How to choose ticketing software: eight questions

You have three tabs open with ticketing software, and each one shows roughly the same list: online sales, QR codes, scanning at the door, a dashboard. So which ticketing system do you choose? These tips will help. The differences rarely sit in the feature list. They sit in eight questions you ask every provider, and whose answers you can check yourself.

Take a community band that runs four events a year as an example: a concert, two dinner evenings and a quiz night, each with around two hundred paid tickets at 12 euros. That makes eight hundred tickets a year.

1. What does it cost over your year?

Don't work out an offer on the example in the brochure, but on your own numbers. Take a made-up platform that charges 3 percent plus 50 cents per ticket. On a 12-euro ticket that is 86 cents, and on eight hundred tickets 688 euros a year.

Put a fixed amount next to it. With Passavo, the Start plan costs €90.00 a year, for up to 3,000 paid tickets. How to work out the break-even point between a subscription and a commission is explained in Subscription or commission for tickets.

2. Where does your visitor's money end up?

Some platforms collect payments into their own account and pay you out later, sometimes only after the event. Others send the money straight to your account. Ask, and also ask what happens if your event is cancelled.

With Passavo you connect your own account with Mollie, Stripe or Bancontact Pro. The money goes straight to you and we keep none of it. How that works is described in Payout and costs.

3. Does your visitor pay anything on top of your price?

A platform that is "free for organisers" often charges the buyer a service fee. Your poster says 12 euros and your visitor pays more at checkout. Check the last step of the order, not the first. Why that costs you sales is explained in Passing the booking fee on to the buyer.

4. Does door scanning work without a network?

A church hall or a sports hall with weak Wi-Fi is the rule rather than the exception. Ask whether the scanning app keeps working when the network drops, and whether you notice when someone presents the same ticket twice. How we handle it is described in Scan tickets at the door, even without a network.

5. Do the web shop and the door sell from the same stock?

On the night itself, people without a ticket always turn up. If the till at the door works from a separate list, sooner or later you sell the same seat twice. With Passavo the counter point of sale sells from the same stock as the web shop, from the Start plan.

6. Whose name are you selling under?

Does the ticket shop mostly show the provider's logo, or your organisation's? Can the shop sit on your own website, or on your own domain? With Passavo you choose your own colours and logo from Start, and from Growth you sell on your own domain.

7. How long are you tied in, and do you get your data back?

A three-year contract is a long time if it turns out not to work. Ask about the term, the notice period and what you take with you when you leave. With Passavo you pay monthly and cancel whenever you like, with no notice period. You export your orders, tickets and visitors yourself as CSV, see Exporting your data.

8. Can you try it without paying?

A demo where a salesperson does the clicking tells you little. What you want is to create an event yourself, buy a ticket and scan it. On the free plan of Passavo you can do that without card details: free events are unlimited, and you sell up to 100 paid tickets per event.

How to test it in one afternoon

1. Create an account and put a free test event online.
2. Register yourself from your phone and open the ticket in your wallet.
3. Turn off the Wi-Fi on a second device and scan your ticket.
4. Connect your payment provider and make a test payment.
5. Put the figure for your own year next to the plans on our pricing page.

Want to see the fees of existing platforms side by side, with the source and the date we checked them? You'll find them in our comparisons. A short explanation of the terms is in ticketing software.