Questions organizers ask

Car show software for volunteer organizers. It runs online registration, on-site QR spectator voting, judged scoring, sponsor sales, a small store, and automatic results from one place. There is no app to download and nothing to install: organizers, entrants, judges, and voters all use a phone browser.

Read more: How it works

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Anthony Andreatos, who runs car shows himself. It came out of watching well-run volunteer shows lose their awards hour to clipboards, cash boxes, and hand-counted paper ballots, and then getting tired of it from the organizer’s side of the table.

Read more: About

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No. The free tier is the whole product with no size cap, and nothing asks for a card. You only ever pay if you take a show white-label and it goes live.

Read more: Pricing

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Claim your club’s address at app.thecarshowhq.com/start. Requests are screened and real clubs are approved the same day. Once you’re in, most shows are ready in about ten minutes: classes, entry fee, registration form, and voting. Returning organizers duplicate last year’s show in one click and change the date.

Read more: Start your show

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No. Everything runs in a web browser on any phone. Entrants tap your link, enter their car, and pay. Spectators scan a QR code and vote. Judges open the judge page and type a short code. Nobody creates an account except the people who run the show.

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A phone or laptop to manage the show, an ordinary office printer for the black-and-white windshield cards, and, if you want the live leaderboard on display, any screen with a browser. Registrants and spectators use their own phones. A tablet on the registration table is nice for walk-up sign-ups, and a card reader is only needed if you want to tap cards at the gate.

Read more: Gear and services

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Fewer than the paper version. Registration happens before the gate opens, walk-ups check themselves in on a kiosk, gate volunteers scan passes from a crew link with no login, and the vote tallies itself. A handful of people can run the day and still see the cars.

Read more: Day-of tools

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No. Turn on only what your show needs. A casual meet might use walk-up registration and a quick People’s Choice vote, while a charity fundraiser leans on sponsor tiers, a donation page, and judged classes. The tools stay out of your way until you switch them on.

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Yes. The same tools run a weekly cruise-in with twenty cars or an annual show with hundreds, and the free tier has no size cap. The largest voting-only show to date numbered over a thousand cars and the ballot held up fine.

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Charity fundraisers, car club shows, cars and coffee meets, cruise-ins, truck and Jeep shows, motorcycle and bike nights, school and church fundraisers, first responder and benefit shows, toy drives and holiday shows. The categories, forms, and awards are yours to define, so a show that fits none of those labels still works.

Read more: Show types

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The first time you open it, a guided tour walks through the manage area: show controls, live stats, registrants, classes and awards, results, billing, and settings. You can exit any time and retake it from the Take the tour button, so a volunteer can learn it the morning of the show. One search bar finds any setting by name, typos forgiven.

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A show can’t be published if it charges money it can’t collect. If entry fees are on with no payment provider connected, or the provider is still in test mode, publishing is blocked and the reason is spelled out. The dashboard also flags the common misses, like a car getting votes with no check-in.

Read more: Testing your show

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The live demo is a seeded, fully working show: registration, sponsors, QR voting, and results, running on the same software your show would. No account needed. Start with the show page a spectator sees, then the live leaderboard, then the registration flow your entrants would fill out.

Read more: Live demo

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Yes. That’s what a voting-only show is for. Turn on Voting only: I number the cars myself, create the car numbers in bulk, print the cards, and run the ballot. Your registration process stays wherever it lives today. Several clubs that register on paper or through their own site run just the People’s Choice vote here.

Read more: Voting-only shows

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The full product is free, with no feature limits, no size cap, and no card on file. If you want a show fully under your own brand, a white-label pass costs $39 for a small show, $79 for a medium one, or $149 for a large one, or $199 a year for unlimited white-label shows. Prices are in US dollars.

Read more: Pricing

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There isn’t a feature catch. A free show runs on a carshowhq.com web address and shows a small “Run your show on Car Show HQ” card. Registration, payments, sponsor tiers, QR voting, judging, and automatic results all work exactly as they do on a white-label show.

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No. Entry fees, sponsor payments, donations, and store sales settle to your own Square, Stripe, or PayPal account. Car Show HQ is never the merchant of record and never holds your funds. The white-label fee is billed to the organizer separately, so it never comes out of event money.

Read more: Payments and payouts

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The show looks like yours, not ours. It runs on your own domain with your name and logo up front, from the sign-up page to the results, and the Car Show HQ marks and promo card come off. Registrants see your show start to finish.

