Article
Can you save time?
If you run an independent venue, you already know how much time the logistics takes just to make a gig happen.
Bookings, tech specs, soundchecks, artist comms, invoices, it all adds up. And for most of us, it’s not a full-time team handling it; it’s one or two people spinning every plate.
Before we built Stage Portal, we were in the exact same spot. As venue owners, we would be booking bands while chasing a missing rider, emailing back a sound tech, updating a spreadsheet, and answering messages from artists, all before lunch.
This is when we sat back and realised the amount of time being spent on logistics instead of the strategic decisions that could improve the venue.
Most venues think their biggest challenge is budget. But in reality, it’s time. Every week, venue teams lose hours to back-and-forth messages, missing attachments, and manual updates.
The problem isn’t that people aren’t organised, it’s that their tools aren’t connected. Most venues we speak to have a system which is a variety of different apps and platforms. You’ve got artists sending files over Messenger, riders in emails, tech specs in Google Drive, and event notes in someone’s notebook. When all that information lives in different places, it eats away at your day and your sanity.
For years, I thought this was just the way things had to be. Most of the tools out there were built for arenas and major touring operations, the kind with full production teams, logistics staff, and budgets big enough to justify expensive systems.
So we decided to build our own, a system that could actually streamline and automate the kind of logistics smaller teams deal with every day.
When we were helping to run a festival, collecting and analysing the riders for sixty different artists used to take around 36 hours of admin time. Once we built Stage Portal, it took six seconds.
That’s not a marketing line, that’s real data.
And that was the moment it clicked: if one connected system could save us that much time, imagine what it could do for small and mid-sized venues, where every minute really matters. Because in this world, a few hours lost to admin can be the difference between breaking even and booking your next show.
That’s why we built Stage Portal for Grassroots music, the people keeping live music alive week after week.
Stage Portal connects all the moving parts of your events:
✅ Bookings
✅ Artist riders & stage plots
✅ Tech specs
✅ Guest lists
✅ Expenses
✅ Team communication
Everything lives in one place, no more digging through old chats or wondering who has the latest version of a document.
Your sound techs, bar staff, and promoters all see the same, up-to-date info. Artists can upload their riders directly. You can review and approve everything from one dashboard.
It's been a real game changer for our venue, helping us to focus on delivering live events and less on admin
And when something changes an artist updates their setup or adds another band member the system updates automatically, sending notifications to your team.
That means fewer surprises at soundcheck and more time focusing on the music.
The first small venue that switched to Stage Portal ending up saving an average of two hours of admin per gig.
Another used it to coordinate bookings across multiple staff and reported their smoothest run of shows in years.
What those teams discovered wasn’t just a tool, it was time they got back.
When the admin stopped eating into their day, they had more space to do what really drives their business: booking more artists, improving audience experience, and growing their community.
If this sounds familiar, the endless messages, the missing files, the late-night scrambles you’re not alone. Every venue faces it.
But you don’t have to keep doing things the hard way.
Stage Portal gives you the tools the big players use, but built for independent venues that actually need them most.
It doesn’t just help you manage shows, it helps you buy back your time.
And that time? That’s where your next great event comes from.
Stage Portal is already helping venues and festivals save hours per event, simplify communication, and get back to what they do best, creating incredible live music experiences.
You can try it free for 30 days, no setup fees or contracts.
Start your free trial today at stageportal.gg
and take back the hours that matter most.
Because when your systems run smoothly, your shows do too.
Book a 30 minute demo and see how you can:
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