Event ticketing

Plan Your Haunted House With This Square-Integrated Ticketing System

  • Riley Manning
    by Riley Manning • June 22, 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.

A spooky looking haunted house for all the tips we have about planning your event, including an eventbrite alternative.

With over 4,000 paid Haunted House events in the nation, it is easy to see that these attractions draw serious crowds—and revenue.

Haunted houses can be complex attractions. Operators should strive to engineer every part to add to the spooky ambiance and raise the tension. But friction in the ticketing process, lines at the gate, and bad logistics can kill the vibe for visitors.

With the right ticketing platform, you can solve several problems with one convenient tool.

Reducing friction with this Eventbrite alternative

an eventbrite alternative.

Make ticketing simple

The ability to buy tickets online is a game-changer for any attraction. It’s not uncommon for haunted house proprietors using SimpleTix to wake up to several hundreds of dollars in overnight sales. But it’s great for customers too. They can buy at their convenience when they’re in the mood to buy, and if they need to change their day or timeslot, they can do it right within the app.

Streamline the line

While anticipation is a vital element of a spooky experience, long lines can stall the excitement. Mobile tickets can be scanned in a blink, whether they’re on a phone, a print-out, or even a smartwatch. If tickets were bought in a group, your gate staff can scan part or all of the group in with just one scan.

Hype up your haunted house

With SimpleTix,  you can dig into the analytics of your ticket purchasers and send them waivers, promo codes, and survey questions from inside your ticketing platform. You can also keep them informed about things like parking, weather updates, and other information.

an eventbrite alternative.

Early Bird Tickets and Instant Payouts

Haunted Houses tend to see a large volume of early bird tickets. SimpleTix, unlike other Eventbrite alternatives, will pay those purchases out instantly. With this instant remuneration feature, event organizers have cash in hand to pivot to other expenses associated with the Haunted House. This financial flexibility is a great value add for the event planner and reduces the hassle of dealing with banks or other lending institutions.

Maybe you would like to leverage this financial flexibility for more marketing and advertising campaigns? Paying upfront for those aforementioned web-based services will give you a better idea of where you stand in your P&L books before the start date of the event rolls around.

Or perhaps you could start making your merch purchases? Concessions, t-shirts, hats, other apparel, art, and take-home trinkets can all be sold and purchased through your ticketing application. This saves you time and hassle by not having to administer multiple, redundant systems during your haunted house event, and your event staff will not have to be trained on different systems. The final result is a happier customer presented with more opportunities to spend money on your platform.

All of these optimizations are easily rolled into one ticketing solution. The Haunted Field of Screams is a Colorado-based Haunted House that leveraged the SimpleTix platform as an Eventbrite alternative for festival ticketing. With a scary carnival, a haunted corn maze, and a paintball battle with rotting zombies, this festival had several different activities wrapped up in their ticketing platform.

With over 20,000 attendees, they found SimpleTix to be flexible to their needs and robust enough to handle that high volume of sales. Like any other SimpleTix event, the organizers were able to use the platform to track sales and contact ticket purchasers with event details. The platform’s integration with Square technology allowed for on-site, day-of-event ticket sales.

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 at support@simpletix.com.

Latest News

Related Articles

A spooky looking haunted house for all the tips we have about planning your event, including an eventbrite alternative.
Editors pick

Eventbrite Pricing 2026: Fees, Refunds & What’s Actually Changed

  • Vikram Bodas
    by Vikram Bodas • July 8, 2026

Eventbrite pricing 2026 is a lot for event organizers to sort through. There are longstanding policies that quietly cost paid-event operators real money, and there is genuine news under new ownership. This guide covers what the fees actually cost you today, what actually changed under the Bending Spoons acquisition, and how the alternatives compare on real numbers. Below is the honest breakdown, sourced to Eventbrite's own pricing page and SEC filings. Eventbrite pricing 2026: current fee structure As of 2026, Eventbrite charges 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket for the service fee, plus 2.9% for payment processing. In-person sales carry a $1 + 2.9% fee. There is no per-ticket fee cap. For a quick benchmark of total organizer-side fees: On a $25 ticket, fees total about $3.44 (13.8%) On a $50 ticket, fees total about $5.09 (10.2%) On a $100 ticket, fees total about $8.39 (8.4%) On a $500 ticket, fees total about $34.79 (7.0%) On a $1,000 ticket, fees total about $67.79 (6.8%) The fees scale with ticket price with no ceiling. That is the story for anyone selling premium tickets, season passes, VIP tiers, or corporate packages. Eventbrite pricing 2026: no per-ticket fee cap Eventbrite does not cap total ticket fees. This has been true since 2018, when Eventbrite removed the previous cap during its IPO. For most organizers selling everyday tickets ($20 to $50), the absence of a cap rarely comes up in the math. But for organizers selling premium tickets, the uncapped structure translates into real per-event cost. Take a conference selling three ticket tiers on Eventbrite: $150 general admission: fee about $12.34 (8.2%) $400 VIP ticket: fee about $27.09 (6.8%) $800 sponsor ticket: fee about $50.90 (6.4%) For a 200-person conference with a mix of GA and VIP tickets, that translates into hundreds of dollars...

