Ticket Agent services

[TDjohn]

Hi,

I am TD, but also the theater manager and FOH when needed. So I have to address ticketing.

This is an issue for a bit down the road because we don't have audiences now. NTL, it came up when Vendini sent me a new quote yesterday.

Vendini wants $400/month ($4800/year) plus 75 cents per ticket in fees to continue with them.

I must say that we loved Vendini when we could afford it. We did not use all the features, but that was OK. They got bought out by Audience View and it looks like they are trying to carve more than a pound of flesh from our theater in an attempt to recover from the current economic situation.

Anyway, I used showtix4u before and liked them. I also tried Brownbag tickets for a bit.

What are you using?

Charging the buyer a reasonable fee is tolerable. We think a reasonable fee would be about $1 for a $10 ticket, 1.50 for $20. I guess the total payout for all fees added should be about 10%.

Am I wrong about that? Have ticketing costs gone way up?

What do you folks think?

John

 

[sk8rsdad]

If your key criterion is low price then TicketAssistant is worth taking for a test drive. It is a small (and I mean small) company that targets the community theatre market. They charge $99 for a one-time purchase of a Windows-based program and $100 CAD per year to host the online ticketing. Your credit card processing service will expect their tithe from a purchase. The feature set is limited but may be adequate.

My theatre company currently uses TixHub. Tneir pricing is more in line with the bigger players.

 

[gafftaper]

We have adopted Brown Paper Tickets in our school district. It's worked out quite well. We've been using it for everything from show tickets to prom tickets. I'm not directly involved with it so I don't know the details. But I know they people who do work with it really like it and find them easy to work with. Best of all, the fees are passed along to the customer so the venue doesn't get blasted like Vendini does.

 

[TimMc]

TICKETsage Custom Box Office Ticketing Solutions

www.ticketsage.com

 

[TDjohn]

Thanks, folks.

 

[urban79]

We've been using seatyourself.biz for the last couple of years - it's also a small outfit, but they've been very responsive and have a decent setup. The way ours is setup the customer pays a 50cent per ticket fee that goes to SeatYourself, and we pay the CC fees (3.6%). They host a website for us, can do seating charts (although we do general admission) and will disburse funds post event via check (this was extremely important to my bean counters. Check them out!

Chris

 

[Lasermike]

I don’t know how the back end works but our children’s theater uses Seat Advisor for its ticketing and as an end user, I have no complaints.
I do know our budget is not big so I imagine it’s not expensive.

Michael

 

[Massey28694]

If your key criterion is low price then TicketAssistant is worth taking for a test drive. It is a small (and I mean small) company that targets the community theatre market. They charge $99 for a one-time purchase of a Windows-based program and $100 CAD per year to host the online ticketing. Your credit card processing service will expect their tithe from a purchase. The feature set is limited but may be adequate.

My theatre company currently uses TixHub. Tneir pricing is more in line with the bigger players.

When I joined our community theater a few years back, they were printing paper tickets on their printer and cutting them up with scissors (no lie!). Online ticketing was unheard of. I did a lot of research looking for a low cost alternative, as Vendini and those other big boys wanted far too much of our revenues. TicketAssistant was developed by a community theater volunteer who faced the same situation. Lucky for him, he’s a whiz at the database stuff (or whatever it’s called), as that’s basically all the ticketing services provide. If you don’t need the bells and whistles like barcodes for scanning tickets, it’s hard to beat this app. The owner is a pleasure and he even allows you to download and use the program with no upfront payment. $99 and i believe $49 a year for online ticket sales hosting, you simply cannot beat it! I know we save thousands of dollars each year and I can put that money to better use. Give it a try and let me know if you have questions. Good luck!

 

[BenH]

Arts-People.com (used to be ticket-turtle). Fee is based upon usage - they take a cut of every ticket sold on-line or at the door with a credit card. Cash sales at the door (not likely during covid19) are not charged a fee. At least that is what seem to remember.

 

[Crisp image]

Here in Australia we have used Trybooking.com . From memory they charge the buyer $0.30 and we are charged $0.50 per ticket sold plus 1.5% for credit card fees if used. No charge for cash sales. the have barcoded tickets (and an app) and seat allocation if needed. you can process refunds and reissue tickets to different shows from the web UI. Works well for us. And if you have an event that is free to attend but you want tickets issued then it is free to use. At the end of the season you have the funds transferred from them to your bank account. Easy and it works well.

Regards
Geoff

 

[almorton]

We use ticketsource.co.uk for our UK based sales. Seems quite a flexible system, as we have three (at least) different seating arrangements depending on whether we're pros, in the round or arena. We're a volunteer run theatre, so non pro. Our box office is manned by volunteers who are of retirement age, and they cope with the front end ok, using touch screens, card readers and ticket printers to handle walk up sales, which immediately takes the seat they've just sold off sale on the online system, and of course any seats sold online are reflected in their terminal display.

 

[Malabaristo]

Has anyone here used Ludus? They're another service where the fees are just based on ticket sales (no cost for comps or cash) and they support both online and box-office purchases. They also have an associated service for hosting live streamed or pre-recorded virtual performances as well. I've been poking around a bit and set up a test account, and so far they seem pretty interesting.