We recently, two years ago, bought into the Tessitura
System. I have to say it's amazing. I think you should make a few calls before completely writing it off; They are interested in gettig more folks invovled and may be willing to deal, they are an Open Source sort of, you are really making a donation to the tessitura
network, which let's you participate in ongoing upgrade voting processes, it does a heck of a lot more than just
box office.
Selling tickets is easy, and almost anyone could write a program to make Excell, and Access do it. Tessitura is more of an all around solution for
book keeping, donation
tracking and marketing cross referencing. Try to get Names, Numbers, addresses from Ticket Master and see haow far you get. It's expensive I agree, but in the long run what you get from it is worth it. you can also make up your own schedule for instituting new capabilities. Let's say you plan on wanting to sell tickets from your website but you don't have the gear in place yet, that's cool you can always add those services to Tessitura later, like turning on a
switch.
All around I'd say it pretty neat.