Best Event Ticketing Softwares 2019

Sparxo

Experienced event producers are looking for ticketing software with small ticket fees and big potential for branding and sales. Fortunately, Sparxo offers all the above. With Sparxo software, you can sell tickets directly on your site with no redirects and reasonable fees. Sparxo only charges $1 for tickets under $25, $2 for tickets priced between $25 and $50, and $3 for tickets $50 and above. That means their maximum fee caps at $3!*

While Sparxo charges an extra $0.30 is added to each additional ticket purchased in a bundle, the maximum Sparxo convenience fee is only $3.00 + 2.9% + 0.30* per ticket. This includes the Sparxo application fee and the credit card transaction fee. What’s more? With Sparxo, you also have the option to pass all fees passed to the customer. No credit card or sign up fees, no membership dues – you keep 100% of your ticket price.

While Sparxo’s simple pricing system makes it a strong choice for all demographics, its biggest draw seems to be with experienced event planners, who tend to be more concerned with their branding and attendee experience. Sparxo allows you to embed ticket sales on your website, design powerful splash pages, and discover who your returning customers are via smart guestlists. It’s also mobile compatible and intuitive for attendees. This means that all the event software you need is in one place and at one website, a major advantage for event producers who want to shape every aspect of the attendee experience.

Sparxo’s attendee registration does not redirect like Eventbrite and other well-known ticketing software. All traffic goes to your site and stays there, allowing you to shape every step of their experience. By using Sparxo to sell tickets directly from your site, you could decrease your bounce rate, increase retention, boost your SEO, and brand. With Sparxo, all event organizers have access to all features Sparxo offers.

At Sparxo, we understand that our event producers may have to deal with sudden cancelations or refunds. We get it. Just let us know and not only will the customer be refunded, but they’ll also get their Sparxo fees back too. And if you ever need to cancel or postpone? You pay no cancellation fees either. Plus, Sparxo offers customer service to every client even nonprofit organizations with free events. A Sparxo customer service representative is always available by chat on their website or email at contact@sparxo.com.

Real Customer Review: 5/5

“Pros: Sparxo is great to use for events – it’s easy to track guests as well as collaborate with fellow event co-organizers. The layout is very easy to learn and create events. I like the event splash page which personalizes your event and the app which allows you to easily check-in guests. Sparxo’s customer service is also excellent and they are very responsive if you have any questions.

Cons: …Some people are unaware of Sparxo – I have to explain what the company is.”

Eventbrite

Eventbrite is the Kraft Mc ‘N Cheese of ticketing software – it’s everywhere, convenient, and easy to get started, but may not be the best or most substantive choice for more experienced event producers.

Eventbrite’s Essentials package is 2% + $0.79 per ticket which limits you to one ticket type and their Professional package which is comparable to Sparxo’s offerings is 3.5% + $1.59. Only the Professional package allows users to sell tickets from their own site, get sales analytics, or sell different ticket types. Eventbrite’s gives you the option to either “absorb” your fees and pay them from ticketing revenue, or pass them on to your ticket buyers. The majority of event organizers who pass fees to their attendees pay nothing out of pocket to use Eventbrite, although attendees will be paying a higher ticket price to make that possible.

Although Eventbrite’s ‘Profesional’ plan claims direct integration to your website, most clients ultimately have their customers redirected to Eventbrite’s own website. Why? Well, unless you’re one of Eventbrite’s biggest clients (out of thousands!) or adhere perfectly to their long list of rules, Eventbrite will redirect leads from your website to your Eventbrite page. That means a higher bounce rate, lower retention, and far worse SEO. Sure, Eventbrite pages may be easy to find, but readers aren’t boosting your website’s traffic, their boosting Eventbrite’s. While this tradeoff can sometimes be acceptable if brand and SEO aren’t a priority, ultimately experienced Event producers who value their SEO would be wise to steer clear of Eventbrite.

One of Eventbrite’s lesser-known blemishes: they can promote your competition. When traffic is redirected to your Eventbrite page, potential attendees can see your event, sure, but they also see similar events, recommended by Eventbrite. Their on Eventbrite’s site, after all, not yours. And Eventbrite’s job is to promote all events, not just yours. This means traffic to your Eventbrite page may be seeing advertisements from competing events, potentially cutting your attendance and brand awareness. With Eventbrite, your customer data is shared with Eventbrite who does send email blasts to your customers on competitor events.