Read more: Branding and domains

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When you connect your own domain, or when you hide the Car Show HQ marks. Setup, configuration, and duplicating last year are always free, so you can build the whole show, show it to your board, and decide later.

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From the Billing tab inside your show. Pick the pass, review a page that spells out exactly what you’ll be charged, and pay through Stripe’s hosted checkout. Card details never touch Car Show HQ. The pass switches on the moment payment clears.

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No. You pay for the pass you picked, there’s no surprise per-car charge when more cars register, and we never hold your results back. If the show grows, you can move from Small to Medium or Large yourself from the Billing tab and pay only the difference. Your call, and nothing is held back if you skip it.

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No. A show that went live white-label stays that way for good, so old links, printed QR codes, and last year’s winners page keep working. Letting a plan lapse only affects new shows.

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The full product is free for any show. If a registered 501(c)(3) wants the show white-labeled on its own domain, that upgrade is free or reduced for charities. Reach out through the contact page and we’ll set it up.

Read more: Contact

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No. Recurring shows and voting-only shows are part of the free product, like everything except white-label presentation. Run a weekly meet all year, or a thousand-car People’s Choice vote, with no charge.

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Yes. Show times display in your show’s own timezone, the location check works anywhere a phone can get a fix, and a voting-only show takes no payments at all. If you take entry fees, you need a Square, Stripe, or PayPal account that operates in your country, since the money goes to your account, not ours. White-label passes are priced in US dollars.

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You build an entry form with the fields your show needs, add your classes, and include a liability waiver. Entrants sign up from their phone, agree to the waiver, and pay the entry fee before they arrive. Everyone lands in one list you can search, filter, export, and check in on show day.

Read more: Setting up registration

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Yes, per show. Classes and special awards are yours to name. The form takes extra questions of your own, like City, State, or a free-text description owners can write about their car, and any question can be marked required. Custom answers come through in the registrant export under their own column.

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Yes. Turn on pay-at-event and the form asks how they want to pay. On the day, walk-ups register themselves on a tablet in kiosk mode, locked to the sign-up screen with a staff unlock code, or staff add them from the Registrants page. Online and walk-up entries end up in the same list, however they paid.

Read more: Day-of tools

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Yes. The Registrants page has an Add a registrant button for the person who paid you another way, the comped entry, or the club president’s car. Staff entries skip checkout, and you record how they paid.

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Yes. Add the waiver to your form and entrants must tick an agreement box before they can finish. You can upload your insurer’s PDF rather than retyping it, and the agreement is recorded with the entry.

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No. Leave the dates blank and entries open when you publish and close when the show ends. Set a closing date to stop online entries early, for printing cards or a hard cutoff, and the site counts down to it.

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No, on purpose. The Car Number is a staff tool: it goes on the windshield card at check-in and it’s what voters type. The confirmation email and the success page never show it, so nobody can vote for a number they saw in an email. The one exception is the kiosk’s success screen on show day, which shows it big so the person at the table can find their card.

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Decide your numbering before entries start confirming. Set First car number early, turn on pick-your-own if you want entrants choosing, and the importer can carry a number column when you bring in a list. An assigned number can’t be edited afterwards, because a printed card may already carry it.

Read more: Check-in and windshield cards

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Yes. An owner or admin can withdraw an entry, which is what you want when someone registered twice or a declined card left a stray pending entry in your numbers. The car number stays reserved, so a printed card is never handed out twice. Refund the money in your payment provider; the entry and the money are separate.

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Confirm with them, withdraw the second entry on the Registrants page, and refund the second payment in your Square, Stripe, or PayPal account, where the money is. The withdrawn entry stays in your records as withdrawn.

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No. Upload a CSV or an Excel .xlsx file (the first sheet of a workbook) from the Registrants page. Match your columns to ours, preview, and every row becomes a confirmed entry with a car number. Existing numbers are kept, blanks get the next free one. Nobody is emailed, and if any row has a problem nothing imports at all, with the errors naming the row numbers.

Read more: Importing entrants

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Rows with an email address are caught as already registered, so a second run imports nothing new. Rows with no email get a placeholder address on the first run and can come in twice. Keep a real email in every row you can.

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Yes, if you want it. Under Settings, Notifications, choose who gets new-registration alerts. The alert carries the entry details, and the same page decides where contact-form messages and sponsorship requests land.

Read more: Emailing your registrants

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Yes. The form has an optional car club field, and the club name prints on the card under the owner’s name and comes through in the export. Clubs that turn up ten cars deep care about this a lot.

