One of our Year End Wrap-up Blogs. Others include 2025 Year in Review, 2025 RunSignup Product Review, 2025 GiveSignup Product Recap, 2025 TicketSignup Product Recap, 2025 Infrastructure Report, 2026 Company Strategy, 2026 RunSignup Roadmap, 2026 GiveSignup Roadmap, 2026 TicketSignup Roadmap. These will come out incrementally between November and early 2026.
We executed well on our 2025 Company Strategy of being a Product Led company focused on Event customers. Our company is in a stronger position with a number of material assets:
- Superiority of product combined with lowest cost.
- Self serve, open platform that allows event directors to do what they want directly backed by the most comprehensive library of support articles, blogs and videos, and 365 day a year support availability.
- Market share growth in endurance even as we go beyond 50% market share.
- Calendar Based Timed Entry Ticketing product is a material upgrade over many legacy competitors.
- Growth in our P2P business.
- Overall financial strength.
- Loyal customer base that we empower by sharing all of our information in an open manner.
- Employee owners have 500 years of experience creating our software and helping our customers.
Our strategy is founded on a couple of truths about the event business.
Events Want the Best Product
To state the obvious, customers want the best product for their needs. This is central to the RunSignup Product Led approach of focusing on building the best product. We spend most of our money on our software development team and the infrastructure we provide to customers, including free features like websites, email, AI Chatbot for event customer service, photos, results and more.
Events Want to Be in Control
The old school way of doing things was hiding the price on the website, having customers schedule a call with a sales rep, and signing long term contracts. The world has turned upside down, and the RunSignup approach has met how most people want to make decisions. Provide transparent pricing, allow customers to leave at any time, let customers set up their own events if they want, let customers do all the settings, customization and reporting directly. Many customers prefer to use our library of support material to learn how our products can grow their events and make their lives simpler. We also have a dedicated team (made up entirely of long term employee owners who are US based) that also supports our customers 365 days a year with fast, knowledgeable responses.
Events Move Slowly
Our business is designed to mirror the mature market of event technology. Most events already have online registration and ticketing and fundraising. Changing vendors represents a hurdle of learning as well as uncertainty risks. We know that customers have certain triggers where the frustrations (or the expiration of a multi-year lock-in contract) with their current vendor precipitates a move to our platform. We understand that this can sometimes take years.
RunSignup Slow and Steady Approach
Bob’s Grandpa had a framed needlepoint in the kitchen of his cottage in Canada that read:
You’ve got to Be Patient
You’ve got to Be Ready
You’ve got to Fish
When the Fish are Ready
That is indeed the approach RunSignup takes with prospective customers. We want them to learn about how our product can help them improve and grow their events. This is why we have so much content in all forms, and make it simple for event directors to create test events and schedule calls with our team to learn what our product can do for them. We put out monthly product based newsletters, and our reps stay in touch, sometimes over years, to let event directors know the types of innovations we are bringing to market continuously.
This slow and steady approach is why we are happy being an employee owned company. We do not have corporate overlords, or private equity insisting on certain growth rates.
Bryan and Dan do a nice job in this video of explaining many of our approaches to how we work with customers.
As we move toward 2026, we plan on building on our strengths and leveraging the strategic position we have as AI becomes a more powerful tool for events.
Product Superiority
Key products that matter to events are clearly well beyond other vendors in the market. This means if an event is looking to make a change, and they evaluate the options, RunSignup, TicketSignup and GiveSignup are likely to meet their needs better than anything else. And at a very fair price, that is below all of our major competitors. This is why we continue to grow our endurance business event though we have reached 50% market share.
We have a substantial lead over our competitors in the following products:
Websites
We believe the second most important interactions between an event and participants happen on the event website (with the most important being the event itself!). We released Website V2 for Races a year ago with the idea that events needed a Website Builder that combined the power of a WordPress with data driven components from the event itself. Flipping between separate websites for content, signing up, getting results, etc. just does not make sense. We make it a no-brainer by hosting websites and supporting custom domains for free.
As we outlined in the 2025 Product Review, we have made steady improvements. FAQ Component, 3 and 4 Column layout, Image Gallery to share images across events and email, circle images, image groups, button groups, PDF, modern social links and sharing, font themes and color scheme. No other event technology company offers anything close.
