We wholeheartedly support communities around the world! We’ve been part of the community for decades, it has impacted us both personally and professionally, and we simply want to give back.
We want to empower community events with a full version of Sessionize, so they can manage sessions and speakers more easily. Community enthusiasts spend their free time organizing events and user groups, so our goal is to help them be more efficient and save time on content-related activities. There is never enough time when you organize an event!
That’s why our policy was, is, and always will be – free community events can use Sessionize for free. No strings attached. We love to be mentioned as a sponsor or a supporter, but even that is optional. We’ve done that for thousands of events so far, and we’ll continue doing so.
We’ve also introduced a user group mode – a special variant of Sessionize tailored for user groups, meetups, tweetups, and similar. This variant is also free for communities, made solely because it makes perfect sense for organizers and speakers to use the same tool for events and meetups. You can read more about this mode in the User groups explained article.
The requirements
A for-profit corporation organizing an event for their community of users may call it a community event, so we need some ground rules to define which events are eligible for our community offering.
- The event must be free. That means you cannot charge an entrance fee to anybody. If the fee is symbolic, like 5 USD per participant, we may make an exception.
If your standard ticket price is less than 50 USD per participant, there is a low-cost events discount available. Please contact support for more info. - The event must be open to everyone. Not only to participate but to apply to speak as well. Communities are meant to be inclusive, open, and transparent, so it’s crucial that your event shares the same values.
- The event must be organized by enthusiasts and/or volunteers that are not paid for their work. If you’re doing it in your spare time, we want to support you! If you’re doing that as a part of your job and/or get paid for it, you’ll need a paid license.
Here are a few real-world examples of non-eligible events:
- Events that charge an entrance fee of any kind
- Internal events or events closed to the public, where only employees, members, or a limited group of people can participate and/or submit sessions
- Direct and indirect promotional or marketing events of any kind
- For-profit events of any kind
- Non-profit events organized by a for-profit company
- Events organized by a non-profit organization where organizers get paid for organizing events or are doing that as a part of their job
- Events managed by a professional event services company
How to request a free community license?
If you’re eligible for a free community license, please create an event on Sessionize, set it up as much as possible, and fill out the community license request form. It may take up to 24 hours for your event to be checked and manually activated (or a bit more during weekends and holidays).
In case of any questions, feel free to contact our Support. We’d be happy to answer all your questions!