One app per conference, or one account for all of them.

The short version

A conference app is a piece of software an organiser rents for their event. It is excellent at the job it is built for: the agenda, the floor plan, the push notification telling you the keynote has moved rooms, and increasingly a matchmaking tab. It is built around the event, which means it begins when the event begins and it is over when the event is over.

The Gantry is built around the person. You hold the account, not the organiser. It covers every Room listed on the platform rather than one event, and what you accumulate on it stays with you.

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What the per-event model does to small rooms

Most business networking in the UK is not a conference. It is thirty or forty people at a breakfast, run monthly, often by a chamber, a BID or one determined person. A per-event licence does not scale down to that. The fee is frequently more than the room takes in ticket revenue, so the organiser buys nothing and runs the evening on a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group and a printed list.

The result is that the tooling in this market collects around the events that need it least. A 500-person conference already has a programme, an app and staff. The thirty-person room, where a bad evening means nobody speaks to anybody new, has a badge and a biscuit.

Charging event owners nothing is how that gets fixed, and it is also how the platform fills up. See what event networking software actually costs for the economics, and the pricing each platform publishes.

What one account across events actually gives you

You can see what is on before you commit the evening. Rooms are filtered by how far you will travel and how far ahead you plan. You are choosing between events rather than being handed one.

Your network compounds. Six events in a year on six apps leaves six disconnected lists and a pocket of cards. On one account it is one network, and the people you already know show up on the events they are going to next.

Organisers can see repeat attendance. Because the account persists, an event owner can see who came back, who is new, and what the room produced across their programme rather than one night of it. A per-event app structurally cannot: it has no memory of last time.

Where a conference app is the right answer

If what you need is an agenda with fifteen parallel tracks, a venue map, exhibitor lead scanning and a push notification to four thousand people, buy a conference platform. The Gantry does not do any of that, and is not trying to. It does the part those products treat as a tab: who is in the room, who is worth meeting, and what happens in the two weeks either side.

Common questions

What is the difference between an event app and The Gantry?

An event app is licensed by the organiser for one event. The attendee downloads it, uses it for the duration, and loses access when the event closes. The Gantry is an account the attendee holds: one profile, one connection list, and every Room on the platform across the UK, whoever is running it.

Do I need a different app for every event?

Not on The Gantry. The same account covers every Room listed on the platform. Event apps are bought per event, so a person attending six events a year typically installs six apps and retypes their profile six times.

What happens to my connections after the event?

On The Gantry they stay in your account. Delegate access to a particular room runs from 14 days before the event to 7 days after, but the people you connected with remain yours afterwards.