Hi  [@shawntabrizi](https://kusama.polkassembly.io/user/shawntabrizi) 

Thanks for your feedback regarding website cost, as well as overall costs of hosting virtual conferences. Our team is experienced in running several events both in person, and virtual. Here's some thoughts behind the costs needed to design, produce and host the virtual conference. 

**Webflow Design & Development Agency Costs**
1. We were going to have the website built on Webflow -- we've reached out to several different agencies for custom designs. The average quotes we've received were in ballpark range of 15-20k+ or higher. Our thoughts were to engage an design & development agency that could help create full custom elements, and website flow on Webflow to create hype and branding around KusamaNetwork. 

Reason we are utilizing Webflow is so our non-technical webteam can utilize the 'collections' feature and visual edit mode to easily add to the site's roster, agenda and speakers. 

Example agencies & price range minimums: 

[https://experts.webflow.com/profile/finsweet](url)

[https://experts.webflow.com/profile/nonameyet-studio](url)

[https://experts.webflow.com/profile/z1-digital-studio](url)

**Virtual Conference costs:**

2. Costs for running a virtual event are not necessarily cheap, despite being online. At least for a high production event. 

Video hosting platform such as [Hopin.com](url) requires $50,000+ to utilize its full features and attendee count. This includes 5,000 registrants, but any overage would cost 8$+ additional per person.

This does not include website, team, marketing, or production either. We've opted out going down this route as it would have actually added even more additional costs to execute the conference. 

Please see Hopin's pricing proposal as an example: 
[https://docsend.com/view/g4mydkxbktqxmcq4](url)

Hope this highlights more on our quoted budget needs we had in mind to produce and host this conference.

The costs in the proposal seem very high. Why should it cost so much money to run a virtual event? Why should it cost $16,000 to create a website?



wow, hopin is extortionate, would help if you had mentioned that in the proposal doc - I didn't see it, although it would make sense if you you have an ongoing subscription and you're just going to partially subsidize. Would help if you revised your estimate or breakdown - seems like you came up with a number and then split it up after the fact. 

I don't know why I personally feel the target audience of this event doesn't mesh with what I want to support, along with the marketing approach you've decided on... but we've already supported a couple of online events with more organic approaches targeted at a less retail-crypto audience that didn't have much traction, so... I'm fine with seeing what a more traditional growthhacker approach to an event looks like.

I recall one of the criticisms in the Kusama Direction channel was that this event was originally proposed near the same time as sub0 - I would argue that sort of thing would only be an issue if you are trying to add workload to speakers from the existing event, in terms of attendees, I don't think people will mind there being a mini substrate/kusama-season. 

This is a motion whose proposer address (Hjuii5eGVttxjAqQrPLVN3atxBDXPc4hNpXF6cPhbwzvtis) is shown in on-chain info below. Only this user can edit this description and the title. If you own this account, login and tell us more about your proposal.

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#356 Proposal: CHAOS 2021 - Kusama Conference (Virtual)