Eventbrite’s customer service can also be a problem, especially on a lower-paying plan, where users must slog through Eventbrite’s online help center. Only with the ‘Professional’ plan do you even get to call or email service representatives. Eventbrite’s service center has been known to be less than sympathetic to its customers, often erring against the customer and the client. If you were to purchase the wrong ticket or experience some technical difficulties, Eventbrite’s customer service would go out of their way to not help you, or at the very least charge you for the difference.

In short, Eventbrite is well-known and intuitive, an excellent choice for event producers just looking to slap together a simple event page as quick as possible. But because their fees are high and their web redirects cut into SEO, Eventbrite may not be such a strong choice for more experienced event producers.

Real Customer Reviews: 3/5

“Pros: Concise

Cons: Very limited flexibility… No customer support whatsoever.”

“I found it difficult to pull money back to our banks considering the large number of accounts and programs we have”

TicketSpice:

Ticketspisce seems to draw most of its users via their relatively low pricing, $0.99 commission per ticket. It’s affordable and it’s simple, sure. But in the end, you get what you pay for. Look a little below the surface and TicketSpice’s simple commission systems start to look a whole lot pricier.

TicketSpice charges that same $0.99 commission per the ticket no matter what, even for free tickets. That means if you have a free event, event planners still have to pay $0.99 commission per ticket sold to TicketSpice. The company further charges the event planner with a credit card processing fee for setting all that up. More sophisticated software like Eventbrite and Sparxo don’t charge either fee, free events selling tickets for free, with no surprise credit card or processing fees.

Hush-hush! TicketSpice also charges you 2 cents every time you and your event goers message each other. This can really add up when your event has a large crowd, meaning your eventgoers will either have to close their lips or event producers will have to open their wallets. TicketSpice’s low initial fee structure means they try very hard to sneak in these sorts of hidden fees, which can irk clients and attendees alike.

Ticketspice’s Achilles heel? The software itself. Sure, their system can be affordable, but a quick glance at their bugs and crashes and event producers can see why. With their latest update, TicketSpice 4.0, users were forced to create a whole new account just to use TicketSpice. This second-signup created a mess of confusion and doppelganger accounts, every new account having new usernames. Users had to message Ticketspice directly to “reserve” their old username. Messy and unorganized, Ticketspice didn’t invest in the time to integrate the new updates into their pre-existing system, which truly shows they do not care about their users.

Real Customer Reviews: 4/5

“Pros: Ticket spice offers a lot more flexibility in putting events together. We had a complex request for our ticketing and TicketSpice was able to help us with that solution

Cons: I believe its a relatively new company so they’re still figuring out the tech side.”

“Cheap, but you get what you pay for”

Purple Pass

On the surface, PurplePass doesn’t seem like an exceptional ticketing software at all, with 2.5% + $0.99 ticket costs, high credit card fees, and expensive wristband and color add-ons. However, PurplePass is one of the few ticketing software to go out of its way to offer personalization, competing with Sparxo for the “Whitelabel” spot. Unfortunately, Purplepass’s software still has a ways to go, as does its customer service. Its fees also run higher than many competitors who offer the same Whitelabel service.

Real Customer Reviews: 4/5

“Pros: The scanners were easy to use. Since most our staff have personal iphones it was easy to use. The reporting tools is awesome because it shows a breakdown of the sales and fees which is easy to read.

Cons: The app felt limited. If we wanted to scan we could only be on the “scanning mode”, if we had a walk-in attendee that needed to purchase a ticket we had to remember to change modes”

“Customer service lacking.”

TicketTailor

TicketTailor is a ticketing software gaining awareness, especially in the arts community for their unique $0.65 per ticket pricing, a simple but potentially costly fee. Tickettailor offers unlimited ticket sales at the same price point, with free tickets being free and a 20% charitable discount. This means that an event selling very few tickets at a high price point has a lot to gain from working with TicketTailor. A bigger event with lower-priced tickets? Not so much.

One of the biggest issues is with ticket tailor is a complete lack of branding. TicketTailor gives users a one-size-fits-all ticket design via their own website. While this can be fine for small musicians or performing arts events, any company with a brand could run into awareness issues using TicketTailor.

Real Customer Reviews: ⅘

“Pros: I really like the ease of use and how simple it is to set up a storefront for tickets. Super quick set up time and very accessible to manage and make quick edits if needed

Cons: I dislike the fact that we cannot customize the look of our tickets and rather are stuck with the default ‘QR’ coded squares that are the printable ‘tickets’. We would like to see something that allows us to be creative with the presentation of our tickets and make them feel like actual concert tickets”

“Wish I had more options on customizing the ticket page.”

If you’d like to try Sparxo after this review, you can get started absolutely free! No obligations. No fees. Just powerful software to help you deliver your killer events.