Please follow our new blog for the latest RunSignup news.
Visit the new RunSignup blog
We’ve done a lot of work this year on improving the availability of our Service. Over the past several months we have moved to completion of that in parallel with our scalability project and have reached a point of stability and the highest level of service we can think of in our architecture. This means […]
50,000 Registrations in 7 Minutes! Your race probably does not need to sign that many people up that quickly, but all of our customers are going to benefit from theScalability and Availability project we have recently concluded. We were motivated as runners because of race websites that are unresponsive during registration, or after big races trying […]
We are very happy to release the new Race Director User Interface. This not only makes RunSignUp look great, but adds some nice functionality and great ease of use! Highlights include a quick view on registration count vs. previous year, wider layout, Action Links at the top, clearer Tab layout, and redesigned accordion styling to […]
Our Monthly Webinar is a chance to see some of the latest advances from RunSignUp and how your race can take advantage of them. We also open the floor to any questions. Topics from the December Webinar include: Results Gift Certificates Sponsor Images Registration on Your Website Video Help New Race Director User Interface
RunScore has updated their ability to download Participant information from RunSignUp and ChronoTrack Live. Timers can now easily select one or more Events (5K and 10K) to download or update at once. We are starting to see timers and race directors leave online registration open on the day of the race. This makes it easy […]
Hy-Tek has a very specific format for importing participants. Race managers who use Hy-Tek typically have to jump thru some hoops to import participants from an online registration system. We have simplified this. Under the Participant Reports section, there is now a nice little button – click it and we will download a file that […]
Our Scalability project has reached success! We have eclipsed our goal of doing 50,000 registrations in 10 minutes – completing the task in only 7 minutes. This means RunSignUp is simply the most scalable registration system in the world – able to meet the needs of the largest races. And combined with our robust Participant […]
One of the races that uses RunSignUp, the Passaic Valley 5K, is being highlighted on Running HD on the YES Network (the network that carries the Yankees and other sports teams). They gave a nice shout-out to RunSignUp! Here is the video: Highlights of the December 2012 episode can be seen at: http://youtu.be/me7BvjCCZDo YES Airtimes: […]
I just came back from the Amazon Cloud Conference. I am more convinced than ever that we made the right decision a year ago to move to the Cloud. Amazon now has hundreds of thousands of businesses from 190 countries now using their infrastructure. Every day they add more compute power than what Amazon needed […]
Here is the recording of the Webinar we just did for the upcoming release of our Race Director UI.
RunScore, one of the most popular Timer and Scoring software packages, has done a nice of doing a simple integration with RunSignUp to show Splits. This video shows the details of how to do this for timers with RunScore:
We have some exciting changes that will make RunSignUp easier and more powerful for our Race Directors and Timers! We are getting ready to roll out a new User Interface for you to use. We are holding a Webinar on Monday 11/19 at 7PM Eastern where we will preview the changes and explain the roll out schedule. […]
One of the features race directors love are the quick graphical reports they get from RunSignup. Here are some examples (there are plenty more):
40 Years of Results Runners are always interested in history! One of our race directors decided to take real advantage of our new Results Posting to put up the past 40 years of results. This is free and easy to do. For best results, get the native data files from your timer and upload them. See this […]
We have added a very simple way for you to add Sponsor images and links to your race information page on RunSignUp. This feature uploads your images and puts them in a standard sized 175 X 175 pixel box in a special Sponsor Section on the Race Information page – right above the default map […]
We did a very interesting upgrade today on RunSignUp. In technical terms, we added something called Session Replication. And we did this across two Amazon Availability Zones by duplicating our memcache session servers. What this means is that if one of Amazon’s Cloud data centers goes out, users are automatically switched to the other data […]
RunSignUp is designed to let races do registration right on their own website! This helps races build their own community, and makes it far simpler for runners. Here is a video showing some examples of races who provide registration right on their own websites: If you want to do this for your race, follow this […]