A spooky looking haunted house for all the tips we have about planning your event, including an eventbrite alternative.
Editors pick

Haunted House Ticketing Software: Timed Entry, Scanning & Capacity Control for 2026

  • Vikram Bodas
    by Vikram Bodas • July 8, 2026

If you run a haunted attraction, October is your Super Bowl. So how you sell tickets from June through September decides how the whole season goes. This guide covers what haunted house ticketing software actually needs to do in 2026, how to pick one, and what SimpleTix costs for haunts of any size. What haunted house ticketing software needs to do Selling haunted house tickets is not like selling concert tickets. First, capacity is measured in throughput per hour, not in seats. Second, weather can shut you down without warning. Third, most of your revenue happens across three or four weekends. And fourth, your staff is often in costume at 9pm in a field with spotty cell service. So the ticketing software has to handle all of that. Here is the checklist most haunt operators use: Timed entry with per-slot capacity control so lines stay manageable Fast scanning at the gate, including offline mode for outdoor venues Re-entry passes for multi-attraction ticketing Add-ons for photos, upcharges, VIP fast-pass Group and family bundles so a family of five is one checkout, not five Waitlists for when peak-hour slots sell out Attendee wallet passes so guests are not fumbling for paper Same-day or fast payouts during the season crunch If your current tool cannot do all of that, it is worth switching now. The last thing you want is to be debugging your ticketing at 8pm on the first weekend of October. How does timed entry work for haunted houses? Timed entry lets you release a fixed number of tickets per time slot (typically every 15 or 30 minutes) so guests arrive in waves instead of a single 7pm crush. For a walkthrough haunt with a 45-minute experience, that usually means 20 to 40 guests per 15-minute window. So over a four-hour...

A spooky looking haunted house for all the tips we have about planning your event, including an eventbrite alternative.
Eventbrite Alternative

Partiful Just Launched Ticketing: What Event Organizers Need to Know

  • Vikram Bodas
    by Vikram Bodas • June 5, 2026

Partiful just launched ticketing. As of June 2, 2026, hosts can now sell tickets directly inside the Partiful app on iOS, Android, and web. Initially, the feature is rolling out to U.S. hosts. Then broader availability is planned in the coming months. If you have run events before, you probably already know Partiful. It is the social-first invitation platform with millions of monthly active users. Until now, every paid event on Partiful had to push guests off-platform to actually buy a ticket. So this launch closes that gap. But here is the question every event organizer needs to ask. Is Partiful's new ticketing the right platform for your event? Or is it built for a different kind of host? Below is the honest breakdown. What Partiful Ticketing actually does Partiful's launch covers the basics every casual social host needs: Ticket tiers with multiple pricing levels Capacity limits to cap attendance Promo codes for special guest pricing QR code check-in at the door SMS notifications to attendees Staff permissions so bouncers or co-hosts can check guests in Sales tracking for real-time payouts and attendance Also, payment processing runs through Stripe. Then payouts are available roughly three days after the event ends. Meanwhile, free tickets carry no fees. Paid ticket fees scale with event size and ticket price. So Partiful shows hosts the exact fee during setup, and hosts can pass it on or absorb it. CEO Shreya Murthy framed the launch this way: "Ticketing has always lived outside the social experience of an event — you buy a ticket somewhere else, then figure out who's going. We think that's backwards." So if your event lives or dies on word of mouth and the "who else is going" dynamic, Partiful's pitch is real. The platform is built around social discovery, dynamic invites,...

Sell More Tickets—More Easily

Attractions, seasonal events, performing arts centers and festivals love SimpleTix because it makes selling tickets… Simple!

GET STARTED FOR FREE