guestlist

It’s hard to believe, but it’s now been exactly one year since Guestlist first opened its doors. What began as a dare between three friends to actually finish a software product has turned into full-fledged web service that has helped hundreds of event organizers sell tickets online and keep tabs on their cash flow. Over that period we’ve collected half a million dollars on behalf of our users, a near-majority of which was delivered directly to charities. All powered by word of mouth. Needless to say, we feel pretty good about ourselves. So, we thought we’d take a moment to reflect upon this crucial milestone, and look back at how Guestlist has grown from 2009-2010.

A brief timeline

July 22nd, 2009 We open Guestlist to our adoring public: a single user based out of Houston, Texas, who caught our pre-release demo at a tech event earlier that month.

July 26th, 2009 I present Guestlist at DemoCampToronto21. We earn some rave reviews, and the local *Camp community pledges to use Guestlist for their events.

August 9th, 2009 We announce our first major feature addition: public attendee lists. Turns out to be a pretty popular feature.

October 12th, 2009 Our Campaign Monitor integration is released. CampaignMonitor is gracious enough to write a blog post about us and include it in their newsletter.

November 27th, 2009 Mashable writes an article about us and we get a boat load of traffic. Server manages to stay afloat.

December 19th, 2009 We allow users to add new fields to their registration form from a set of predefined fields. It’s not exactly custom fields, our most requested feature at that point, but it’s a step forward.

March 3rd, 2010 Copying of existing events is added. Users with recurring events rejoice and support requests drop by 30%.

May 5th, 2010 We release our custom fields implementation. We think we have a slicker and easier understood interface than anybody else. Oh, and branded emails gets released too.

July 12th, 2010 We launch our paid service. We become the first event registration company that doesn’t charge a minimum fee, or ask for your credit card. Not too shabby.

Doubling down

That’s the story of what our team put together, part time, over one year. We can’t say it was easy; building and maintaining a quality application part-time requires a lot of dedication and free time. That’s why we’re excited to announce that 2/3s of our team has opted to work full-time on Guestlist going forward. We believe 100% in Guestlist, and want to make sure it’s taken care of in the best way possible.

Stay tuned, exciting features soon

If you haven’t already, we’d be thrilled if you’d subscribe to our blog or follow @guestlistapp on Twitter. It’s the best way to stay on top of new feature announcements and Guestlist news. We’ve got some really exciting things to share with you — some of which is coming out as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned!

As mentioned a few posts ago, Guestlist becomes a paid service beginning today. After 10 months of open beta service, hundreds of thousands of dollars in ticket sales, and dozens of feature updates, we’re finally ready to open the till and start paying our bills.

How much does it cost?

We’re happy to say that Guestlist will only cost 2% of each ticket sold, *with no minimum fee*. We believe we’re the only event registration provider that foregoes a minimum fee, which, when coupled with our competitive 2% commission, gives both small and large events a single affordable solution. Run the numbers, and you’ll find Guestlist is tough to beat.

How will you charge me?

Guestlist will never send you a monthly bill, or ask for your credit card number. Instead, we take our commission at transaction time, every time a ticket is sold, securely via PayPal. If you need a receipt, an ongoing tally of payments you’ve made to Guestlist will be available inside your Guestlist account, under the “My Account” link.

Existing events are unaffected

If you’ve already published an event page on Guestlist, don’t worry - we won’t charge you a cent. This will only affect events going forward.

Charitible events will still be free

Guestlist will continue to be 100% free to use for charitable events and organizations. If you believe your event or organization qualifies, please contact us.

More improvements on the way

In just the past few months we’ve introduced custom fields, branded emails, and copyable events, and more is on the way. Becoming a paid service enables us to keep growing Guestlist, by adding more really useful features, delivering better performance, and providing more timely support. We’re very grateful to everyone who’s used Guestlist over the past year, and we’re hopeful that you’ll remain onboard as customers going forward. For more information on our pricing, check out our pricing page, or contact us.

Earlier this month, we announced that Guestlist would become a paid service beginning May 24th. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, we’re delaying that move for another two months. Why?

We’re committed to delivering both a competitive price and a world-class billing system for Guestlist. Unfortunately, not all pieces are in place yet, and we’re going to need more time to get it right. We could start billing people today using a number of different services, but we don’t think this would provide the best experience for our users. So we’d rather keep the service free in the meantime.

The good news is this: users can continue using Guestlist to host their events, absolutely free, until mid-July. If you have any questions, please let us know.

Last week Guestlist presented at Democamp Toronto 21, along with a handful of other Toronto-area start-ups. By all accounts, it was a success; not just for Guestlist, but for all presenters alike. Here’s what people had to say about Guestlist:

…one of the best demos I’ve ever seen, even up there with the legendary DabbleDB demo from ages ago. —Andrew Louis

…best demo of the night…a really nice re-think with some cool GUI features. —Greg Wilson

Very slick and great use of AJAX elements here. It’s so good that DemoCamp mentioned that they are going to switch from EventBrite to Guestlist; so there, now you go try it! —Josh Sookman

GuestlistApp - best demo so far! Use it for your event. —Michael Glenn

Guest List looks like a great app. Awesome user experience. —Ken Seto

Thanks again to the Democamp organizers, and to everyone for your positive comments.

Hot on the heels of our open beta announcement, we’re happy to mention that we’ll be giving a look-see of Guestlist this Tuesday at Democamp Toronto 21. Joining us will be demos from Zoocasa, Art Anywhere, HomeStars, Cascada Mobile, Mashup Arts, WeGoWeGo, and guiGoog.

If you’ve already tried Guestlist and plan to be in attendance, we’d greatly appreciate it if you could say hello and let us know what you think.