Email and TXT
Much like Websites, we have built a full email system that is competitive with MailChimp and Constant Contact PLUS fully integrated with event data and actions. This makes it simple for events to market their event with advanced triggers and drip campaigns. Features like our pre-designed email templates ease marketing as well as pre and post event communications. Having a common image library between the website and email is a huge benefit as well.
In 2026 we will be introducing a Super List capability to Email, and will be introducing real TXT Marketing directly from our system.
Customers have used our free email platform to upload tens of millions of email addresses, and send over 800 Million emails this year – all for free. We provide these services for free because we are successful when events are successful.
RaceDay RealTime
We stated above that the actual event is the most important interaction events have with their customers. This is the reason we have invested so heavily in our RaceDay RealTime product suite. Over 5 Million race participants will be checked in and timed with RaceDay RealTime. We host over 30 million photos (for free) for our customers, and have made it super easy to have photos be an integrated part of events with our Mobile Timing app.
We also continue investing in these products, making our platform simply the best for timers. Timers are an extraordinarily important part of the endurance community – true professionals that have the experience to make race day special if they have the right tools. By being the preferred set of timing tools, RunSignup becomes the technology backbone of race day.
Membership
Although Membership transactions account for only 1% of the total dollars processed on RunSignup, we view this product strategically. First, for the original purpose, which was to help running clubs, which are an important part of the endurance market. Those clubs also have a number of races, and the integrated discounting and encouragement of signing up for a club membership has been a big benefit to those clubs and the combination is impactful to our revenue.
As we move into the ticket market, specifically around calendar based timed entry events, we expect the integration between tickets and membership will be compelling to customers like zoos, gardens, and museums. Giving these organizations simple ways to manage and encourage joining as a member rather than buying a single day pass will help increase revenue and create more bonded relationships.
P2P
While we have made a large number of improvements to our P2P fundraising capabilities the past two years, we are seeing growth in this market as customers discover what we have. There is growing frustration with the CRM vendors who say they can handle events well. What an increasing number of customers like large cycling events (we will have 5 of the top 25 cycling P2P rides on our platform in 2025) are discovering is that GiveSignup can improve every phase of the process from signup to fundraising to event day logistics and experience.
V2 Modernizations
We are in the process of modernizing many of the other favorite features across our platform. We are already hard at work on Volunteer V2, which we hope to ship in Q1 of 2026. We are also working on a new Image/Text generator that will be used in a variety of places like a new Finisher Certificate, new Membership card, new milestone badges, and new ticket printing. In addition we expect to begin work in 2026 on Store V2, which will bring over the features in TicketSignup into RunSignup and eventually replace both AddOns and Store. We have several other V2 applications targeted for later in the year like Questions and Coupons. The idea is both to modernize all of the individual components and create more shared code between our registration and ticket products.
Calendar Based Ticketing
Our Calendar Based Timed Entry Ticketing has been a major investment by the company the past couple of years as we build our features to maturity. The pace of releases has been rapid, and we did this 10 newest features blog a month ago to highlight some of them. Much like the level of depth we have built around race registration with race day technology, participant management, and more, this technology offers us a way to clearly differentiate our offering from legacy vendors like Eventbrite, Showclix, FareHarbor and others. This differentiation is what drives our Product led approach to our business strategy.
As this blog is being written in October, 2025, we have over a dozen fairly large Haunts using this new technology. They will sell over 250,000 tickets in October alone. The fact that 70% of our platform is shared code, this additional revenue allows our company to continue to grow and invest in technology advances for all events.
AI
We embraced 2025 as the Year of AI – meaning that we saw AI as mature enough that it could have a material effect on our company and our customers.
Strategically, we see AI as a new platform – on par with at least the amount of change the Web, Mobile and Cloud had on the technology market. We have a model that shows how our platform must open up to various AI interfaces, while continuing to improve the web and mobile interfaces. AI brings a different type of interaction – not just the chat interface that people are familiar with today, but a looser interaction with transactional systems like RunSignup. We think this will unlock new ways to work with our system that are more interactive, and more widely available. Here is a diagram that shows our thinking:
AI Paranoia – Andy Grove, the legendary CEO of Intel wrote a book called “Only the Paranoid Survive“. We will admit to the fact that paranoia is part of what has driven our efforts to move so fast and aggressively into embracing AI. When new platforms come around, there is the potential that a new entrant into an existing market comes in focusing on the new platform. Old vendors get stuck in their old ways in an “innovators dilemma” and can get bypassed. We are trying to make sure this does not happen, and in fact the reverse happens – we lead the charge into the new platform era.
