Frequently Asked Questions

What does FestivalSystems actually do?
What sort of festivals is the system suitable for?
How many stages/performers can the system cope with?
Can artists/volunteers/delegates/presenters log in and fill out their own info?
How reliable is the system?
How secure is our information?
What hardware do we require to run the software?
How much does the system cost?
Do you do ticket sales?
Are there any hidden extras that we have to pay for?
Can we purchase the system outright?

What does FestivalSystems actually do?

We provide a way of making your life simpler and easier through both the software we provide and the service and support that accompanies it. Having the tools at hand is only part of the solution, knowing how to use them and making the most of their capabilities is equally important.

What sort of events is the system suitable for?

It is ideal for any production that has multiple artists performing on multiple stages over a 1-7 day period. We can cope with music festivals, arts and literature events, conferences and more.

How many stages/performers can the system cope with?

As many as you need! Our current record is 40 different performance spaces with over 500 performers.

Can artists/volunteers/delegates/presenters log in and fill out their own info?

We can gather and manage a wide range of essential information depending entirely on the demands of your team. We've got a really clever form builder that lets you ask for the information you require and present those forms in publicly accessible formats. Performer production forms, volunteer acquisition, conference and delegate details, guest lists and more are all handled with ease.

How reliable is the system?

Firstly, we'd like to stress that we don't cut corners on infrastructure. We understand that the information we maintain for you is vital to your business and, therefore, we treat everything you provide as though it was the most important thing in the world.

Everything is hosted and managed on rock-solid servers (99.99% up-time in the last twelve months) provided and maintained by globally respected hosting company Media Temple. By hosting the system on their servers we ensure that upgrades and other improvements occur seamlessly.

We also have a triple-redundancy policy of backups. The entire system is synced every night to a storage server by Media Temple, there are off-site server backups done concurrently (utilising Amazon's S3 Storage Solution) and a local copy is downloaded nightly to our offices.

Daily backup data is kept for 90 days ensuring that, if at any stage something unforeseen occurs, we are able to recover and resume with minimal inconvenience.

How secure is our information?

There are a number of built-in security measures in place, including a multi-level permission system, secure login, user activity tracking and security checks within each significant task. Each user account has a set of permissions that determine what the user is able to see and what alterations they can do within the system, allowing you to set appropriate restrictions depending on each user's role within your team.

Everything is logged. When a change is made it doesn't just note the change, but who did it and when.

What hardware do we require to run the software?

It will work on any computer - Mac or Windows with an internet connection and a modern web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome or Safari). Because the system is hosted for you on our state of the art servers, you don't need to download, install, maintain or upgrade anything, ever. It just works.

How much does the system cost?

We charge an annual subscription that most of our festivals pay by monthly instalment. There's a sliding scale depending on the size of your event, meaning that a larger festival will pay slightly more than a smaller one. Our ball-park answer is that it's around the same value as two tickets per month.

We promise that we can free up a significant amount of your time that you'd otherwise be spending on administrative tasks or searching for information that we can provide instantly. If you believe that you can sell an additional 24 tickets to your festival given a little more time, that you'd rather avoid sleepless nights trying to remember everything that needs doing, or even that you would like to have a little bit of the summer away from the relentless monster that is organising a successful festival, then let's talk.

We also offer substantial discounts for those companies running multiple events. Please get in touch to find out more.

Are there any hidden extras that we have to pay for?

We believe there shouldn't be any restriction on the number of users, as the benefits of a system such as ours is greatly improved if everyone in your team has access. We make all system improvements and upgrades available as standard, so you'll always be running on the latest and best version of the system. We don't charge extra for support as we don't want you to hesitate before asking for help. As a result we don't have any hidden costs.

Do you do ticket sales?

Unfortunately we're not looking at providing ticket sales software as part of this system, nor is there any intention to do so in the future. Our delegate module can integrate with your ticketing solution, on the provision that your ticketing provider is willing to make some minor changes to enable the two systems to talk with each other.

Can we purchase the system outright?

The quick answer is no. However, if asked again, our question would be why would you want to own it?

Ownership of something like this brings a whole different level of headache. We'd no longer be able to host the system on our servers, so you'd have to pay for the migration to a new server (and we've a fairly sophisticated set-up here that you'd have to try to recreate). Then, who would provide support for the system? What happens when the server goes down? How much would you have to pay when you want an improvement to the functionality? And, while our main product receives a steady stream of new features and functionality, you would either have to keep paying for these to be integrated, or never get another upgrade, ever. There's no middle ground here - as soon as there was an upgrade you didn't pay for, your version would no longer be compatible.