the processor's rate. What can go is the additional share a giving platform takes on top of it.
- Licensing and reporting bodiesMusic and streaming licences, charity or denominational returns and anything a regulator requires are filed through their own systems. We produce the figures those returns ask for.
Records that have to hold up years later
A camp or a children's programme creates records that may be asked for long after the week has ended: the signed consent, the allergy that was declared, the medication that was given and by whom, the incident that was written up, who was named as allowed to collect a child, and which volunteers held a current check that week. Retention rules vary by country and by insurer, and the request never arrives at a convenient moment. Producing one child's complete file in minutes is the standard worth building to.
The other half of it is who can see what. A cabin leader needs the allergy and the emergency contact and has no business seeing what the family paid or whether a scholarship covered it. Someone helping at the desk for one weekend needs less again. Rented systems tend to offer a few fixed roles, and offices work around them by printing a list that shows everything. When the system is yours, the visibility rules are written to match your safeguarding policy rather than the other way round.
Questions churches, camps and conference teams ask
Can one person register a whole family or group and pay once?
Yes, and it is usually the first thing we build. One payer holds the booking, each place carries its own form, and a group leader can hold places before the names are known. Our own price does not count registrants, so a household costs us no more than a single attendee does.
Can giving stay in the same place as event registration?
Yes. Recurring gifts, one-off donations and payments for an event can sit on one household record, which is what lets the office see the whole relationship at once. Card payments still run through a payment processor. What goes away is the extra share charged for collecting a gift.
How are scholarships and reduced rates kept private?
The amount is applied at checkout and stored where only the people who approve it can see it. Rosters, cabin lists and volunteer views show the attendee and what is needed to look after them, and nothing at all about what was paid.
We are volunteer-run and hold one camp a year. Is this too much?
It may well be, and we would rather tell you than sell you something. If one subscription covers registration and the rest is handled by people who know each other, that is a sensible way to run a small programme. Add a full year together, including the registration fees, the database band and the share taken on giving, with the calculator on this site. If the number is small, stay where you are.
Keep reading
Tell us what registration and giving cost you
The per-registrant fee, the share taken on gifts, and how many of your sign-ups are households or groups.
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.