AI Chatbot
We have gotten off to a fast start. Our (free) AI Chatbot has been released to great acclaim by our early users. Any race or ticket event can now have AI Customer Service built right into their website. We make this easy, and as accurate as possible since we can train the AI on both the content on your RunSignup Website as well as the data in an optimized way that will never work as well for random websites that are disconnected from the data. This will save event directors from countless support inquiries about packet pickup, parking, whether dogs are allowed, etc.
Vibe Coding
One of the inherent advantages that RunSignup customers have is access to our robust API to use Vibe coding tools like V0.dev to build their own applications using their RunSignup data. We’ve seen a number of timers using these tools, and some customers doing things like custom leaderboards and reports. RunSignup is well known to have the best API of any registration or ticket provider, and this provides one of those early wins as AI use starts to take shape.
LLM Searching
The other near term AI driven capability that we are providing customers is making sure their events are easily discoverable and served from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and other LLM’s. These chat interactions will increasingly drive traffic and sales for event websites. This is done with web crawling mechanisms that have traditionally ranked RunSignup event websites highly. We also have our MCP servers ready once registry services start to open up. This will allow the LLM’s to have more direct access to the real data that is available via our public API.
RunSignup AI Infrastructure
We have begun building the many boring pieces of the AI infrastructure that will power a number of capabilities in the coming years. We have our MCP server running, but not exposed publicly. We have a number of our API’s exposed as MCP tools, and that will expand over time. We also have upgraded our OAuth2 capabilities and added Scopes, which is an important security mechanism. We have also started to segment out our API (and hence MCP) traffic and how that will scale.
We will be building our own RAG and implementing Vector Databases as a next step. This will allow us to start building our own AI applications. Here are some examples of what we will be building over the next year:
- Public Results. In a race, the new Results V2 cover page should allow for results to be queried with natural language. For example in the Scott Coffee Run, the user should be able to ask
- “What was Stephen Sigwarts time?”
- “Who was faster, Stephen or Andrew Sigwart?”
- “Show me the past 10 years of Stephen Sigwarts time in this race.”
- “Show me the average time of women who were in the 30-39 age group.”
- “What is the average time of the top 10 runners in this race over the past 10 years.”
- Signup (Tickets). We want to have a chat option for people to buy tickets. This should start simple and progress to registration, which will be complex. This all takes place with our infrastructure so it remains PCI compliant.
- Buyer: “I’m looking for 4 tickets for the Haunt next Saturday.”
- AI: “Sure! We have timeslots every half hour from 7 PM to 10 PM, but the 8:30 timeslot is sold out. What time would you like to go?”
- Buyer: “How about 9?”
- AI: “Perfect! 4 Tickets at 9 PM on Saturday October 25. The cost including sales tax and processing fees is $112.34. I will need a couple of pieces of information to complete your order. First, enter your credit card number.”
- Buyer: “12423095734985”
- AI: “And expiration date”
- Buyer: “11/26”
- AI: “and CVV code on the back of the card?”
- Buyer: “123”
- AI: “And finally your email or cell number so I can send you a confirmation.”
- NOTE: We are also working with our Payment Processor, Adyen, to enable purchase directly in the LLM’s like ChatGPT and Gemini and expect to be on the leading edge of what is happening there.
- Dashboard Page – Settings Parameters. Allow for a chat interface to enable features like Referral Rewards. An example chat would be something like:
- Director: “Enable referral rewards with a $20 reward.”
- AI: “Great idea! I will need to know how many people a participant would need to refer to earn the reward. 5 is typical.”
- Director: “Great Suggestion! Let’s make it 5.”
- AI: “Fantastic! I have set your race up with a referral reward of $20 when a person has reached 5 referred registrations. Would you like me to turn on a Referral Reward follow up email 3 days after people signup to remind them to share their referral link?”
