Virtual waiting room
Control your online traffic with Queue-it's virtual waiting room
Manage peak traffic with virtual waiting room software so you can prevent website crashes, slowdowns, and overselling—no matter the demand
- Prevent crashes, slowdowns & overselling with real-time control over the flow of traffic to your site
- Protect any part of your site or app—from your PLP to your "Add to Cart" action to your APIs
- Get 24/7 protection for unexpected traffic peaks, triggering the waiting room only when it’s needed
- Replace frustrating performance problems with smooth, orderly sales & registrations
- Ensure fair access with first-in-first-out, randomization & prioritization mechanisms
- Give customers peace of mind with transparent info like place in line & estimated wait time
- Use the virtual waiting room as a security checkpoint to slow down, block & challenge bots before they hit your site or app
- Remove bots’ speed & volume advantages with “live raffle" randomization & unique visitor identifiers
- Tailor your bot mitigation to your needs with up to 100 custom Traffic Access Rules
- Avoid the exponential costs of scaling & downtime by processing visitors at the rate you choose
- Control your event with the Queue-it Platform, where you can adjust traffic flow, communicate with customers & analyze sales progress
- Handle peak traffic without needing to re-architect your systems for a few traffic spikes a year
Scheduled events
Protect scheduled events like product launches & ticket onsales by collecting early visitors on a pre-queue countdown page & randomizing them when the sale goes live
Unexpected traffic spikes
Get 24/7 protection against unexpected traffic spikes caused by marketing campaigns or PR exposure with a waiting room that only triggers when traffic hits the threshold you've set
Exclusive sales
Deliver secure early & exclusive access to major sales & events with an invite-only waiting room that proactively verifies visitors via 2FA & keeps out bad bots
Peak traffic without Queue-it
Scaling costs surge exponentially
Bottlenecks fail, causing crashes & overselling
Customers miss out as bots snatch up product
Frustrating online experiences shatter brand trust
Peak traffic with Queue-it*
33% savings on database scaling
85% of customers sell product more efficiently
85% of customers say their sales are fairer
84% say their online experience improved
* Based on 214 survey responses from Queue-it customers (2024). See the results.
“Queue-it’s a great bolt-on piece of infrastructure, completely dynamic to our needs. The virtual waiting room made much more sense than re-architecting our systems to try to deal with the insanity of product drops that take place a few times a year.”
TRISTAN WATSON, ENGINEERING MANAGER
"The peace of mind we get from using Queue-it is outstanding ... The virtual waiting room reacts to and controls our traffic instantaneously, and if we need to make any changes, we can easily do it on the spot with the API or the dashboard.”
THIBAUD SIMOND, INFRASTRUCTURE MANAGER
“I can count on one hand the number of times in my career I've implemented a new technology and it exceeded my expectations. Queue-it is one of those times, both in how easy it is to implement, and in how well it works.”
DENIS GOULET, NEW HAMPSHIRE STATE CIO
A virtual waiting room is a cloud-based service that empowers organizations to prevent website crashes and slowdowns by controlling traffic surges to their sites or apps.
Virtual waiting room software keeps sites running smoothly during peak demand by redirecting visitors to an online queue, before flowing them back to the website at the rate you choose.
Virtual waiting rooms work by redirecting site visitors to a waiting room that enables a controlled flow of traffic to your site or app. Queue-it's solution can be used:
- As a safety net that only activates when a traffic threshold is reached (the insurance play)
- For scheduled sales where you anticipate a traffic spike (the timed release play)
- Or for exclusive or early access sales where you want to gate access to a page (the exclusivity play)
If use Queue-it as a safety net, customers are redirected to a customizable online queue only when traffic exceeds the capacity you've set. They're then flowed back to your website or app in a controlled, first-in-first-out order.
If your sale or registration is set to start at a specific time, customers are held on a countdown page and then randomized just like a raffle, giving everyone an equal chance. Everyone arriving later gets a first-come, first-served spot in the online queue.
If you're using Queue-it for exclusive access, only the customers you've chosen can access the queue and the protected page. Customers can verify they're "invited" with either a unique single-use link or their email address.
When visitors are placed in the waiting room depends on how you set up Queue-it.
First, you can choose whether the waiting room should be “Always Visible” or “Visible at Peak”. If you choose “Visible at Peak”, the waiting room will activate only when traffic inflow (in visitors per minute) exceeds the threshold you've set.
Second, you choose the parts of the user flow that Queue-it covers. This could be your entire website, a landing page, the login page, or a dynamic request like when customers click “Add to Cart”. This way, you queue visitors only at the stage in the user journey that needs protection, while visitors who haven’t taken the protected action can browse the site normally.
Queue-it uses both first-in, first-out (FIFO) queuing and randomization to create a fair experience for your customers.
When the virtual waiting room is used as a safety net and activated by traffic spikes, it operates as a FIFO queue.
When the virtual waiting room is used for scheduled sales, early visitors are placed in a pre-queue with a countdown timer. When the timer hits zero and the sale or registration begins, visitors are given a randomly assigned position in queue. Once these positions are assigned, the queue operates in FIFO order, meaning those who arrive after the sale begins are placed at the back of the queue.
This combination of randomization and FIFO queuing for scheduled sales ensures all visitors who show up on time get an equal chance at first access and prevents speedy bots from getting an unfair advantage.
You choose the traffic outflow level, measured in visitors per minute, and can adjust it up or down on-the-fly using Queue-it's API or web-based admin platform.
The best way to determine your outflow is to use a load test. If you haven't run a load test, Queue-it's peak traffic experts bring years of expertise in identifying system bottlenecks, understanding how many visitors your infrastructure can handle, and recommending a starting outflow level that's optimal for your site's performance.
You can integrate Queue-it's virtual waiting room with a client-side, server-side, edge, or mobile SDK connector. Queue-it offers over 25 connectors and dedicated support staff for implementation.
Yes, Queue-it's virtual waiting room can be used on mobile devices and integrated into iOS, Android, Cordova, or React Native app frameworks. Visitors on a desktop can even transfer their position in queue to their mobile device if they need to queue on the go.
The virtual waiting room is a lightweight solution built specifically to avoid bottlenecks and handle extreme load, meaning holding users is less resource-intensive than on typical sites or apps.
Queue-it is cloud hosted, with several dedicated global AWS data centers, enabling high levels of scalability and eliminating single points of failure. Queue-it processes an average of 75 million visitors daily.