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Yes. Group entries are an invoiced block: the club pays once, by card or check, and gets a code its members use at registration for free or discounted entry. Unused entries are a contribution to the show, and the invoice says so before anyone pays.

Read more: Group entries

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Almost always the show was moved to a later stage, like voting, which closes online registration on the public page, or Voting only was switched on. Open the dashboard and check the show’s stage and the Registration tab. Moving it back reopens the form with every entry intact.

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You do. Entry fees, donations, sponsorships, and store sales are paid straight into the payment account you connect. Car Show HQ is never the merchant of record, never holds your funds, and there is no payout from us to wait for, because the money never routed through us.

Read more: Payments and payouts

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Square, Stripe, or PayPal, whichever your club already banks with. Square connects in two clicks: sign in and approve, nothing to copy. Stripe and PayPal are set up by pasting keys from your own account, with instructions written for a treasurer rather than a developer.

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Yes. The keys come from the developer side of PayPal (developer.paypal.com), not the login page, and connecting them doesn’t change anything else that account does for your club. Payment status is tracked automatically against each entry, so nobody matches PayPal emails to a spreadsheet by hand.

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A new show starts on Square as its payment provider. After you connect Stripe or PayPal, open Settings, Registration and pick that provider for the show, or the checkout keeps looking for a Square connection.

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No. Plenty of shows run free entry, or collect only at the gate in cash. Connecting a provider is optional, and a show with no fee works normally without one.

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Yes. Turn on Allow paying at the event and an entrant can register online and pay cash on the day; staff press Mark paid at the table. Walk-ups are the same. Cash entries sit in the same list and reports as card entries.

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Yes, two ways. The kiosk or the gate screen shows a QR code and the driver pays through your connected provider on their own phone, no hardware at all. Or pair a Square Terminal and let them tap to pay. Either way the payment reconciles against that car’s entry.

Read more: Gate Mode

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You do, in your payment provider, because that’s where the money is. Refunds, disputes, and chargebacks are between you, your entrant, and your provider. If the problem is that a payment didn’t reconcile against an entry, that part is ours and we’ll sort it.

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Never. Card details are entered on your provider’s own checkout pages and don’t reach our servers. What comes back is payment status, which is what marks an entry paid.

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Their entry is saved and nothing was charged. The page says so after ninety seconds and offers Try payment again, and about an hour later they get one reminder with the same link. One email per registration, never a second. If their PayPal or bank refuses them, pay-at-event is the fallback.

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Open their entry on the Registrants page: the payment status there is what the provider reported. A payment the provider rejected shows as pending and no card was charged, so they can try again. Payment status comes from the provider’s own notification, never from the page the entrant was looking at, so a closed browser tab doesn’t lose a payment.

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No. Branding only changes how the show looks. Payments still run through your own connected account.

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Yes. A free show with a connected provider can turn on a donate page: tap an amount, finish on your provider’s checkout, done. Name and email are optional. It’s separate from the donation box on the registration form, and both can be on at once.

Read more: Spectator donations

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Your payment processor and your own books. The store charges the price you set and never adds tax on top, and every sale lands in your provider account where your tax settings and reports live. Set prices with your state’s rules in mind.

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Staff work from one entry list all day. Pre-registered cars are already on it, walk-ups get added at the kiosk, and Card written on the Card desk is the check-in, so there is no second step. Drivers can also check themselves in from the QR in their confirmation email. Once voting opens, the dashboard offers to check in every registered car still waiting.

Read more: Check-in and windshield cards

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No. The cards are black and white on purpose and print on any office printer, on 5 x 7 card stock or plain paper. A Card orientation setting turns them landscape or portrait to match the stock you bought. Sponsor logos print in grayscale.

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Yes, and that’s how most shows do it. Print the personalized cards for everyone pre-registered the day before or once online registration closes. Then print a stack of blank cards: same show name, same voting QR code, a big empty box for the number. As a walk-up parks, write the number on a blank with a marker. Nothing has to be printed on site.

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It opens your show’s ballot. Spectators scan any card, type the car number they want to vote for, confirm the preview, and vote from their own phone. The code is the same on every card, so one card, a sign, or a flyer all lead to the same ballot.

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No. A printed card may already carry it, so the number is fixed once assigned. Decide your numbering before entries start confirming: set First car number early and turn on pick-your-own then too if you want it. The importer is the one exception, since it can carry a number column.

