Boulder, Colo. — The competition among vendors of online registration applications has prompted one such vendor, RegOnline, to eliminate its setup fee, a common element in the pricing structure of ASP’s
The move mostly benefits organizers of small meetings.

Under RegOnline’s new pricing structure, planners can choose to forgo the company’s $125-per-event setup fee. But they pay more per registrant — $3.75 as opposed to $2.50.

RegOnline president Bill Flagg said the new pricing option is a better deal for groups holding meetings of fewer than 100 participants.

“Previously, online registration involved too many up-front costs to be financially feasible for events such as classes, training and workshops,” said Flagg. “Smaller events now have the opportunity to take advantage of the same services that larger events already enjoy.”

Meetings Corbin Ball agreed with Flagg. Calling RegOnline’s no-setup-fee option an attractive price point, he said, “Small meeting planning companies or small groups stand to gain the most, as the base set-up fee can be prohibitive for them.”

RegOnline is not the first to offer no setup fee. Two others are Acteva, of San Francisco, and ISIS, of Oakland, N.J.

Acteva charges transaction fees of 2.5 percent to 10 percent of the attendee registration fee, depending on the amount of the fee and the volume of transactions. Some of Acteva’s fees fall in line with the typical $4 to $8 transaction fees many online registration ASPs charge. ISIS charges $4 per transaction for its simple registration application, GoldReg.

Another RegOnline competitor, Cvent, of Arlington, Va., charges an annual setup fee of $2,500. In addition, groups pay $2 to $15 per registrant or $400 to $2,000 per event. The variation in fees depends on volume.

Relative to much more robust — and pricier — applications such as seeUthere and StarCite’s b-there, Reg Online offers a light version of a full attendee-management application. The application can handle multiple sessions, but the housing and travel modules are request systems, not booking engines. In other words, attendees request hotel and travel reservations through the system for later processing by event organizers.

In contrast to RegOnline, Acteva is tailored to groups that hold one-day events, mainly sell tickets to their events, and need few if any hotel rooms. Cvent offers powerful electronic marketing tools.

RegOnline’s new pricing option allows groups to deploy the application for all their meetings, both large and small, at a reasonable cost.

For example, Linda Neher, operations director for the Indiana Telecommunications Association, is deploying Reg Online to register about 250 people for the group’s upcoming annual convention in June, as well board meetings, which typically draw about 15 people each.

Neher is paying the setup fee for the convention but only the per-registrant charge for the board meetings.

“I would not be able to justify paying the setup fee for such a small number of people,” she said.

Neher also is deploying RegOnline to solicit associate members for $50 each to pay for extra hospitality expenses at the convention. She’s paying the per-registrant fee, without the setup fee, because she expects only about 20 companies to volunteer the additional funding.

Boulder, Colo. — RegOnline has released an online application

for managing organizational memberships that features affordable pricing for small groups.

“We’ve taken software that used to cost an association tens of thousands of dollars and made it easy and affordable to all associations through a pay-as-you-go, web-based system,” said company president Bill Flagg.

Pricing for the membership application starts at $125 for a one-time setup fee and $2.50 per member annually. Volume discounts are available.

A modified version of the company’s event registration application, RegOnline’s membership management software allows groups to set up a customizable membership web page. Members can sign up, renew and pay for their memberships at the web page, and make changes to their profiles.

Groups that deploy both the membership and registration applications can integrate member and attendee information into a single database.

The integration of information lets a group’s meeting planners and other managers compile a wide variety of reports that include comprehensive information on members’ group-related activities. In a single report, for example, managers can determine whether a member is current on membership dues and has registered to attend the annual meeting.

The combined system also pre-populates online event registration forms with members’ addresses, telephone numbers and company affiliation after members enter their names and email addresses.