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Ticketing software vs a ticket marketplace: which fits?
Ticketing software or a ticket marketplace? What each one gives you, what you give up, and the numbers for a theatre group playing three nights.
· 4 min read
You want to sell your tickets online and you come across two kinds of providers. One puts your event on a big site among hundreds of others, where people browse and buy. The other gives you software to sell yourself, on your own page and under your own name. Both are called a "ticketing platform", but they work completely differently. Ticketing software or a marketplace: which one fits your event?
What is the difference?
A marketplace is someone else's shop. Your event gets a listing, the buyer creates an account on that site, pays there and receives a ticket with their name on it. The marketplace earns on every ticket sold, usually through a percentage or a fixed amount per ticket, often added on top of your price as a service fee.
Ticketing software is a shop of your own. You set up your events, share the link through your own channels, and the buyer pays you. The software costs a fixed amount, or nothing for small numbers, and the buyer only sees your name and your price.
What does a marketplace give you?
Mainly one thing: an audience that doesn't know you yet. Someone with nothing planned on a Saturday night, scrolling through a big events listing, might stumble on yours. For a new festival without a mailing list, or an attraction that lives on tourists, that reach can be worth real money.
What do you give up in return?
- A cut of every ticket. Including the tickets you sold yourself, because most buyers find you through your poster, your newsletter or your Facebook page, and only then click through to the marketplace.
- The relationship with your buyer. They become the marketplace's customer. Whether you get their email address for next year is up to the platform.
- Attention at the moment of payment. Next to your event sit other events, sometimes on the same night, a few miles away.
- Your own face. The buyer remembers the name of the site, not the name of your group.
A worked example: the theatre group with three nights
An amateur theatre group plays three nights of 150 seats each, at 12 euros a ticket. That's 450 tickets. Almost everyone comes through the members, the newsletter and the posters around town: say 400 out of 450.
Take a made-up marketplace that charges 1 euro per ticket. That's 450 euros per production, 400 of which is on tickets you sold yourself. So the marketplace brought you 50 new audience members, at 9 euros a head.
With ticketing software from Passavo, there's no charge per ticket. With 150 seats a night you're above the 100 paid tickets per event of the free plan, so you'd look at Start: €90.00 a year, for all of that year's productions together. Whether that works out cheaper for you takes one step to calculate in Subscription or commission.
And those 50 new faces? You can also find them with a poster at the bakery, a post in the local Facebook group or a discount code for a friendly club.
When should you choose which?
A marketplace fits when:
- your audience doesn't know you yet and you have no channels of your own;
- you're organising something once and never again;
- the commission costs you less than what you'd spend on promotion yourself.
Your own ticketing software fits when:
- your audience is mostly regulars, members and neighbours;
- you sell again every year or every season;
- you want to be able to reach your buyers for the next edition;
- you want your visitor to pay the price that's on your poster.
What you keep in your hands with your own software
With Passavo, your shop sits on its own link, which you share wherever you like or embed in your own website. From Start it carries your logo and your colour; from Growth it can live on your own domain, such as tickets.yourgroup.org.
The money goes through your own account with your payment provider straight to you; we take nothing from it. And your buyers stay yours: on every plan, including the free one, you can export your orders and customers as CSV, including who wants to receive your newsletter.
Combining both
If you run a venue that lives on tourists, such as a museum or a guided tour, you don't have to choose. Your own shop stays the base, and from Growth GetYourGuide, Tiqets or Viator can sell alongside it as resellers, on the same capacity. Their visitor gets a regular QR code from you and scans at the same entrance. How that works is explained in selling through travel platforms.
Still weighing up providers? The eight questions for choosing ticketing software will help. What each plan costs and what's included is on the pricing page.
