Why we price per event, not per month

Exhibitors do two or three shows a year

Talk to the marketing managers who buy a booth quiz and the calendar is always the same shape: a big show in the spring, a big show in the autumn, perhaps a regional expo or a dealer meet in between. Two or three events a year, each lasting two to four days. In between, nothing. The product is used on six to nine days out of 365.

A monthly subscription prices the 356 idle days. The customer knows it, and the honest ones told us so: "I would pay for the show, I will not pay for August." A yearly seat is the same problem with a longer invoice. The only unit that matches how the customer actually uses the thing is the event.

What we tried before this

We started with monthly tiers, because that is what software does. They did not fit, so we replaced them with a mix: a small Event Pass, a bigger Pro Pass, seat caps, participant caps and a recurring Agency subscription. That was worse: buyers could not tell what they were paying for.

So we cut it to one thing. An Event Pass is a credit. Make an event live and the credit is spent on that event, which is then covered for 30 days with everything unlocked: unlimited players, your branding, the consent ledger, exports, Stage mode, the lucky draw. There is no Pro. There is no seat. There is no participant cap on a covered event. The price steps down by quantity in one order, ₹7,999 each from three and ₹5,999 each from ten, because a company that knows its show calendar should be able to buy the year at once.

Credits last twelve months, because shows move

A pass bought in March for a show in July has to survive the show being postponed to September. Credits are valid for 12 months from the day they are bought or given, and the 30-day coverage starts only when you make the event live, not when you pay. We email you 30 days before a credit lapses. If you delete an event that nobody has played inside its 30 days, the credit goes back to your balance. The point is that nobody should have to time a purchase to a show date.

No auto-debit, on purpose

Nothing on QDevine charges your card again on its own. A pass is a one-time order. The Agency year, ₹99,999 for unlimited events and a white-label player, is also a one-time order: we remind you at 30 and 7 days before it ends, and if you do not renew, the workspace drops to Free. Nobody has to find the cancel button.

Part of this is principle and part is practical. In India, recurring card mandates above a modest amount need an OTP on every charge anyway, so a subscription would have meant chasing customers for approval each month. A one-time UPI or card payment with a GST invoice is what finance teams here are set up for.

What Free is for

Free is the whole product with three limits: 30 players per event, a platform badge, and no export. It exists so you can build the quiz, brand it, rehearse it with your team and look at the board on a TV before a show, without a trial clock running. Buy the pass the week of the show. We would rather you paid once, for a show you ran, than paid monthly for a product you were still evaluating.

Where it does not fit, and what we do instead

Two kinds of customer run events every week: agencies that produce events for clients, and organisers who want every stand at their show on the platform. For them, per-event pricing is the wrong shape, so the Agency year covers unlimited events for a fixed price and the Organiser package is quoted per show, from ₹2,50,000. Both are still one-time purchases.

And if you are comparing us with a per-host, per-year quiz subscription in dollars: for a classroom or a weekly team meeting that model is fine. For two shows a year it is twelve months of a seat used on six days, with a foreign-currency card statement every month. Three passes at ₹7,999 each, one GST invoice, is what we think an exhibitor should be asked to pay.

Questions people ask about the model

Read next

• Trade show quiz pricing: what a pass covers, the tiers, GST and USD, in one page.
• Kahoot alternative for events: where a per-host subscription fits and where it does not.
• Exhibitions and trade shows: what one pass buys you at a show, end to end.