CineSend alternatives: the festival platform for the edition people attend

CineSend, founded in 2016 by a Canadian filmmaker, describes itself as a secure platform for teams to manage video in the cloud. It sells three products: Files, for collecting, storing and sharing high-value video with secure screeners (Teams from $797 a month); OTT, a customisable live and VOD platform for events and SVOD or TVOD services (Pro from $1,997 a month); and Request, for collecting media files from many providers ($0.50 per GB downloaded). Its site names Sundance, Tribeca and Venice among its festival and institute customers, and its virtual events page lists integrations with ticketing systems such as Elevent and Agile for online sales.

That is excellent plumbing for moving films into a festival and screening them securely online. Its products are built around video: delivery, screeners and streaming. Festivals looking for a CineSend alternative for their public edition are usually looking for something else: the festival website, the programme, the app and the in-person sale.

Getting films into a festival safely and getting an audience into the cinema are two separate problems. The first is about files, screeners and rights holders; the second is about the programme, the pass, the seat and the phone in someone's pocket the hour the programme drops. Buying the first does not solve the second.

Filmgrail is built for the second. Sections and strands are first-class content in the CMS. Passes are sold before the programme exists and redeemed later. Industry screenings stay off public sale while accredited guests can still book them. The festival's branded app carries the schedule, tickets and push notifications for the week, and the whole site rolls forward to next year without a rebuild.

Keep a delivery and screener platform for your programming and industry teams if you need one, and put Filmgrail in front of your audience. For the wider market, see film festival ticketing platforms compared.

Festivals already running their public edition on Filmgrail include the Bergen International Film Festival, Norway's largest film festival with over 120 documentary and fiction films a year, and the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund, which runs a public programme and the New Nordic Films industry market in the same week from one system. Haugesund's main venue, Edda Kino, runs on the same platform all year, so the festival and the cinema share one infrastructure.

Because the public edition is where a festival earns its audience, and it deserves a website and app that are unmistakably yours: sections and strands as first-class content, passes sold before the programme exists and redeemed later, industry accreditation beside public sale, and a site built to stay up the hour the programme drops. The edition rolls forward every year as content, not as a new build.

A mid-size international festival pays about $5,000 a year, flat, with no per-ticket fees, and smaller festivals pay less (see pricing). If we already integrate your ticketing and payment provider you can be live in a few weeks; a provider we have not connected before takes about a month.

See it before you talk to anyone: build your festival's prototype in 30 seconds — your own festival site and festival back office, from your current address. Then book a festival demo against your real programme, and read how the festival platform works.