Top 10 Eventbrite Alternatives - The Ones You Need to Know About
Not sure if you've noticed, but Eventbrite is crazy expensive.
The kind of expensive where if you do the maths, it kind of makes you cry a little inside...
If if you sell 100 tickets at $20.00, Eventbrite is going to charge you roughly $328.
...Yep...$328.
I say roughly because trying to understand Eventbrite's pricing is a PHD required task in itself.
$328 to sell $2000 worth of tickets. That's over 16% of your revenue. Insane.
Eventbrite branding
The other issue with Eventbrite, is that it's all about them. Their branding is everywhere - smothering your own brand and leaving it gasping for air! It's all over your event page, and it's even all over the emails that get sent to your attendees.
Those attendees you worked hard to get - well Eventbrite wants to promote their other events to those attendees too.
So not only are you paying their extortionate fees, but you're also passing over attendee information for them to promote to.
Maybe this was ok in 2010...
Greener pastures
So you're here, reading this article and you're wondering...is the grass greener somewhere else? You'd be right in thinking so.
Now, if you've landed on this article from Google you've read a few of these lists already and heard about the same 5 products.
But, if I've learn't anything from the ticketing space in the last 7 years, it's that as soon as you mention the word 'ticketing platform' things seem to get mighty expensive. It's like mentioning the word 'wedding' when all you actually need is a nice big hall to host you and your friends.
So with that in mind, I've added a few unusual suggestions for you too.
10 alternatives to Eventbrite
Ticket Tailor
"You dream it. We'll ticket it."
The pros
The one you may have heard of before.
Ticket Tailor found it's origins in 2010 so it's been around for a while. I would describe it as the most Eventbrite like ticketing site that's not Eventbrite - if that makes sense. If you're familiar with Eventbrite, you're going to be right at home with Ticket Tailor.
It's very good at letting you build a page that people can buy your tickets from. That's their bread and butter, and they do it pretty damn well!
Ticket Tailor also gives you a nice, easy to understand 'back-end' where you can view your ticket purchases and see who's coming.
Ticket tailor seems to get very good reviews with most people being very happy with it.
The cons
The main con with Ticket Tailor is also it's strength. It's like Eventbrite. You make a page, external to your own website, and you then send traffic to that website to buy your tickets.
It still doesn't feel like part of your own website and brand.
I noticed Ticket Tailor does have some embedding options, but they still take your customer away to an external page to make the sale. Not ideal. But, if you don't already have your own website, then who cares.
The costs
$0.75 per ticket sold + payment processor fees
$0.28 per ticket sold (if pre pay) + payment processor fees
Free for free events
Typeform
"Make forms worth filling out"
The pros
Eh? I can almost hear you say it. "Isn't Typeform for making...forms?"
Yes, correct! But remember what I was saying about ticketing platforms and weddings? (Sorry, that is going to make no sense if you didn't read the start of the article).
Typeform enables you to make forms, we know that. But Typeform also lets you add payment options to your form (via their Stripe integration). This is great because this means you can create a form for selling tickets to your event.
What's even better, is that Typeform allows you to embed your forms on your website.
Sweet!
Turns out Typeform actually have a festival registration template here.
And the cost difference between using Eventbrite? Typeform charges $50.00 for 1000 responses.
I mean, I don't like to do back of handkerchief math but...this is a fraction the price of Eventbrite.
The cons
Typeform, of course, isn't a ticketing platform, so it's best kept to the simple use cases.
It doesn't have some of the features you might need like waitlists, ticket types, email confirmations, etc etc. BUT - if you need simple, and want cheap, then Typeform is a great alternative to Eventbrite.
The costs
Monthly subscription. Prices begin at $25 a month (+ payment processor fees) for 100 responses and scale up from there.
Stripe
"Financial infrastructure to grow your revenue"
The pros
Stripe is technically a payment processor. In fact, most of the ticketing platforms you know of actually use Stripe in the background, but add a bunch of fees on top.
