Hot CuesFor DJs and event companies
Every formality has a track, and a spot.
Hot Cues turns a wedding timeline into a run of show your whole team works from — with the right song cued at every moment that needs one, and nothing left to the group chat at 4pm on a Saturday.
The way it goes now
The timeline is in a PDF. The songs are in an email. The changes are in your head.
Three sources, one truth
A planner's timeline, a spreadsheet of songs, and a thread of “actually, can we swap the recessional?”. Whichever one you opened last is the one you're working from.
The gaps show up at the altar
Nobody notices the bride's entrance has no track until the officiant looks at you. The list of what's missing should exist before the day, not during it.
Only you know how it runs
Send a second DJ and you send a phone call with them. What's in your head has to be on the sheet, or you can never not be there.
What a hot cue is
A processional isn't one moment. It's four — and three of them need a different song.
Every template breaks the formalities out the way they actually happen, so nothing hides inside a line that just says “Ceremony”.
The questionnaire builds itself
Click once and Hot Cues asks the couple only about the cues that need an answer — placed in the order the day runs, not in the order someone typed the form.
Answers land on the timeline
A song they pick attaches to the cue it belongs to. Say no to the garter and that cue comes off the sheet. Nobody retypes anything.
Music arrives in tiers
Everything they gave you, in one place, sorted by how much they mean it — so a request and a rule don't look the same at 10pm.
From first email to last dance
One place the whole event lives, from the inquiry to the debrief.
- Inquiry
A couple asks about your date
They land on your own sign-in page — your logo, your colors, your name on the door. No password to invent, just a code to their inbox.
- Proposal
You quote from your own menu
Services and prices you set once. The dashboard tells you which proposals have gone quiet and which calls never got their notes written up.
- Planning
They fill in the parts only they know
Hot Cues reads your timeline, works out which formalities need music, and builds the questionnaire from them — in the order the day actually happens.
- The week of
Everything lands in one sheet
Songs attach to the moments they belong to. Bridal party, parents, vendors and their arrival times sit where the DJ will look for them.
- The night
It works with no signal
Save the sheet before you leave. Tick cues off, type what actually happened, change the order on the fly. It syncs when you're back on wifi.
- After
The money, and what you learned
The balance, each DJ's share off the assignment that earned it, and a debrief while the room is still fresh in your head.
The portal your clients open at dinner
Everything the fancy planner apps do. In your brand, not theirs.
The portal is where your couples actually live for six months — so it carries every trick the big planner apps sell, minus their logo on your client's screen.
- Your brand, everywhereOne hex repaints every screen — plus cover photos and section banners, settable per company, per template, or per event.
- Buttons that do thingsPayment links, review asks, schedulers — custom buttons on any section, with every tap tracked so you know they looked.
- Video where it helpsLoom, Vimeo, and YouTube welcome videos that play right where you placed them, no leaving the planner.
- Contact captureWedding party and vendors with phone, email, and socials — one tap pulls them straight from the couple's own contacts.
- GIFs welcomeCovers and headline media take GIFs, because a planner a couple enjoys opening is a planner that gets finished.
- Notify MeThe moment a client accepts a quote, signs the contract, grabs an upsell, or submits a form — you know.
- Messages that send themselvesThirty days before, three days after for the review ask — written once, in your words, sent on time every event.
- A DJ-only layerInternal notes, the venue book, and setup photos live behind the curtain — clients never see the machinery.
When it matters
Barn venues don't have wifi. The sheet works anyway.
Save it before you leave and it's yours for the night — tick cues off as they happen, type what actually went down, move a segment when the speeches run long. Everything syncs when you're back in signal, and nothing you typed gets overwritten by someone else's copy.
Everyone who matters, with arrival times
Bridal party, groomsmen, parents of both sides, and every vendor — who they are, when they get there, and which door.
A venue book that fills itself
A room you've never worked arrives with its address and phone already in, because another company has been there. What you learned the hard way stays yours.
Prints like a proper sheet
Your logo, tight margins, the formalities in bold and the notes as bullets. Because sometimes the answer is still paper in a folder.
The part nobody posts about
The night ends. The business doesn't.
Somebody still has to be paid, the balance still has to land, and what you learned about that room is only worth anything if it's written down before you forget it.
Send someone else and still be there
Everything you'd have said on the phone is already on the sheet: the order, the cues, the tracks, whose mother is in the second row. A DJ who has never met this couple can work the night the way you would — which is the difference between having staff and having a second you.
Deposits in, balances out
Invoice straight from the event. Card, or a Venmo or Cash App link if that's what they use — and money that arrived outside the system still has to be marked paid by a person, on purpose, with their name against it.