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Yes. Every row on the Registrants page and every car on the Card desk has a Print card button that opens that one card with the print dialog up. No printer at the table? Copy the number onto a blank from the stack.

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An entry still at Pending payment won’t check in. Press Mark paid first: that one button records the payment, confirms the entry, assigns the car number, and sends the confirmation. Then Check in works like any other row.

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Less than you’d think. By default any registered car is on the ballot whether or not it was checked in, so the car can still win. If a car is getting votes without a check-in, the dashboard and the Results page say so, and one button checks in every registered car still waiting.

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Any tablet with a browser becomes a self-service sign-up station. Set it on the registration table in kiosk mode, people add themselves, a staff unlock code keeps it locked to the sign-up screen, and it resets when idle. It can take a card through your own hosted checkout with no reader, or pair a Square Terminal for tap to pay.

Read more: Day-of tools

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No. Create the crew link on the gate page, a QR code appears, and a volunteer scans it with their phone camera. They can scan gate passes, admit ticket holders, and check in paid cars. Collecting money, undoing a check-in, and every setting need a real staff login, and the server enforces that. Press New crew link and every phone on the old link is out instantly.

Read more: Gate Mode

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Type instead of scan. The gate page takes the short code from the pass or just a last name and opens the same verdict screen. Scanning an already-used pass shows a blue “already checked in” screen rather than counting anyone twice, and every verdict screen has an undo button.

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Gate Mode needs a connection, because it reads and writes the same entry list your registration table is using. Test at the actual gate position before show day, and keep a printed list as backup, the way you would for any connected tool.

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Yes. The cards carry the bike’s number and the voting QR, and riders set them on the seat or clip them to the bars instead of taping a car-sized card to a tank.

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Each car wears a windshield card with the show’s voting QR code. A spectator scans it, enters the car number, sees a quick preview to confirm, and casts one vote per category. No app to download, no account to create, a few seconds per vote.

Read more: Spectator voting

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One for the whole event. The ballot is a single link per show, so the same QR goes on every windshield card, on signs, on the flyer, and on the big-screen board. Voters pick the car by typing its number, or from a list if you turn that on.

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Yes. Under Settings, Voting, the car picker can be the number box, a list of entered cars, or both. A list suits a short field of finalists; a show with hundreds of cars wants number only, because a 600-row list is no fun to scroll in the sun. A voting-only show, where the cars are just numbers, always uses the number box.

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No, and that’s a deliberate limit. Voting works at the show, from the QR on the cards, and the ballot closes when you close it. A ballot anyone can reach from a couch is a ballot the biggest group chat wins, and the point of People’s Choice is the people who showed up. The location check, below, is how you enforce it.

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Yes. Under Settings, Voting, Where votes come from has three answers. Ask for location lets a phone near the venue in, refuses one that is clearly far away, and lets a phone that declines the prompt through as unverified, with the count on your dashboard. Require location sets a distance, and a phone that can’t prove it’s inside shows a QR code any staff member can scan to let that one person vote. It stops the link texted across town, not a fake-location app.

Read more: Keeping voting on the grounds

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No. A phone is only ever refused when it shares a location and that location is far from the venue. Network addresses are never used, because mobile carriers route traffic through hubs in other states and that would refuse people standing at the show. The staffed voting station never asks at all.

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No. The phone shares its position once, the server compares it to the venue you pinned, and the numbers are thrown away. The only things kept are counts: refused, unverified, and let in by staff.

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Ballots are one vote per person per category, with duplicate protection on top, and every vote is a locked record once cast. It isn’t a bank vault, and no crowd voting system is, but it stops the casual repeat voting that makes a paper ballot box meaningless.

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Open means anyone at the show can vote. Closed means only participants can. Judged shows score classes with judges and can still run People’s Choice beside them. Your show page states which one you run in plain words, so nobody has to guess at the ballot.

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Yes. On Categories and awards, set that class’s Who votes this class to Participants only. The ballot then asks for an email, which a spectator leaves blank: a registration email opens the participants-only award, a blank one votes everything else. A club can run a members’ pick beside People’s Choice.

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Run a voting station: a tablet at the registration table that a staff member opens with the same day code as the kiosk. It gives each voter a fresh ballot and resets between voters. It’s an accommodation for the part of your crowd not carrying a smartphone, and it takes a minute to put out.

