Opening the portal and launching your program

You can build and fully test your program for free: every feature, your own branding, up to your team's user limit (admin, judge, test entrant), all signing in directly, portal closed to the public. You'll see a "Test mode" banner while in this state.

When you're ready to open it up to the public, go to Admin → Upgrade Plan and launch: a single flat fee per program cycle removes the user cap, enables public self-registration, and opens the portal. You choose whether to launch portal access only, or portal + entries together.

Separately from launch, each category has its own Entries Open / Judging Open flags (set on the category edit page, or via defaults on the Program page): these control whether entrants can currently submit into that category and whether judges can currently score it, independent of the overall portal/launch state.