Honest comparison

FreelanceAudioVisual.com vs. LASSO

LASSO is a legit enterprise platform. If you're a $50M+ AV company staffing hundreds of shows a month, LASSO earned its reputation. For everyone else — the mid-market producer running 20–100 shows a year — here's where we fit differently.

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Our honest take

LASSO is a real product built for real problems. It dominates the top tier of live events — massive tradeshows, national roadshows, enterprise AV contracts — and the features match that scale: compliance, payroll, insurance, certifications at scale. If that's your world, LASSO is a defensible pick.

We're not trying to beat LASSO at the enterprise game. Our bet is that the mid-market corporate AV producer — the 12-cities-a-year production company, the 5-person PM shop scrambling a Q4 summit — needs something lighter, cheaper, and with a public directory so they can source crew they haven't worked with before. LASSO's pricing + implementation make sense above a certain volume; below it, you're paying for unused surface area.

One more thing: LASSO is effectively closed to techs — you can't just sign up as a freelancer and build a public profile. We're the opposite. Techs sign up free, profile is public, companies search them directly. The directory is the product.

Feature comparison

FreelanceAudioVisual.comLASSO
Primary marketMid-market AV producers ($500k – $20M/yr)Enterprise live events and staffing firms
Pricing$12.99/mo or $99/yr flat, all-inCustom enterprise pricing — typically $500+/mo minimum
Public tech directoryYes — every tech has a public profileNo — private workforce database
Onboarding timeSign up and post a crew call in 5 minutesWeeks — sales demo → contract → implementation
Compliance / 1099 / payrollNot included — bring your own (tech self-invoices)Full compliance stack
Crew roster / CRMCrew lists + private notes + reliability ratingFull enterprise CRM
Show scheduling + positionsYesYes
Invoicing for techsBuilt-in (invoice → client via your Gmail/Outlook)Via payroll/compliance flows
International crew sourcingCountry field + international profiles supportedUS-focused
Commission / take-rateNone — you pay your crew directlyNone on the platform itself

When we’re the right choice over LASSO

  • You run 20–100 shows a year and $500/mo of LASSO is math that doesn't work.
  • You need to source crew you've never worked with before and want a public directory to browse.
  • Your crew handles their own 1099s — you just need scheduling, rosters, and show management.
  • You don't want to sit through a sales call to get pricing.
  • Your techs would appreciate building a public profile that helps them land work outside your roster too.

Try it for two weeks

Full access to the platform — directory, crew management, scheduling, onboarding — for 14 days. Cancel anytime before day 15 and you're never charged.