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Yes. Settings, then Destructive actions, clears every vote, voter, and scorecard for the show. It’s available while the show is in Draft or Published, needs the owner, and asks you to type the show’s name back. Once voting has opened, the clear refuses, because at that point the votes may be real.

Read more: Testing your show

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Your call. Every show has a big-screen board for a TV or projector, with one class rotating at a time, a scan-to-vote QR so passers-by can vote from the screen, and a light mode for daylight. You control whether it shows counts, rankings only, or nothing until awards, and you can post a notice across the top from your phone.

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No. Type the highest number you’ll hand out, pick the category, press Create the numbers. Five hundred cars take about a second, and the ceiling is 5,000. You never type a make, model, or owner; the ballot only needs the number on the windshield. Made too many? Remove cars above any number, and anything that already has a vote stays.

Read more: Voting-only shows

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It closes. The register page says cars are registered at the show, the kiosk says they’re numbered there, and the entry fee, the form, and the payment settings stop applying. Turn the setting off and all of it comes back. Results, the live board, and the TV board say Car 846 rather than an owner’s name, because there isn’t one.

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When voting closes, the tally is already done, because it updates as votes land. Category winners, Best of Show, and People’s Choice are ready in seconds, judged classes rank by their scores, and you add hand-picked special awards on top. Every vote is an immutable record, so the count holds up.

Read more: Results and awards

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Yes, and most shows do exactly that. Setting a class to judged takes it off the public ballot, so spectators never see a class they aren’t voting on, while People’s Choice and Best of Show keep collecting votes. The awards script reads straight down one list.

Read more: Judged scoring

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No. Each judge gets a card with a QR code and a short code of their own. Scanning signs them in on their phone; typing the code on the judge page does the same. They see only the classes assigned to them, and codes are per judge, which is what makes each score attributable later.

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Yes, until you finalize. A revised score is stored as a new scorecard that supersedes the previous one, and the original is kept. Nothing is overwritten, so if a result is ever questioned you can show exactly what was entered and what changed.

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It depends on your aggregation setting. On average, the default, a car scored by two judges isn’t penalized against a car scored by three. On sum, missing scores put a car behind, so check the coverage view before finalizing. The platform warns about incomplete coverage but never blocks you.

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Yes. One show-wide sheet is the default and covers most shows. A class can opt into its own sheet, which replaces the show-wide one for that class. Each submitted scorecard records the criteria it was scored against, so editing a sheet mid-show never corrupts scores already in.

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No. A judge’s code opens their assigned classes and scoresheets, nothing else. Judged standings stay hidden from everyone outside the manage area until you finalize.

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The card gets a yellow border and a TIE badge so you see it before the ceremony. The order shown is deterministic (votes, then Best of Show votes, then who registered first, then the lower car number), and if you want a different call you override the winner with a reason, which is logged.

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No. Finalizing writes the winners and locks the awards. Pick every hand-picked winner first, look the Results page over, and press it once. Ticking trophies off afterwards is not locked.

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Send them the awards script link. It’s private and unguessable, needs no login, and lists the winners in reading order with Best of Show last, so the MC can work straight off their phone. Anyone holding the link can read the winners, so only send it to ceremony people.

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The trophy list keeps their row open. You tick winners off as trophies are handed over, so anyone who left early is still sitting there unticked with their car number, award, and name when you come back to it. Their contact details are on their entry.

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Yes. The Results page has an Export CSV menu: the standings for every class with vote counts or points, every individual vote, and, on judged shows, every scoresheet. The registrant export carries the entrants’ details and custom answers, and the two match up by car number.

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Once results are finalized, the show page gets a Winners section with each award and car, and it stays at the same address for good, with any gallery photos you add. Returning entrants land on last year’s winners when they look up this year’s show. The live leaderboards show standings while voting runs; they aren’t the official results.

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Yes. Set up the classes that fit your event, then add special awards like Longest Distance, Ladies’ Choice, or Club Pick. The crowd-voted ones count themselves; the ones you choose by hand you pick on the Results page before finalizing.

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You build named, priced levels on the Sponsors page, each with its perks. A public sponsor page shows them as a price list, collects requests, and when a business says yes you send an invoice from the show. Logos appear on your show page, grouped by level, and on the windshield cards and TV board if the level includes it.

Read more: Sponsors and tiers

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They can. The invoice email links a page with the amount and a Pay button; they finish on your own Square, Stripe, or PayPal checkout, or mail a check if that’s how you set the invoice up. No account to create. A sponsor who paid some other way gets recorded, not invoiced.

