Why attendance apps aren't enough

There are dozens of event platforms, check-in apps, and attendance systems on the market. Eventbrite, Cvent, Hopin, countless school management systems—they all answer the same question: "Who showed up?"

This is useful. But it's not the same as answering a different question: "Can this person prove to someone else that they were there?"

The distinction sounds subtle. It's actually fundamental.

Internal records vs. portable proof

Attendance apps create internal records. The organization knows who attended. This information lives in their database, accessible to their staff, useful for their purposes.

But what happens when the attendee needs that information to matter elsewhere?

Consider: A volunteer needs to prove their hours to a university. The nonprofit has an attendance record, but how does the university verify it? They could:

• Trust a screenshot or PDF. Easily fabricated. Any university knows this.
• Call the nonprofit to verify. Slow. Often no one answers. Maybe the staff member who knows has left.
• Request official documentation. Creates work for everyone. Takes days or weeks. Often falls through the cracks.

None of these are good options. They all require either trusting unverifiable documents or creating manual work to establish trust.

The verification problem

Attendance apps are organizer-centric. They help the organization track who showed up. They're not designed to help attendees prove their presence to third parties.

Presence receipts are participant-centric. They create artifacts that travel with the person—portable proofs that can be verified by anyone without contacting the issuing organization.

When you need proof, not just records

If your only need is knowing who attended your event, any attendance app will work fine.

But if your attendees will later need to prove their presence to third parties—for compliance, credentials, legal requirements, or anything else—then attendance records aren't enough. You need to issue proof.

That's what presence receipts are for. They're not a better attendance app. They're a different primitive: portable, verifiable proof that travels with the person who needs it.