

Introducing Lanyrd Pro, for companies that speak at and sponsor events - simonw
http://lanyrd.com/blog/2013/lanyrd-pro/

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simonw
We've got a pretty amazing collection of launch customers!

<http://events.heroku.com/>

<http://facebook-developers.lanyrd.com/>

<http://github.lanyrd.com/>

<http://lanyrd.com/mashery/>

<http://lanyrd.com/happy-cog/>

~~~
andrewaylett
HTTPS Everywhere is pushing the Heroku page to HTTPS, which breaks because
while you've got a server listening on port 443, it's presenting a Lanyrd
certificate.

Definitely an issue with my configuration, but might well affect a few of your
more security concious visitors.

~~~
ntumlin
I have HTTPS Everywhere and I'm shocked at the number of sites I've found that
don't work like they should when it's enabled. Namely a certain stock charting
website that uses javascript to force you to HTTP unless you are a pro member
that gets HTTPS Everywhere stuck in a loop fighting with it.

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alain94040
Not half-bad as a revenue strategy. As an event organizer (the Startup
Conference is May 30, check out <http://thestartupconference.com> and contact
me if your startup raised money in 2013, we'll put you on stage in front of
1,000 people), the one thing I receive over and over are offers from
completely unqualified "partners" and sponsors that don't even bother to check
who our audience is. At that point, I stopped answering to the worst
offenders.

I like the concept of a branded page for the sponsors, tying together multiple
events. Serious sponsors have a long-term view and will have a methodical
approach to sponsoring multiple related events over an entire year.

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dtran
Congrats on the launch Simon and team!

Re: the design of the pricing page on <http://lanyrd.com/pro/> (I know it's
probably in alpha):

1) The second set of plans on the dark background below the slides looks so
much better aesthetically than the first set of plans! Did you find that
having the plans below the slides/lists of companies converted better?

2) I found Bronze vs. Bronze Plus and Silver vs Silver Plus confusing, and
organizing in 3 columns with Bronze/Bronze Plus and Silver/Silver Plus in the
first two columns made it look disorganized. Why not just show 5 columns with
more distinct names? The "Book 14 day trial" buttons are sort of
scattered/hard to find and require a lot of scrolling to get to (esp after the
huge list under Silver).

~~~
simonw
Thanks for the feedback - we're going to take another look at the pricing page
ASAP.

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citricsquid
The pricing page lists "administratiors", not sure if that's a pun or typo.
The github.lanyrd.com page has "upcoming [78]" and "past [415]" at the bottom,
clicking the past tab takes a second or two and then it completely removes the
upcoming / past section, no console errors but the network request (to
[http://github.lanyrd.com/?context=past&component=107&...](http://github.lanyrd.com/?context=past&component=107&&ajax=1))
returns:

    
    
        {"eval": "$('.js-component-107').html(null); lanyrd.truncateFacetLists();"}
    

I'm using Chrome 26.0.1410.64 on Windows 7.

edit: the upcoming/past thing seems to work now.

~~~
simonw
Thanks for the bug reports - we're rolling out a couple of spelling
corrections right now.

~~~
zwegner
Well, on that note--your name comes off rather weird to me. I'm guessing it's
supposed to read as "lanyard", but it makes me think "Lanyrd Skanyrd".

~~~
liampmccabe
That is not a bug report, rather an unhelpful opinion on semantics.

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volandovengo
I've been wanting to see social networking for business conferences really
take off for a while.

Anyone know why Lanyrd doesn't have more traction? For any given conference, I
find that it's rare for more than 10% to signal that they are going to the
conference.

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porker
I like, but I'm having a hard job seeing how it's worth so much per month to
customers? Silver and Gold plans are definitely not cheap at $799/month /
$1599/month respectively (source: <http://lanyrd.com/pro/>).

~~~
simonw
Pricing is based on the number of members - silver gives you up to 180, and
the gold plan allows up to 500. If your company have 500 employees out
speaking at conferences your annual events budget already measures in the tens
of millions of dollars, at which point we're a small fraction. If we can make
your event participation just a few percentage points more effective (and
we're confident we can do a lot more than that) we're an absolute bargain.

~~~
porker
I see, you're pricing on members, and I was looking at the useful features
(like branded subdomain and suchlike). I wasn't clear what 'members' were,
they're speakers? So this really isn't a product for companies with < 20 staff
and only 3 speaking, but wanting to show off all their talks in one place...

~~~
simonw
We'll definitely make that clearer.

It's not just for the speakers - we show team members who are attending the
event as well. The primary intention of the company pages is "come and meet us
at these events", so attendees are very important too.

~~~
porker
Thanks, that's much clearer now!

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songzme
When I first read this blog article, I was instantly sold on this idea (I
personally go to alot of events to represent our company). I was on my way to
sign up for a trial but stopped short when I saw the pricing. Why is this
service so expensive?

~~~
simonw
Our initial plans and pricing are aimed at companies who have events as a core
part of their marketing strategy - companies with developer evangelism teams,
for example. We're actively seeking feedback on pricing for other kinds of
company at the moment. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this - you can reach
me at simon at lanyrd dot com.

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daemon13
Some commenters are referring to specific prices ("Silver and Gold plans are
definitely not cheap at $799/month / $1599/month ") - well, unless I am
missing smth, right now the pricing page does not have ANY numbers.

Bug?

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drcongo
I love Lanyrd. Best of luck with this, it looks like a good deal all round.

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mrlerner
Isn't this basically what Pathable offers for $799 / YEAR?
<http://www.pathable.com/pricing>

~~~
simonw
Not at all - Pathable is an entirely different kind of product.

Pathable offer a platform for running a social network at an individual
conference.

Our product provides tools for companies that speak at and sponsor many
different events - a branded site for promoting the events they are involved
with and internal tools for planning and coordinating their event marketing
strategy.

Take a look at <http://events.heroku.com/> for example, or check out our
explanatory slide deck here: <http://www.slideshare.net/lanyrd/lanyrd-pro>

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nemesisj
How are you doing the calendar feeds? Using a caldav server or just static
ical files for download?

~~~
simonw
We're serving up static iCal feeds - Google Calendar etc can be configured to
poll them for updates.

Here's an example of one of our public feeds (of Ruby on Rails events in
Europe) - you can paste this in to the "Subscribe" menu in your calendar.

[http://lanyrd.com/topics/ruby-on-rails/in/europe/ruby-on-
rai...](http://lanyrd.com/topics/ruby-on-rails/in/europe/ruby-on-rails-in-
europe.ics)

You can see our subscribe UI in the right hand column on this page:
<http://lanyrd.com/topics/ruby-on-rails/in/europe/>

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OoTheNigerian
Good stuff

I'd suggest you simplify your ^pricing.

Use the most important feature to differentiate. e.g number of people in a
team or number of events. As it is presently, it is quite confusing.

^<http://lanyrd.com/pro/>

~~~
talkingquickly
Potentially not even the pricing, just how it's presented. It's almost
impossible to do any sort of quick comparison/ understand what the key
differences between each plan at the moment.

~~~
simonw
Thanks for the feedback. We'll definitely be iterating on the pricing page a
whole bunch.

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aubergene
The track topic in a location is such an improvement!

