Almost everything, answered here.

It turns the matchmaking hour at an event into a booked schedule. Each host sits at one round table with a stated reason to be there. Everyone who registered picks the tables worth their time and claims a seat in a round, first come first served.

Before the doors open, every attendee has their own agenda and every host has their seat list.

No, and it is not trying to. Keep using whatever you already sell tickets with. Open Doors imports the attendee list you already have and handles the part those tools leave undone: who sits with whom, and when.

Usually under an hour. Create your event, add a table for each host, drop in the spreadsheet you already have, then open booking when you are ready.

The part that takes real time is deciding who your hosts are, and that happens before you open the software.

Open your event and go to the Share tab. The link is there with a copy button, and it is the same link for everyone — your attendees sign in with the address you imported, so there is nothing personal in it to get wrong.

If the event is still in Draft the tab tells you so, because anyone following the link before you open booking cannot do anything with it.

Yes, on the Share tab. There is a print-ready sign as a PDF, and the code on its own as a PNG for a slide or a table card.

It is one code for the event, not one per person. Scanning it opens the event page, where each attendee signs in with their own email address and sees their own schedule — so a printed sign on a table never gives anyone access to someone else’s booking.

No. It sends sign-in links, schedules and host briefings, and nothing else. Everything you announce goes out through your own platform, your own list and your own voice.

The Share tab gives you drafts to make that easy: an announcement, a reminder, an invitation for someone to host a table, and a short paragraph for a newsletter. Each is filled in with your event details. Edit them, save them, and copy or hand them to whoever runs your communications — saved drafts are shared with your team.

A sample event, there so you can learn the product without touching anything real. Every account starts with one, marked sample in your event list: four invented hosts, a few made-up attendees and three rounds, already filled in so you can see what a prepared table looks like.

It does not count toward your plan — not the event, not the attendees, not the tables. On a plan that allows one event a year, exploring still leaves that event untouched.

Booking is already open in it, so you can take a seat and see what an attendee sees. Put your own address on the People tab and sign in as yourself — the invented people cannot receive mail, so nothing arrives if you sign in as one of them. The event is not linked from anywhere, so the only way in is your own link. Change anything in it, break it, or ignore it.

No. It runs in a browser for you and for your attendees. Nobody downloads an app and nobody creates a password.

Because an attendee who has to remember one on the morning of your event will not remember it. Instead you enter your email address and we send a one-time link. It works once and expires in 30 minutes.

Check junk mail first — that is almost always where it is.

If it is genuinely missing, the usual cause is that the address is not on the list. Staff sign in at the console with an address your organization was given access to. Attendees sign in on the event page with the address they registered with. They are two separate lists, and being on one does not put you on the other.

That is deliberate. The form gives the same answer either way so it cannot be used to find out who is registered for your event.

Ask for another. There is no limit, and expiring quickly is what makes a passwordless link safe to send by email.

Whatever you already have. Drop in an Excel file or a CSV, or paste the rows straight out of your spreadsheet — tabs, commas and semicolons all work.

An email address is the only thing a row must have — a row without one is skipped and told to you. Everything else is optional.

Columns can be in any order and extra ones are ignored. Headings like Email, Name, Organization, Employer or School are recognized for you. A name split across First Name and Last Name is joined automatically, so you do not have to combine them first. If there is no heading row at all we find the column holding email addresses and work outward.

Nothing is added until you confirm. You see how many are new, how many are already there, and exactly which rows were skipped and why.

No. Importing adds them to the list so they are allowed to sign in, and that is all. Open Doors sends nothing until a person goes to the event page and asks for a link themselves.

So your attendees hear about it when you tell them. Take the link from the Share tab and send it from your own list — there is a draft announcement there ready to edit. If you import a list and wait, nothing will happen.

Nobody is duplicated. People already on the list are updated and the rest are added, so re-importing a corrected spreadsheet is always safe.

Only genuinely new people count against your plan limit.

Team, in the console. An owner adds them by email and chooses whether they are an admin or staff. They get a sign-in link straight away — no password to set up.

Owners can also change someone’s role or remove them. The last owner cannot be removed or demoted, so an organization is never left with nobody who can manage it.

How many people you can add depends on your plan.

You choose, table by table. A table can seat anywhere from two to six people in total, and one of those is the host — so between one and five attendees sit with them.

Six works well for a 25-minute round: enough that everyone speaks, few enough that nobody sits silent. Set a smaller number for a host who wants a closer conversation.

Yes. If a host’s email matches someone on your attendee list the two are linked, so they can book seats in the rounds they are not hosting, and never against themselves.

Not by default, and the rule is stricter than it first sounds: one seat per company per round, across the whole event — not per table. Two colleagues cannot take seats in the same round even at different tables.

That is deliberate. It stops one firm occupying a disproportionate share of a round, which is the complaint that quietly ends these programs.

They can still book different rounds as much as they like, and you can switch the rule off entirely in Settings if your event needs colleagues to split up.