We are continuing to expand the RunSignUp API as we get more requirements from partners and from our own efforts to develop Mobile Apps. Of note, we have our first partner (who we will announce next week) who uses the new OAuth access. This industry standard makes it easier and more secure to connect with other […]
We now enable gift certificates on every race! This works very simply. Anyone can purchase a gift certificate for any amount for a race. We default to the current fee for that event. The recipient’s name and email address are entered, and they are then notified of their gift. They can then use the special […]
We still have a lot of work to do, but the progress so far is really good. We have a great test suite designed where we can deploy any number of test servers to emulate any number of runners registering for a race. We can also deploy any number of webservers to handle the load. […]
Jordan was signing up for a Half Marathon yesterday. Unfortunately he had to use Active. Not sure how much of these screens were Active (are they selling shoes in addition to magazines now???) and how much was the Race Director. In any case, our STRONG suggestion is to keep it simple! The more data you […]
It is a bad day for some of the Amazon Cloud (see this for a report how Reddit, Airbnb, Github, CourseEra, Flipboard and many more went down). Fortunately, we have been working on expanding our redundancy and failover. And this was a good test of these expanded capabilities. We were able to survive without manual […]
The Vestal XX recently posted over 40 years of results for their 20KM race. They had the original data and were able to upload all of it to RunSignUp Results for free. The result is great looking results, simple searching, Age Ranking, etc. The 1978 results hold special meaning to me – I was in […]
We had deployed an update last night which apparently affected one of our web servers. So for the past 12 hours some of our users (half) experienced slow response times (>2 seconds). We think all transactions were complete if people had patience. The ironic part is that this is one of the steps we are […]
A Real Life Bib Transfer & Refunds Example One of our race users just ended their open bib transfer and refund period, and we thought the experience might be interesting to other races considering this option. The race opened in June and sold out (4,250 runners) in early September. They enabled a Wait List, which […]
RunScore is our first partner who has taken full advantage of the RunSignUp Open API to make life simple for timers and race directors who want to get results posted FAST! Alan Jones of RunScore did the integration. It goes full circle. From within the RunScore system, you can click a couple of buttons and […]
Now that RunSignUp has all these cool Results Posting and Results Viewing options, we have added Notifications! Race Directors need to enable “Find A Runner” and “Results Notifications” under the Customize Tab. Then whenever results are posted, whomever signs up for notification will get that notification via either email or cell phone. This makes it […]
We now have videos to help you use our iPhone Mobile Timer application. See more about the Timer Application, or view the open source code! This is perfect for timing small races and providing real time results to runners – even with txt notifications. Pretty cool. (And a special thanks to Billy Connolly, our iPhone […]
We take our fiduciary responsibility seriously here at RunSignUp. We’ve done a number of upgrades this year that help our customers understand exact details about how we pay them and the ability to drill down to the transaction level on what for. This was always one of my big complaints when I used Active.com as […]
We have recently done a number of upgrades to our infrastructure to try to improve our service. As discussed in an earlier blog, we are trying to be transparent on how we operate. One of the biggest things that worries us about providing our service is what happens if it goes down when our customers […]
Results! Are you interested in giving your results a fresher look? Do you wonder why your runners can’t search them like you are used to with Google? Wouldn’t it be nice to have race info, signup, confirmation, donations and results all available in an easy single place for your runners to access? This is something […]
From the beginning, we have been focused on trying to make it easier for race directors and timers to work together. Recently we have made some major progress in this area by making it easy for timers to download participant information and upload results. One of the issues is how to handle security. In some […]
If you have the bib assignments already done in RunSignUp, you can quickly upload a file with just bib numbers and times. RunSignUp will match the bibs and give a great looking results display. A race director/timer used the Agee Timing system this past weekend and here is how easy it is for them to […]
