Pricing that scales with your mission

Pricing FAQ

Is the Starter plan really free?

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Yes. The Starter plan is free for a single facility with no credit card required, and you can run core booking and calendar operations on it indefinitely.

It is worth being clear about what this is not. It is not a trial that converts to paid after a set period, and it is not a demo tier that stops working once you pass a booking limit. A single-facility organization can operate on Starter permanently without ever being asked for payment details.

The reason we offer it is straightforward: many of the organizations that most need to get off spreadsheets — small congregations, volunteer-run theatres, single rec centres — have no software budget at all. Charging them nothing costs us relatively little, and those organizations tend to grow into paid plans when they genuinely need more, rather than because a countdown expired.

What counts as one facility?

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A facility is one physical location — one church campus, one theatre building, one park or recreation centre. Multiple rooms within a single location all count as one facility.

This is the question that most often causes uncertainty when people estimate cost, so the practical rule is worth stating plainly: rooms do not add to your bill. A church with a sanctuary, fellowship hall, six classrooms, a gym, and a commercial kitchen is a single facility. A theatre with a main stage, studio space, rehearsal rooms, and a lobby is a single facility.

What creates a second facility is a second physical site — a satellite campus across town, a second recreation centre, an additional building operated as its own location. If you are unsure how your particular setup counts, ask during the demo and we will tell you before you commit to anything.

Can I upgrade or downgrade at any time?

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Yes. You can upgrade at any time with billing adjusting immediately, and downgrades take effect at the end of your current billing cycle.

The asymmetry is intentional rather than a penalty. Upgrading applies straight away because the need is usually immediate — a new site is opening, or you have hit something Starter does not cover and want it working now rather than at the start of next month. Downgrading applies at the cycle end because you have already paid for the period, so you keep what you paid for.

What matters more is that neither direction puts your data at risk. Moving between plans changes what is available to you, not what you have recorded. Bookings, contracts, member records, and history stay intact, so seasonal organizations can scale up and back down without treating it as a migration.

Do you charge per user?

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No. VenueArc pricing is per facility, not per user or per seat. You can add as many staff, volunteers, and administrators as your organization needs without affecting the price.

This is a deliberate departure from how most software is sold, because per-seat pricing works badly for the organizations we serve. Churches, theatres, and park districts run on volunteers and part-time staff — often a large, rotating group of them. Under per-user pricing, every additional helper is a line item, so organizations respond predictably by rationing accounts.

That rationing quietly defeats the purpose. Shared logins appear, the audit trail becomes meaningless, and the people who actually need to check availability end up texting whoever holds an account. Charging by facility means everyone who touches your calendar can have their own properly permissioned access.

Is there a long-term contract?

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Standard plans are month-to-month with no long-term commitment. Multi-site and enterprise agreements may include annual pricing for better rates, and we discuss those options during your demo.

Month-to-month billing puts the obligation in the right place. If the platform stops being worth what you pay, you should be able to stop paying — that keeps the pressure on us to remain useful rather than relying on a contract to retain you.

Annual arrangements exist for multi-site organizations mainly because their procurement works that way. Larger operations frequently need a fixed annual figure for budgeting, board approval, or a funding cycle, and a predictable yearly cost is more useful to them than the flexibility of monthly billing. Which structure suits you is a question of how your organization budgets, not a condition we impose.

How does Azure metering work?

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VenueArc runs on Microsoft Azure infrastructure, and your subscription includes all compute and storage costs. There is no separate Azure bill for standard usage tiers.

This question comes up because cloud-hosted software sometimes passes infrastructure costs through as usage-based charges, which makes budgeting genuinely difficult — you cannot know in advance what a busy season will cost. For organizations reporting to a board or working within a fixed annual budget, an unpredictable line item is a real problem regardless of its size.

Your subscription price is what you pay. Running a heavier month of events, storing more contracts, or adding more users does not generate an infrastructure charge on top. Azure is the platform VenueArc is built on rather than a cost you separately manage, and you need no Azure account or relationship with Microsoft to use it.