Attendees join its waitlist and are offered the seat if someone releases one. Seats are never reassigned by staff.

Cancel it from the Settings tab, rather than closing booking. Closing means the schedule has settled and the event is still happening, so attendees can still sign in to see where they are sitting — the wrong message entirely if it is not happening.

Canceling tells anyone opening the page, or scanning the printed code, that the event is off. Bookings are kept so you have a record of who had seats, and you can put it back to draft if it goes ahead after all.

Withdraw the table from the console. Its booked seats are released and those attendees rebook themselves — attendees cannot withdraw a table, and only your staff can.

Nobody is moved by hand, deliberately. That is what keeps it first come, first served, and what stops anyone claiming the room was rigged.

Leave the event in Draft. Attendees cannot book at all until you set it to Open, which is how you hold booking until the date you have announced.

A tent card for each table, so people find the right one without asking, and a host briefing for each host — their seat list with what each person said they want to discuss. Send those the morning of the event so nothing is stale.

Open a link, pick a table in each round, and optionally write one line about what they are looking for. That line goes to the hosts whose tables they booked, so the conversation can start with business instead of introductions.

Two short things, and both are required. What they do — a sentence about their business, at least 40 characters and up to 256. And the one topic that matters most to them, at least 30 characters and up to 140. Both fields count up to the minimum as they type, so nobody has to guess.

Both are deliberate. A company name alone tells a host nothing: a host cannot prepare for a table of names, but they can prepare for a table of businesses with stated needs. Attendees can change either at any time.

Almost always the two required lines above the rounds have not been filled in yet. A seat cannot be taken until a host would have something to read, so the booking is refused and the page now says exactly that and takes them to the two fields.

They are at the top of the event page, under "Your hosts will see". Fill both in, press Save, and the seat reserves normally. If a different reason is shown, it is the real one — the table filled up, booking has not opened yet, or someone from the same company already holds a seat in that round.

Any time before the event. Releasing a seat puts it straight back for someone else.

Booking a different table in the same round simply moves them — the first seat is given up automatically, so nobody can hold two seats in one round. Changing tables is not refused, it is just a move.

They can email it to themselves, download it, or add it to their calendar from the event page whenever they like.

Someone on your staff can book on their behalf from the console, and print their schedule for them.

The number of people on one event’s list — not a yearly total, and not a count of bookings. Someone who books a seat in every round counts once.

The limit applies per event, so a 300-attendee plan means 300 people at each of your events, not 300 across the year.

Over a rolling twelve months, not by how many are open at once. Closing an event does not hand the slot back — otherwise a plan limit would mean nothing.

Nothing already booked is affected. You are told which limit you reached and what the next plan allows. Attendees never see it.

On Free and Standard, our name appears on the event page, the emails and the PDFs. Professional and Enterprise remove it, and Enterprise also sends mail from your own domain so the whole thing arrives as you.

Plan and usage, in the console. Every tier is shown with your current one marked, and an owner can pick any of them — you do not have to step up one at a time.

Moving down takes effect straight away and nothing already booked is affected. Canceling is moving to Free, and the button says so. Moving up goes through checkout.

One guard: if your usage is already above the smaller plan — more attendees than it allows, say — you are told which limit is in the way rather than being dropped below your own live event.

No. The Free plan needs nothing but an email address.

Only transactional mail, and only to people you registered: a one-time sign-in link, a confirmed seat, a schedule before the day, and a short follow-up with the contacts someone actually met. There is no marketing, and the product has no facility to send any.

It cannot. An address that is not on an event’s attendee list cannot be emailed by the system at all.

Open the message log in the console, under Deliverability. It lists every message sent for you, newest first, with the address it went to and whether their mail provider accepted it. You can search by address.

Delivered means it reached them and is almost certainly in their junk mail. Bounced means the address does not work. Nothing listed at all means they never requested a link — often the address on your list is misspelled.

There is a Send new link button beside each message, which sends that person a fresh sign-in link. The one in the original expired thirty minutes after it was sent, so a new link is what they need. The log is available on every plan.

Yes, on Enterprise. Your sign-in links and schedules then arrive signed as your own domain instead of the shared Open Doors sender, which both looks right to your members and helps the mail reach inboxes.

It is a real setup step, not a switch. You enter a domain and Open Doors shows you three CNAME records to publish at whoever hosts your DNS — often the same place you bought the domain. If someone else manages that for you, they will need to add them. We recommend a subdomain you do not already send from, such as events.yourorg.org, so your existing mail setup is left completely untouched.

Nothing changes until those records are visible, which we check against public resolvers rather than our own. Until then your mail keeps going out from Open Doors exactly as before, so there is no moment where sending can break.

We stop sending to it immediately, so a bad address cannot damage delivery for everyone else on your event.

You see it in the console under Deliverability. That page shows your delivered, bounced and blocked counts for the last 30 days, and lists every address we can no longer reach with the reason. Correct it with that person rather than resending.

Only the hosts of the tables they booked, and an organizer’s staff. It is never shown to other attendees.