Editors pick

Stop Paying Exorbitant Fees with Apps Like Eventbrite

  • Riley Manning
    by Riley Manning • March 9, 2022

Riley Manning has worked as a travel and entertainment writer for more than 10 years. Today, he writes about unique events and the technology that helps make them happen.

Your events keep getting bigger and better. The crowds are growing, and customers are buying merchandise as quickly as you can make it. But why does it feel like your profits aren’t growing along with your sales? The problem could be your event management software app. Apps like Eventbrite take a huge bite out of your profit potential while offering festival organizers far fewer benefits. It’s time to find an Eventbrite alternative and stop paying exorbitant fees with apps like Eventbrite.

A lower per-ticket price

You’ve done the work. You’ve booked great music and created an amazing event. Don’t let Eventbrite’s Professional package charge you nearly double the amount of an Eventbrite alternative.

Apps like Eventbrite gobble up profits and drive up the per-ticket price for events while leaving out a host of benefits that an Eventbrite alternative offers.

Eventbrite alternative apps offer lower fees and these better features:

  • Square payments
  • Square card reader support
  • Stripe payments
  • Instant payout
  • Custom service fees

Why pay additional fees for less benefit? You want crowds to attend your events, and you shouldn’t have to pass along higher fees to attendees in exchange for less flexibility.

If you’ve found that your crowd will pay $100 for the weekend festival, you shouldn’t have to charge more in order to make your profit. Apps like Eventbrite charge service fees of $1.59 plus 3.5% of the total ticket price. Out of that $100 sale, you lose $5.09 or over 5% of the total sale to service fees.

With an Eventbrite alternative, you could pay far less for each ticket sale. For example, with SimpleTix you get all of the benefits of apps like Eventbrite, and more, while only paying $.79 plus 2% of the total ticket price. This Eventbrite alternative offers a flat-rate fee for each ticket. There are no set-up fees, hidden fees, or costs—it’s completely free to use and you get to charge what you want for tickets.

Instead of paying $5.09 per ticket with apps like Eventbrite, you could pay $2.79 per ticket with an Eventbrite alternative.

Your choice of an Eventbrite alternative app could potentially save you or your organization thousands of dollars in additional fees while offering a streamlined event experience to your customers. This gives your customer an overall better experience and puts more money back into your organization. It also improves the chance of bringing back repeat customers and potential future profits to your event.

Pass Along Fees—or not

As the organizer of a festival, you need flexibility in how you charge your customers. Do you want to build in fees to the per-ticket cost, or would you rather add the fee to the ticket price and pass this fee along to the customer? With an Eventbrite alternative, you can have the option to either add the small fee per ticket on top of the total charge or set a flat rate that includes the fees. This flexibility allows clear pricing and a better idea of your total profit per ticket sold.

Eventbrite’s Professional Package lacks the flexibility to choose how these fees are processed. With an app like Eventbrite, your only option as the organizer is to absorb the fees.

These fees should be flexible and adjust with the price paid on a per-ticket basis. You want your event to be accessible and open to everyone. The larger the crowd, the more people get to enjoy the experience you’ve designed, and the larger the potential sales from the event. Promo codes are essential for being able to offer discounted rates and making your event accessible.

Are you offering special pricing for early birds, seniors and kids, military or first responders? An Eventbrite alternative like SimpleTix automatically adjusts the fee to the discounted rate. Apps like Eventbrite lack this automatic adjustment. Your customers’ fees could be static while the price was reduced, charging either you or your customer an outsized 3.5% fee for a lower ticket price.

Avoid Merchandise Fees

Your festival will leave an impression on everyone who attends. Help them keep their memories vivid and be thinking about your next big event. They’ll do this every time they wear their shirt or hat, or look at their poster from the festival. Having the right price on your merchandise helps your attendees feel comfortable making their purchases and taking home merchandise. Add to this the flexibility to use Square card readers and take instant payouts, and an Eventbrite alternative app looks even more appealing.

Apps like Eventbrite take additional fees from merchandise sales, making it difficult for event organizers to keep prices reasonable. You want your crowd to keep a fire burning for your next event, not feeling put out because of fees. An Eventbrite alternative like SimpleTix partners directly with Square payments. This means they don’t take additional fees from merchandise sales. Your customers will only pay the small Square fee of $.10, plus 2.6% of the sale. An additional fee and the resulting higher price can make your customer second-guess their purchase. With fewer fees both you and your customer can keep more money from the sale, allowing your customer to decide if they want to spend their money on additional merchandise.

As an event organizer, you need the flexibility to prioritize your needs rather than be constrained by the fees of apps like Eventbrite. Whether that’s deciding the right ticket price, or choosing a platform with time-saving feature functionality like attendee check-in, and boosting crowd participation and merchandise sales, you should have control.

Fees should be simple and should never undermine your ability to profit from your event. Hidden fees are the last thing you want to anticipate while balancing the logistics of organizing and hosting your event. Know that these fees are unnecessary, and choose an Eventbrite alternative to keep your fees clear and your pricing structure flexible.

Don’t let apps like Eventbrite offer you fewer benefits while charging higher fees. Take control of your event, and keep more of the profit by using an Eventbrite alternative app like SimpleTix.

SimpleTix has offered an affordable, premium event ticketing platform that outperforms Eventbrite and similar apps for over 12 years. Compared to the competition, SimpleTix offers better options at a better price point. To learn more, call us at +1 (855) 550-3670 or email us here.

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