Read more: Sponsor invoices

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No. Use Already paid? Record it on the Invoices page. Pick the level, the amount, how they paid and when, and the sponsorship is booked without anyone getting an email. They go on your sponsors list the same as an invoiced sponsor.

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Type the discount and a few words on why (returning sponsor, two shows, board vote). The invoice shows the level’s price, the discount with your reason, and the amount due, so their bookkeeper sees the deal you made rather than a number that doesn’t match the tier list.

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That’s between the sponsor and their accountant. What you can do is put your IRS determination letter and W-9 on file under Settings, Tax documents. Every invoice and receipt then carries your legal name, your EIN, and a link to the letter, so nobody has to write and ask.

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Yes. Give a level a number of spots and the public card counts down, then says Sold out and drops the level from the request form.

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To the address in Sponsorship inquiries go to under Settings, Notifications, or if that’s blank, to everyone who gets new-registration alerts. They also appear on the Sponsors page under Sponsorship requests, where you mark them handled.

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Six. One becomes a banner across the bottom, two flank the car number, three or more become columns. Beyond six, the rest are left off the card, so pick the ones who paid for it. On the show page, sponsors are grouped by level with the top level largest.

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Entry fees cover costs. Sponsor levels create the surplus. A donation box on the registration form and a donate page for spectators add gifts, a sponsorship drive lets a club raise one level together, and the store sells admission, parking, merchandise, and raffle tickets. Stack those and a show raises well past what the gate alone collects.

Read more: Fundraising

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No. Plenty of charity shows are run by clubs, schools, churches, and small groups raising money for a cause rather than a registered nonprofit. You decide where the funds go, and the money lands in the payment account you connect.

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Yes. The donate page and a sponsorship drive each have a QR code in the manage area made for flyers and table signs. Scanning it lands on the amount buttons, and the gift goes straight to your connected account.

Read more: Spectator donations

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Yes. Each ticket option issues a QR pass per person, by email and on a page the buyer keeps open on their phone. Price tiers, an early price with a date, and free tiers for kids all work. A family option that admits four issues four passes on one order, and each scans once.

Read more: Tickets and the store

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No, and the volunteer doesn’t need an account. They scan the crew QR once, tap Scan tickets, and the phone’s camera reads each pass and admits on the spot. Typing the eight-character code covers the moment the sun is on the screen.

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That’s your call and your rules. Registration and the store are separate: an entrant who registers a car isn’t sent through the ticket gate, and the confirmation page links the store for the friends they bring. A product can be marked as including admission when you want one purchase to cover both.

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Yes, all on one store page with one checkout. Merchandise takes variants like size and color, stock counts, and a per-order limit. Parking is sold as a count of spots. Everything that isn’t a ticket is handed over at the show on a pickup desk screen where staff mark it done. There’s no shipping, by design.

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Buyers pick a bundle, pay, and get numbered tickets by email and on their phone. At the table, a volunteer sells with or without an email and the numbers show on screen. Every prize has two buttons: Draw, which picks at random from every paid ticket, and Enter a number, for the one you pulled out of a bowl. Both record the winner and email them.

Read more: Raffle tickets

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That depends on your state and your organization, and Car Show HQ doesn’t decide it for you. Many states limit raffles to registered nonprofits or require a permit. Check before you sell a ticket. There’s a Rules box on the raffle where you say, in your own words, what applies.

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Online sales go through the Square, Stripe, or PayPal account your organization connected, the same as entry fees. Cash at the table stays in your cash box; the app only records that it happened. Refunds, including partial ones, are done in your provider and the passes or tickets are voided here.

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Your organization gets its own subdomain, like yourclub.thecarshowhq.com, and every show you run lives under it: this year’s at the root, the others at their own slug. The address identifies the club, not one show, so it stays the same year after year and last year’s winners page keeps working.

Read more: Branding and domains

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Yes. Point a domain or subdomain you own at your site and it serves there with a certificate set up automatically, so the padlock shows without you touching a setting. On some registrars it’s a one-click connect from the Branding page; on the rest it’s one record in your DNS settings, and the page tells you exactly what to paste. Connecting a custom domain is what makes a show white-label.

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Yes. The domain stays with your current registrar; nothing is transferred. One record in the DNS settings changes, and visitors see the new site at the same address. If you’d like the old site kept around, it can live at a subdomain like archive.yourclub.org. If DNS isn’t your thing, delegate access to the account and we’ll do the record for you.