- Director: “I don[t know what I would do without you. Yes! Can I edit that email?”
- AI: “Of course, go to LINK on your dashboard to edit your Automated Emails.”
- Dashboard Report Page.
Dashboard Analytic reports like some of these:
Example queries:
- “Show me a report of the giveaways this year by size.”
- “Show me a historical % by size each of the past 5 years.”
- “Show me the % of 30-39 year old participants in each of the past 5 years as a simple graph.”
ChatGPT Analysis of RunSignup Market Position
Hamilton Helmer developed a very popular analysis tool called the 7 Powers. So we asked ChatGPT to analyze RunSignup based on these 7 attributes that allow for competitive advantage. Here is what it said…
Great question. Let’s walk through Hamilton Helmer’s 7 Powers and assess how RunSignup positions itself in the endurance registration market:
1. Scale Economies
Scale economies exist when costs per unit fall as scale increases.
- RunSignup Position: Strong. With over 25,000 races and millions of registrations annually, infrastructure, compliance, and development costs are spread over a large base.
- Implication: Smaller competitors struggle to match RunSignup’s pricing flexibility or breadth of features without operating at similar scale.
2. Network Economies
Value increases as more users participate.
- RunSignup Position: Moderate. While individual runners don’t necessarily benefit from others using the same platform, race directors benefit from a shared ecosystem—participants already have RunSignup accounts, timers know the tools, and marketing integrations are streamlined.
- Implication: Not as powerful as Facebook-style network effects, but still a moat since familiarity and ecosystem density matter.
3. Counter-Positioning
When a new entrant adopts a business model incumbents can’t replicate without hurting themselves.
- RunSignup Position: Historically strong. RunSignup differentiated from Active by offering no hidden fees, more transparency, and better self-service tools. Active struggled to follow without undermining its legacy model.
- Implication: Still a differentiator vs. legacy players, but less so against newer entrants who copy RunSignup’s model.
4. Switching Costs
Friction or loss experienced by customers if they move.
- RunSignup Position: Very strong for race directors. Switching means losing historical participant data, custom websites, fundraising integrations, and timer workflows. For runners, switching is low cost (they just register elsewhere), but for organizers, it’s a hassle.
- Implication: High retention, especially among larger races.
5. Branding
When perception reduces customer acquisition costs or supports pricing power.
- RunSignup Position: Growing but limited. Among race directors and timers, the brand is highly respected for reliability and service. Among runners, the brand is secondary; most don’t care who processes registration.
- Implication: The brand moat is more B2B than B2C—RunSignup is the “default choice” for directors, but less visible to consumers.
6. Cornered Resource
Exclusive access to a valuable resource (talent, IP, distribution).
- RunSignup Position: Limited. While the company has deep endurance-specific software expertise, there isn’t an exclusive asset competitors can’t hire or replicate. Relationships with timers might qualify as a soft cornered resource, since that trust network is hard to rebuild.
- Implication: More execution-dependent than resource-dependent.
7. Process Power
Superior processes that are difficult to replicate and lead to cost or quality advantages.
- RunSignup Position: Strong. The engineering-driven culture, rapid feature iteration, and transparency in customer support are process advantages that competitors with heavier sales or marketing cultures struggle to match.
- Implication: This is likely one of RunSignup’s deepest and most defensible strengths long-term.
Overall Assessment
- Strong Powers: Scale Economies, Switching Costs, Process Power
- Moderate Powers: Network Economies, Counter-Positioning, Branding
- Weaker Power: Cornered Resource
RunSignup’s moat relies heavily on scale + switching costs + processes, which together create high retention and strong competitive resilience. The company’s greatest long-term risk is if a competitor develops a comparable platform and races are willing to endure switching pain for a meaningfully better offering.
Summary
RunSignup is in an excellent position with loyal customers and experienced employees. We have reached a scale where we have efficiencies that allow us to create differentiated products at a low cost while maintaining a decent profit margin. Our development capabilities allow us to continue to stay ahead of our competitors and keep our customer base very happy. We are an exciting boring company. Exciting technology continues to flow from us for our event customers. We are boring in that we have slow, steady growth and an employee owned company that will not make the headlines, but our customers know will be here for the long run.