FAQ: How much does it cost? January 24, 2006
Organizers are always looking at the bottom line. Each event operates like a standalone P&L and the total dollars collected needs to exceed the total dollars spent. With track rental fees and insurance premiums skyrocketing, this is becoming harder than ever.
When explaining the benefits of our service to a car club, the conversation eventually turns to the most frequently asked question: How much does it cost?
Use of our service for online registration is completely free of charge. You can send email, generate reports, maintain a driver and instructor database and you’ll never pay us a dime. No setup fees, no monthly fees, no termination fees and no contractual obligations to use our service for any period of time.
If someone registers for an event online and pays using a credit card or e-check, the bank charges us a percentage of the fee, somewhere around 3%. You will see some people claim “base rates” as low as 1.9% which do exist, but credit card companies have countless exceptions to that base rate that mean your average transaction rate for advance event registrations is in the 3% neighborhood. Even Paypal offers a similar structure - if you process enough volume, you can get down to a 2.2% rate but most clubs will probably see their 2.9% rate.
On top of this 3% rate, we charge 1.5% to cover our operating costs and continue improving our software. This 4.5% comes out to about $10 on a $225 registration.
Many event organizers are immediately concerned that they cannot cover the cost of these fees and that easier online registration and event management is out of their reach.
We did not anticipate this initially, but our customer data has shown that, despite increasing the price to cover the surcharge, participation levels actually increase when they begin accepting credit cards!
Talking with customers, we found the answer was additional flexibility in handling payment for the cost of the experience versus the cost of the registration.
Attending a 2-day driving event can cost as much as $1000 by the time you include registration fees, hotel, gas and meals. Flexibility in paying the balance and earning airline miles or rewards points outweighs an extra $10 in registration fees. In fact, one customer charges as much as $600 for their event and it hasn’t dampened registration levels.
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