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Yes, on the white-label tier. The Car Show HQ marks and the promo card come off, your logo and colors run from the sign-up page to the results, and the show sits on your own domain. Free shows keep a small “Powered by” line and the promo card.

Read more: Pricing

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Yes. Owners and admins write pages from the manage area with a plain editor, and a page belongs to the club, so an About page written this year is still there next year on every show. Leave Published off to proof a draft at its real address; everyone else gets a not-found page until you publish. A page can’t take the same address as a show or a built-in route like register or vote, and the editor says so.

Read more: Your own pages

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Yes, from Settings. The show’s description, the venue details, the schedule, a notice across the top, the sponsor section, and the photo gallery are all yours to edit, and the change shows the moment you save. Anything that doesn’t fit those slots goes on a page of your own.

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Yes. The Email registrants screen sends to everyone with a live entry and a real address, with a live recipient count and a confirmation step before anything goes out. Cancelled entries, opt-outs, and bounced addresses are left out automatically. Replies come to the sender’s own inbox, not a noreply. Two sends a day is the limit, which covers a schedule change and a correction.

Read more: Emailing your registrants

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Not from inside the platform yet. The email tool reaches the people registered for the show you’re managing, and it stays that way on purpose, because mass mail to people who haven’t registered is how a platform’s email ends up in spam folders. Export last year’s registrants and send the invitation from your own mailing tool.

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No. Everything goes by email. Car Show HQ never texts registrants, voters, or organizers.

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The groundwork is built in: one clean address per page, event structured data, real meta descriptions, social preview cards, and a sitemap that lists only pages worth indexing. Nobody can honestly promise rankings, so we won’t, but the technical work an agency would bill for is already done on every show page.

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Yes. The dashboard shows page views for the last seven and thirty days with a per-page breakdown, counted without cookies or a tracking pixel, so your page needs no consent banner. Bots, your own staff, the kiosk, and the TV board are left out. You can add your own Google Analytics ID if you want sources and cities.

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Yes. Set the show to repeat weekly, every two weeks, or monthly, and the next meet creates itself within the hour after the current one ends, carrying your classes, awards, sponsors, entry form, and schedule with it, with registration already open. Monthly repeats follow the weekday, so a first Saturday stays a first Saturday, and start times hold through daylight saving changes.

Read more: Recurring shows

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No, on purpose. It creates the next occurrence when the current one ends, one at a time, so changing a class, the venue, or the fee takes effect at the very next meet instead of needing every date edited. If you need a future date early, for a flyer or a venue contract, duplicate the show from the Create a show page and set the date yourself.

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The people carry over, the entries don’t. Your organization remembers every registrant, but each occurrence starts with zero entries and fresh car numbers, because last week’s field isn’t this week’s. To pre-load a list, export last week’s CSV and import it into the new occurrence.

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No. Each occurrence has its own ballots, results, and winners, and nothing aggregates across the series. Export each occurrence’s results CSV and keep the season tally in a spreadsheet.

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One evergreen page for a recurring meet, at its own address, with the next date, an “I’m coming” button, this week’s sponsors, the host’s name and logo, and a photo roll across every week. People don’t register: the button asks for a first name and, if you choose, an email and whether they’re bringing a car.

Read more: Cars and coffee series

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Open the dashboard on your phone and press Rained out (or Skipping, for a holiday). The page changes on the spot and everyone who said they were coming that week gets one email with your note. Pressing On sends nothing.

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They stay put. Every occurrence is its own show with its own entrants, voting, and permanent results page at its own address, so last week’s winners are still there next year when someone goes looking for the night they won.

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Mostly no. Gate and ticket volunteers work from a crew link with no login, the kiosk and voting station run on a day code, and judges enter a short per-judge code. Real accounts are for the people who run the show across the season: owners, admins, and staff you invite by email.

Read more: Roles and staff access

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Collect or record money, undo a check-in, create entries, or touch settings. Those stay on phones with a real staff login, and the server enforces the limits rather than just hiding buttons. Only owner and admin accounts can email every registrant.

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Press New crew link. Every phone that scanned the old link is signed out instantly, the new QR goes to the phones you still trust, and the rotation is recorded in your show’s change log.

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From Settings, Staff: enter their email and pick a role. They get an invitation with a set-password link. If the link has expired or they’ve lost it, Forgot your password on the login page sends a fresh one.

