I was asked this question on Quora.com recently. Here’s my reply, which I’ll post below.
I know two very well. Those are Event Smart and Eventbrite.
Event Smart, a company that I founded, offers online event ticketing (online ticket booking system), credit card payment capture, and attendance tracking for a monthly membership fee. Event Smart does not charge per ticket or credit card transaction fees (you bring your own payment processor). Event Smart doesn’t share your customer or attendee data with third-party advertisers, and data is automatically deleted after two years if the account is abandoned.
Eventbrite offers the same services as Event Smart, including quite a few extra niceties, but charges around $3 to $5 per ticket sold, plus payment transaction fees. Eventbrite doesn’t charge a fee for free events, but your customers are entered into the Eventbrite marketing lists in either case.
Bottom line, if you’re charging a high fee for tickets, then you’re better off going with Event Smart. However, if you’re giving away tickets and don’t mind your customer data shared with marketing agencies, Eventbrite is a great choice.
One other option I should mention is Event Espresso, which offers similar features to Event Smart but is built for self-hosted WordPress websites. If you are running a WordPress website, you don’t have to sign up for an online ticket booking system; you install the Event Espresso plugin onto your WordPress website and start creating events selling tickets. You will still need a credit card or payment processor such as Stripe or PayPal but you won’t be forced into monthly payments or high ticketing fees, as seen with many other companies.
What online ticket booking systems do you know about? What’s your experience with them?