However, over the years, Stripe has expanded it's offering and added more and more tools that can be used independently. One of these tools is Stripe Checkout.
I first heard about Stripe Checkout as a way to sell tickets when I was looking to attend a tech conference and noticed they were using it...
It blew my mind to see they were using Stripe directly so I had to dig in...
It's a surprisingly good way of selling tickets and has features like:
- A 'best in class' checkout experience for your customer. It's super slick!
- Add custom questions in the registration form.
- Tax options.
- Ability to brand the checkout experience.
- Send customers back to your website after checkout.
- Payment links to send to your attendees.
- Confirmation emails.
- Easily see who's coming.
The cons
Again, not technically being a ticketing platform, it lacks some of the features you might expect. It's also not the most user friendly product in the world at first and requires a bit of getting used to.
But, if you use Stripe already then it's a good option.
One of the major features I missed was a easy way to create ticket types. I couldn't find an easy solution for this.
The costs
Stripe costs vary from country to country, and vary depending on the countries of both sides of the transaction.
You can see Stripe's pricing here in your area.
In the UK it's around 2.9% + 30¢ depending on the card.
Paypal
The pros
Paypal - another payment processor. In fact, maybe the most famous in the world. Did you know Elon Musk was one of the original founders of Paypal? Anyway...
Paypal has something called their 'no-code' checkout.
The easiest way to access it is by going here:
https://www.paypal.com/buttons/
...and clicking on 'no-code checkout'. You need a Paypal business account for this.
I was on the fence about mentioning this because it is SUPER basic. Way more basic than Stripe checkout.
But - if you wanted to sell 100 tickets to an event, and every ticket is the exact same then Paypal could work well.
The cons
Like Stripe, because its actually a payment processor it's about a cheap as things can get. Don't expect any fancy features.
The costs
Unfortunately Paypal pricing is crazy complicated. There are so many different percentages and tiers that it is baffling.
It appears, from this very useful Shopify article that paypal charge 2.99% + a $0.49 fee when using their buy buttons (You would not believe the amount of research this took).
Shopify
"Making Commerce Better for Everyone"
The pros
Shopify works surprisingly well for selling tickets to events, workshops and classes.
It's not built for selling tickets, but it's perfectly usable.
Shopify has the concept of 'Products' and 'Variants'. These are, after-all, just words and if we imagine these as 'Events' and 'Ticket types' you can see how this could work.
Shopify also has a huge app store, so you can find a lot of functionality on there that you might be missing. For example our own Shopify App helps you get started selling tickets on Shopify.
The cons
The main downside of using Shopify to sell tickets is the fact that it's tricky to put together a list of people who have purchased a particular 'Product'. Which makes the task of finding out who's coming to a particularly event harder than it needs to be.
The costs
Shopify has a monthly fee starting at $29 a month and card rates that start at 2.9% + 30c. Their pricing page can be found here.
The Events Calendar (Wordpress plugin)
"Events made easy"
'The Events Calendar' is one of the original event calendar plugins for Wordpress. It has a HUGE feature set for selling tickets, and has every feature you could ever think off.
It's an old piece of software and has been around for a long time but it seems to be actively maintained and updated.
The pros
The Events Calendar is a one off purchase. Once you purchase their software you can use it forever (but you only get support for 1 year.).
The other nice thing about The Events Calendar is that they don't add any fees on top of the payment processors. This makes it a very cheap way to sell lots of tickets.
The cons
There's two main downsides to 'The Events Calendar'.
- It only works with Wordpress. If you don't have Wordpress you're out of luck. And if you ever switch website platforms you'll have to change ticketing software.
- It's 'self-hosted and requires some specialist Wordpress and server knowledge.
The main complaint I hear from customers using 'The Events Calendar' is that it makes their website slow...eugh! Not what we want.
This is because 'The Events Calendar' is software that you host on your own servers, like your Wordpress installation. Too often people install 'The Events Calendar' on servers that cannot handle the load.
