You make a reservation when you need to have more than 25 people in your Gather Space at the same time (or when you want to have the moderation perks of a Premium Space, like domain access restriction). To make a reservation, you'll need to know the Space capacity, which is the maximum number of people you expect to be in the Space at the same time, as well as the start and end date and time. (However, you don't need a end date when booking a monthly subscription, which renews automatically and bills you monthly.)
Think of it as making a reservation at a restaurant. You need to let them know how many people you expect ahead of time to make sure there is enough room for all of your guests. You can always increase the number of chairs or add tables while you're at the restaurant, but it may take some time. Because the restaurant had to set aside the space in advance, you can't decide to use a smaller space in the middle of your reservation. However, you can absolutely change your reservation to a smaller space before your event starts. Read more about increasing your Space capacity during an event.
When it's time for a reservation to start, Gather will automatically move your Space from our free servers to a dedicated premium server and allow as many people into your Space as you estimated and paid for. Reservations can be for 2 hours, 24 hours, or monthly, and can be made in advance.
From the moment you create your Space, it is always available and free for up to 25 concurrent users. If you are looking to just hang out with your friends and chat, you are probably good on our Free account. If you want to run a bigger event, you can test and experiment for free until you are ready to book a reservation for your event or schedule an ongoing subscription for a long-term Space.
Reservations and subscriptions can be booked through the Space dashboard in each Space. Just click the Gather icon in the top left corner of your Space, and click Upgrade Space. Choose the plan that best fits your needs: 2 hours, Per day, or Monthly.
Our pricing is based on two things: how many people you want to have concurrently in the Space (Space capacity) and how long you want the Space to be available for that number of users (for a 2-hr increment, per day, or per month).
Note: Get the most up-to-date info on cost by visiting our Pricing page of Gather.town.
All reservations and subscriptions are based on the highest expected number of expected participants (Space capacity) as well as the type of plan (2-hrs, per day, or per month). Because all reservations are allocated resources on dedicated servers for your event, you pay for the total anticipated server space that will be used, not just the number of users over the 25 free users.
Spaces on our Free servers all share server space and, as a result, you may encounter less reliability as opposed to our Premium servers.
If you expect 30 users for a 2-hour event, the cost would be calculated as follows: ($2 per user/2 hrs) ∗ 30 users = $60 total. You can always use the free pricing calculator on our Pricing page at Gather.town or by clicking Create a Reservation in the Space dashboard for estimates.
Because 2 hours is the smallest time increment available, 1-hour events will be at the same rate as 2-hour events. If you have a 3-hour event, the Per day plan offers you the most flexibility and savings.
All newly created spaces are automatically added to our Free servers. When you make a reservation for a special event or subscribe to a monthly plan, your Space will be moved to one of our Premium servers for the duration of your reservation or subscription. After the event or the end of your subscription period, your Space will be moved back to our Free servers.
Our goal is to make as much of our platform available on our Free Spaces as we can. A few benefits to Premium Spaces are increased capacity (spaces for more than 25 concurrent users), guaranteed reliability, and more customized security options.
You can update your Free Space to a Premium Space by making a reservation or starting a monthly subscription in your Space dashboard. See Setting Up My Reservation for step-by-step instructions.
We currently offer 3 different options to best suit your scheduling needs. The primary difference is purely how long you will need the increased server capacity and premium Space features.
2-Hour Reservations
With the 2-Hr plan, you can only select the Start date and time; the End date and time is automatically 2 hours from the Start time.
- If your event is longer than 2 hours, the Per day plan is going to offer you the best savings.
- If you start with a 2-Hr reservation and then edit it when it is Upcoming, you can extend the date and time past 2 hours. However, this essentially changes the reservation to a Per day event. You will see the reservation cost switch to daily rate because this provides you the best cost.
Per Day Reservations
With a Per day plan, you can specify the exact Start and End date and time of your event. You pay upfront for the specified amount of time.
- You will be billed the daily rate regardless of the length of your event up to 24 hours.
- This means if your event is 25 hours long, you will be billed for 2 days.
- If your event is less than 24 hours and goes past midnight, you will only be billed for 1 day.
- If your reservation exceeds 2 days, you will automatically be billed the monthly rate which is cheaper than 3 days outright.
- This will appear as a "Monthly Guarantee" discount automatically applied when you make your reservation.
- Yes, this means all events that are 3 to 30 days in length will cost the same. Take advantage of this to plan your event and maximize the enjoyment of your Space!
Monthly Reservations
With a Monthly plan, you specify a Start date, and the subscription auto-renews every 30 days until you cancel it.
- If you wish to book a month or more without subscribing, please book using the Per Day reservation option. You will need to pay upfront for your reservation rather than monthly.
Note: When you create your reservation, we automatically apply a discount to your total if there are cost savings available to make sure you're getting the best cost, no matter what plan you choose.
We occasionally get asked if there's an option to pay afterwards depending on how many people show up to an event. We currently do not offer flexible pricing like this because we don't want to give people surprise bills, and because we need to know how much Premium server space to allocate beforehand. Having the appropriate Space capacity reserved on our Premium servers will provide you and your guests with the smoothest experience during your event.
We recommend you make a conservative estimate on how many people show up. You can also increase or decrease the capacity of your reservation, even during a 2-Hr or Per Day event, but it will take up to 15 minutes for our system to process.
We will not automatically charge you if more than 25 users show up in your Free Space. However, the stability and performance of your Free Space will decrease.
Since our inception, the vision of Gather has been to create a Metaverse where anyone and everyone can participate. One consistent source of customer feedback has been confusion around our pricing. With multiple tiers that were based off non-intuitive criteria, our pricing structure was creating unnecessary friction.
We've since decided to eliminate tiers completely and offer our entire feature set (previously only available in the Metropolis tier) across all Premium Spaces. Learn more and compare options on our new pricing page.