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Yes. Organizer accounts can enable two-factor with any authenticator app, plus single-use recovery codes for the day the phone is lost. It’s optional for organizers and required for Car Show HQ’s own operators, whose access is wider than any single show.

Read more: Security and reliability

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You, and nobody else. Every organization’s shows, entrants, and votes are isolated from every other organization’s. A person who registers with two clubs exists as two separate records, so one club’s list is never another club’s marketing list, and it’s never ours.

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Yes, nightly, stored off the server that runs the platform. A show’s records don’t live in one place.

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Every change to the platform passes an automated test suite before it can ship, and a release that fails its health check rolls back to the previous version on its own. Support is a real person, and show weekends are what the platform is built and staffed around. Put the show date at the top of your message and it gets picked up first.

Read more: Support

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Usually within a day, and faster when a show is live. Put the show date at the top of your message if it’s imminent and it gets picked up sooner.

Read more: Support

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The show name, what you expected to happen, and what happened instead. A screenshot is worth more than a long description, and if an entrant hit the problem, their car number helps us find the record.

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Start with the guided tour, which opens the first time you see the dashboard and can be retaken from the Take the tour button. The docs cover each feature in depth. If your committee would rather see it live, write in with a few times that suit you and we’ll set up a call.

Read more: Docs

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Yes. If you have last year’s entrants in a spreadsheet, import it: every row becomes a confirmed entry with a car number and nobody is emailed. Send whatever else you have, a flyer or last year’s class list, and we’ll help set the show up so returning entrants recognize it. If the file fights you, send it to us and we’ll look.

Read more: Importing entrants

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Register a test car with the fee waived, print its card, scan the QR and vote, check the leaderboard, then clear the votes under Settings, Destructive actions. Payments can only be tested with a real card through your own provider, refunded afterwards. Run the location check on Ask once so your team has seen the prompt before a crowd does.

Read more: Testing your show

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No. Set the times once and the show moves itself: registration closes at its close time, voting opens at the voting time and closes at its end. The dashboard still has the buttons if you want to move early.

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Send it. There’s a feature request form in the manage area, and a good share of what shipped this year came from organizers describing something annoying in plain language. The number-only ballot, clearing test votes, and voting-only shows all started as emails from a show a few days out.

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Entry fees, sponsor payments, and donations settle in your own Square, Stripe, or PayPal account, so refunds and disputes are handled there rather than by us. If the problem is that a payment didn’t reconcile against an entry, that’s ours and we’ll sort it.

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Twelve weeks is a comfortable runway for a first show: venue and insurance first, classes and registration by week ten, sponsors by week eight, promotion from week six. A repeat show at a known venue can compress that to a month, especially when you duplicate last year’s setup.

Read more: Organizer guides

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Book the venue. Date announcements, registration, sponsor asks, and promotion all depend on a confirmed location, and good venues are gone months ahead.

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Almost always yes. Most venues require a one-day event liability policy and a certificate naming them as additional insured. Every entrant should also agree to a liability waiver at registration, recorded with the entry.

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Eight to twelve for most shows, plus two or three special awards. Too many classes is the most common first-year mistake: twenty classes with three trophies each is sixty awards to buy, judge, and announce, and half go to classes with two cars. Start tight, watch the registration counts, merge thin classes two weeks out.

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People’s Choice tallies spectator votes; judged awards come from scored evaluation by judges. Most community shows do best with a hybrid: judges decide class winners and Best of Show, spectators decide People’s Choice. Both run on the same show here.

Read more: Judged scoring

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Ten weeks before show day, as soon as classes and the entry fee are set. Early registration funds trophies and printing before you need them, and class counts tell you weeks in advance whether to merge or split.

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Usually no for small and mid-size shows. A big free crowd raises more through donations, food, and voting energy than a gate fee collects, and sponsors are paying for that crowd. Large established shows with real overhead are the exception, and the store sells the passes when you are one.

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Build three clearly priced levels, put them on a page with a checkout link, and start with the businesses most connected to your crowd: parts stores, detailers, insurance agents, restaurants near the venue. Ask eight weeks out, earlier for a first-year show, and show every sponsor exactly where their logo appears. Three to six sponsors covers most first-year budgets.

Read more: Sponsors and tiers

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Visibility in front of a local, vehicle-owning crowd: logo on the show page and the windshield cards, banners on the field, a named mention at awards, and for the top level a sponsored award they hand out themselves. Every deliverable should be photographable so the recap email can prove it.

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