The costs
'Events Calendar Pro' and 'Events Tickets Plus' costs $198 and comes with a year of support.
Acuity
Flexible scheduling software to help you succeed
The pros
Acuity is an interesting one!
When you visit their website, it doesn't strike you as something you would use to sell tickets to events. And I thought this too...
They aim their marketing at service businesses - hence the word 'appointments'.
But over the years I've seen more and more people selling tickets to classes, workshops and events on Acuity - so I had to have a look what the fuss was about.
Now, honestly, I think one of the main reasons for this is because it's owned by Squarespace, and Squarespace push Acuity a lot in their documentation - but...
When you dig into it Acuity does have most of the tools you would need to use it instead of Eventbrite. But, it requires a complete mindset shift when using it.
Acuity uses the term 'appointments' instead of 'events'. On the backend you use their calendar to create 'availability' for 'appointments' that your customers can then book on to. Phew...that's a lot to take in.
But if you have recurring events, like a workshop or classes this does actually make a lot of sense. It gives you an overview of all the events that you're running that you don't get if you're using Eventbrite where every event is a very separate 'thing'.
They also have a bunch of features like reminder emails, custom intake questions, client sms messages and integrations with Quickbooks and Freshbooks. Nice!
The costs
Acuity starts at $20 a month.
Thundertix
The best box office software for reserved seating events
Thundertix is the most 'corporate' looking ticketing product on this list. I'm not 100% sure corporate is the right word here, but Thundertix target larger businesses that might need their 'seating plan' functionality.
The pros
The main draw towards Thundertix over Eventbrite is their lack of ticketing fees. Instead of charging a percentage they charge a set amount per ticket depending on what plan you are on.
The cons
The downside of Thundertix is that it's a bit...early 2000's. The software could do with a makeover and is starting to feel very dated.
Despite that it has a HUGE number of different features, including more unusual things like being able to add advertisement slots to your event emails.
The costs
Starts at $1 per ticket sold and ramps up if you want more features.
Wix Events & Tickets (Wix plugin)
Event management platform for tickets & RSVPs
The pros
Wix tickets has a bunch of nice features, and integrates into your Wix website if you use Wix already.
Here's some of the features that Wix tickets provides:
- Check in guests with a dedicated app.
- Various ways to display the events on your website. The calendar view, if you've got a lot of events, is a nice one.
- The ability to create seating maps.
- Customise what the event tickets look like.
The cons
Maybe it's me. But I find Wix agonizingly slow to build a website. I'm using a top of the range Macbook Pro, a good internet connection and Wix. Is. So. Slow. Argh!
Switching between pages to set up tickets felt borderline painful. Hopefully this is something Wix will fix in the future.
I also didn't find Wix Events & Tickets to be very intuitive. When you're adding events, it automatically adds these to your website, and trying to figure out what was going on while dealing with Wix being so slow led to me having to stop and take some deep breaths...phew.
Seems I'm not the only one struggling as the app seems to have less than ideal reviews at the moment.
Event Calendar App
Your event calendar ticketing & registration platform
Ok, yes, you got me (in case it wasn't obvious). This is our own product so we're biased. But, I'll give you a genuine take on if we might be a good fit for you.
The pros
Event Calendar App is the only Eventbrite alternative built for your website.
But what do I mean by that?
It was literally built to be embedded on your website.
We wanted to build something that looked like it belongs on your website. As if you had a developer custom code you your own ticketing platform.
This means there's no linking back to our website with 'Eventbrite' written all over it. And emails that get sent to your attendees look like they come from...well...you!
Event Calendar App is specifically built for companies that run regular classes, workshops, courses or events.
If this is you, then Event Calendar App will be a great fit.
The cons
Event Calendar App probably isn't a great fit if you're running a one off event. Although you could still use it for this, you'll miss out on a lot of the benefits of the product.
It's also not a great fit if you don't already have your own website. Lots of the benefits of Event Calendar App are focussed around the fact that it adds the events to your website. Of course, without a website, you'll be missing out on this.