We have seen several races beginning to use Groupon or other similar coupon sites to attract runners. Runners will buy a Groupon and be issued a unique coupon code. RunSignUp now has a simple way to import those coupon codes quickly and easily. The video below shows you how to import the codes. Once they […]
We are announcing two basic ways to post Results to RunSignUp today: Link to a Webpage. This makes it easy to put all of the results from previous years if you can not get access to the raw results files. Upload Native Timer Results. Upload the native results files from Race Director, RunScore or even […]
We are continuing to our roll out our Results capability in RunSignUp! We are really excited today because we are giving race directors a major new capability to upload results and let runners view them. These results can be viewed live at https://runsignup.com/race/results/?raceId=21&eventId=1506. There are a bunch of features above and beyond what you are used […]
Working with so many race directors and timers, we learn that pretty much everyone has a slightly different view of the way they want to organize their races. One of those little areas of dispute is how much information is required for a runner to register. With the increase in electronic communication, address becomes less […]
Open Running API allows various running systems to work together, including Registration, Timing and Results systems Moorestown, NJ – September 7, 2012 – RunSignUp, the leading innovator of online tools for Races and Running Clubs, today announced the availability of the Open Running API. This provides a simple, modern way for Registration, Race Listing, Timing, […]
The Race Director and RunScore are the two most popular timing and results systems used by timers. They both recently worked with RunSignUp to make sure timers had a simple and easy way to download Participant information. You will need the latest update from each, which is free as part of their yearly service agreements. […]
RunSignUp Mobile Timer is available on Github in Open Source now. Sorry, it is not quite ready for release to the Apple Store, but wanted to get the code out so others could start doing interesting things with it! RunSignup Mobile Timer is a mobile application that allows three users to time and place a […]
We heard back from some race directors in response to our blog on Bib Exchange and Refunds – a Runners Right?. I think the two responses below capture the range of comments: We are a non profit that runs a road race as a fundraiser for our programs serving homeless and low income folks. We […]
As another part of our big Results project, we are enabling multiple ways to assign bib numbers. This is not currently released, but we wanted to give our race directors and timers a preview. There are four ways to assign bib and/or chip numbers: Auto-assign. We let you start at any number and go in […]
One of the many little tasks race directors and timers have to worry about is printing labels for their bibs. As part of our Results project we are working on, we will be coming out with ways to assign bibs, or upload bibs from Excel or from timing software like Race Director and RunScore. We […]
A couple of years ago when we started RunSignUp, our basic strategy was to charge a processing fee when it cost us to process a transaction. We uplift our cost for the charge to pay for our salaries and infrastructure and hopefully make a profit. We figure this is a pretty decent way to associate […]
A race director we met with last week said they get a lot of calls asking where on the wait list are they? Number 32 or number 3,232? We have added this feature to our Confirmation page. This makes it easy for a runner to mke sure they are registered, or to see what position […]
I just got an email – an offer from a race to let me vote on the color of T-Shirt I want. This is a great idea!
We have been working hard on giving race directors and timers the ability to post results and give runners the ability to see their results. We are starting to enter Beta with this, and have a number of features coming such as easy posting of Race Director and RunScore result file, nice looking results display, […]
I read an article in the New York Times titled “Down With Shareholder Value“. This has been something that I have thought a lot about the past 20 years. It always struck me as strange that the reason for a company would be to serve shareholders. To me it is an equal balance of […]
Comprehensive Participant Management including Refunds, Bib Exchange and Event Transfers Helps Runners and Race Directors Moorestown, NJ – August 10, 2012 – RunSignUp, the leading innovator of online tools for Races and Running Clubs, today announced the availability of a comprehensive set of tools for participant management including: • Refunds – allowing Race Directors the […]
Road Race Management had a cover story on bib exchange and refunds this past month – “Races Grapple with Number Switching”. The comments from race directors seemed strange to me. They complained how runners were finding ways to work around the system – selling bibs on EBay, Craigs List and other sites, running as bandits, […]
