Eventbrite

Eventbrite is easy to understand and use. The feature-set is not too broad so it's easy to quickly understand everything they offer. I was able to quickly wrap my mind around its scope and deploy an event. I appreciated how easy it was to setup a website for reservations and payment. Although I did not have alot of design options for the payment and reservation pages, the pages were streamlined and worked well. I was able to find good third-party support for lanyards and printed name badges. Being able to sell tickets at the entrance was a nice feature as well.

Pricing felt right. I received good value for the money I spent.

I did not have alot of design flexibility for the payment and reservation pages. I pretty much had to stick with their default template that makes all Eventbrite sites look the same. The event management UI was slow and awkward to use. I did have a couple of periods of site outage that caused me some pain.

Eventbrite is easy to use. It's designed well.

Customer service really stinks at Eventbrite. They're just looking to get paid. Their fees are high, sometimes 15-20% depending upon your ticket price. They had agreed on our festival to payout daily leading up to the event but changed their mind when COVID hit (to hoard cash and save themselves while screwing their event organizers.) Now they are expecting people to pull off multi-million dollar festivals without collecting any of their ticketing money up front. The worst part is they froze our payouts without telling us, until one day we noticed the lack of deposits and logged into Eventbrite to find it. Surprise surprise! They have refused to renegotiate the contract but also refuse to release funds so we can pull off our event. Eventbrite is going to bring the event industry crashing down due to the way they handled COVID.

The thing I like most about this software is being able to customize ticket types. Depending on which type of ticket an attendee chooses, the organizer can determine which type of questions the person registering must answer. For example, if you choose platinum sponsor, you are asked which shirt size you want. It is the best platform I have used for special events and even offers a check-in feature for the day of your event. There are endless opportunities for customizing your own event. Also, if you have a contract in place with Eventbrite for your events, they will not charge you a ticket fee for free events.

The thing I like least about this software is the fees. I was expecting a processing fee for credit card sales but there is an additional Eventbrite fee. This was remedied by signing a contract with them. Now all my fees are capped at a specific price and I can now have the attendee absorb the costs.