If you've run an event with more than one entrance, you already know the problem. One scanner catches a guest, but the scanner at the other door has no idea that guest just walked in. Somebody gets double-counted, a ticket gets rejected that shouldn't be, and your check-in team spends the first twenty minutes of the event troubleshooting instead of welcoming people.
The Spotix Registry exists to close that gap.
What The Spotix Registry Actually Is
Think of the Registry as the single source of truth for who's been checked in at your event, no matter how many devices or how many doors you're running. Every scanner connected to the same registry sees the same check-in status in real time. Someone gets scanned in at Door A, and Door B knows about it instantly. No double check-ins, no confused staff, no guest arguing that they "already came in through the other side."
Where it gets interesting is that we built two versions of the Registry to fit two very different event realities.
The Online Registry
The Online Registry lives on our virtual machines. Your scanning devices connect to it over the internet, and every check-in syncs to a central record that your whole team can see, whether they're at the venue or checking dashboards from home.
This is the simplest setup if your venue has solid, reliable connectivity. Just log in and scan. It's also the better fit if you're running check-in across multiple physical locations for the same event (think satellite viewing parties or multi-city ticket validation) since everything reports back to one central place automatically.
The Offline Registry
The Offline Registry does the same core job, collaborative, real-time scanning across multiple devices, but it doesn't need the internet to do it. It's downloaded directly onto the machines running the Spotix Scanner desktop software and works over your venue's local network instead. Devices talk to each other directly, so check-ins still sync across every scanner in the room even if the venue Wi-Fi is unreliable or nonexistent. The software itself must be installed on your laptop but scanner devices can be phones. The idea is they're all connected via Wi-Fi
This is the one to reach for if you're working in a venue with spotty connectivity or honestly anywhere you're not 100% sure the internet will hold up for the whole event. When check-in is the first impression your guests get, "MTN isn't going" isn't an excuse anyone wants to give.
There's also a standout feature that only lives on the offline side: facial check-in. Guests can be checked in by face match instead of a QR scan, which is a big deal for events where you want check-in to feel fast and frictionless, VIP sections, staff or vendor access points, or any line where you'd rather not have people fumbling for their phones. We've gone deep on exactly how the offline facial recognition pipeline works (the embeddings, the liveness checks, the fallback logic) in a separate post, so if you want the full technical breakdown, that's the one to read next.
The Global Registry
designed to read-first. Which means concurrent scans are handled effortlessly. The global registry is write-first to ensure when your guests are buying tickets everything happens as possible. Read more on this here. Ensure that after scanning with the online registry you click that "Push to Global Registry button" so it shows up on your attendees tab.
Our Advice
If you're confident in the network, whether it's a strong dedicated connection or a venue you've used before and know holds up under load, go with the Online Registry. It's the path of least resistance and gives you cloud-level visibility without any extra setup.
If there's any doubt at all, and there usually is, download the Offline Registry and run it through the Spotix Scanner instead. You lose nothing on the collaborative scanning side, you gain facial check-in as an option, and you're not betting your event's first impression on a WiFi signal you don't control.
Better yet: try both. Run the Online Registry as your primary and keep the Offline Registry ready as backup on at least one device. That way, if the connection drops mid-event, you're not stuck, you just keep scanning.
Ready to set up your registry? Log into your Spotix Booker dashboard to configure either option for your next event.