Your DJs get paid what they were assigned
The split is set when you assign the gig, not remembered on Monday. Deposits stay with the business; when the balance clears, each share is worked out from the assignment that earned it. It will never release more than actually came in — it holds and tells you instead.
What you learned, kept
Which door to load through, the dead outlet by the bar, what the coordinator will and won't allow. It goes into your venue book, and the next person you send arrives already knowing it.
Be honest about the fit
One DJ with forty Saturdays, or five DJs with two hundred. Same sheet.
Hot Cues is built for the shape most event companies actually are — an owner who still plays, and a bench of people who work for them. What changes is which part of it saves you the most.
- Just youOwner, DJ and office
The win is the week before. The questionnaire writes itself off the timeline, the couple answers in the order their day happens, and the sheet is finished on Tuesday instead of in the car on Saturday.
- Two to fiveYou still play most of them
The win is the ones you don't. The gig across town runs the way you'd run it, and nobody has to ring you during dinner service to ask what comes after the toasts.
- GrowingSeveral out on the same night
The win is that it stays one business. One calendar, one set of assignments, payouts that come off the assignment rather than a spreadsheet, and a venue book everybody adds to.
What this is instead of
- a planner's PDF timeline
- a music app your couples log into separately
- a spreadsheet of who's working what
- the group chat where the changes actually live
- a notes app with the venue's quirks in it
- an invoice written somewhere else again
Six places to look, and not one of them is the sheet you're holding at 6:40. One place — and the sheet is what comes out of it.
Founding pricing
One wedding pays for the year. The math is the pitch.
Every plan is the whole planner — the portal, the self-building questionnaire, the offline run sheet, contracts and signing, exports. What you pay for is scale, and the AI crew.
Run your next gigs end to end and see if we're right.
- 3 live events at a time
- 2 team logins
- The whole planner, portal included
- Contracts, invoicing, exports
- Nothing expires, nothing is deleted
For a company with a real season and a bench.
- Unlimited live events
- Your whole team — unlimited logins, payouts included
- Google Calendar sync & integrations
- Everything in Free, uncapped
The crew that reads so you don't type. Priced this way because AI compute is the one thing that costs us real money per use.
- Consults recorded, transcribed, filed as suggestions
- Song mining from emails and pasted notes
- Agent Cue — screenshots in, a drafted event out
- In-app video consults
- Everything in Pro
Founding pricing, locked for as long as you stay subscribed. Invite-only while we onboard companies a few at a time. Every plan — Free included — can export everything it ever put in, any time. Prices in USD.
The bit that's usually vague
The questions you'd ask standing at a load-in. Answered like that.
Do my couples have to learn something new?
They get a link, not an account to invent. It asks about their day in the order their day happens, and only about the moments that actually need a song — so a couple who aren't doing a garter toss never see a garter question.
I'm mid-season. Do I have to move everything across?
No, and you shouldn't. Put your next event in and run it beside whatever you're using now. The one after that is the real test — and if it isn't better, you've lost an afternoon rather than a season.
What does it cost?
Free runs your next three events forever — not a trial. Pro is $240 a year (or $24 monthly) for unlimited events and your whole team. Pro + AI is $490 a year (or $49 monthly) and adds the AI crew: transcribed consults, song mining, Agent Cue. Founding pricing, locked for as long as you stay subscribed — and any change reaches you from us before it applies, not from a receipt.
Does it really work at a venue with no signal?
Yes, and it's the reason the sheet is built the way it is. Save it before you leave and it's yours for the night: tick cues off, type what actually happened, move a segment when the speeches run long. It syncs when you're back in range, and it won't overwrite what somebody else typed.
Can I put my own name on it?
Your logo, your color and your name on the sign-in page your clients use, on the screens they plan in, and on the sheet when it prints. Every shade in the product is derived from one hex value you pick, and each derived pair is checked for contrast — so nothing you choose can quietly make it unreadable.
Whose data is it?
Yours. Your events, your clients, your venue notes — printable and exportable whenever you want them. Another company using Hot Cues can never see any of it, and that isolation is enforced by the database itself, not only by the code that queries it.
The best DJ in the room is the one who already knew what was next.
Hot Cues · built by people who work weddings
Invite only, for now
Tell us about your business and we'll send you a way in.
We're letting companies in a few at a time so we can actually help each one set up. Leave your details and you'll get a private link.
- A person reads it — not a queue, and not a drip sequence.
- A private link comes back to that address when there's room. Usually within a few days.
- The link does the setup. It signs you in and creates your business in one step — no password to invent.
Already a member? Sign in here — or use your company's own sign-in page if they gave you one.