The World of Ticketing Options
We're in the midst of researching options for ticketing software for a big training for arts organizations. It's a complicated area, with the potential of a lot of advanced requirements. You don't need to be a very large arts venue to want to be able to sell tickets to reserved seats both through a box office and online. And pretty much any venue would want to be able to integrate data about patrons who have bought tickets with a fundraising process, to consider them as donors. But when you put these two together, it makes for a complex, and often expensive system.
General Admissions Ticketing
At the lowest end of the spectrum, there's general admission seating solutions. You can use the same vendors in this area as you would use for paid event registration -- as for registering for a workshop or a class. Vendors in this space, like EventBrite or BrownPaperTickets (or see our Few Good Event Registration Tools for a broader overview) allow you to sell tickets online, including different levels of tickets to the same event (like VIP or mezzanine tickets). BrownPaperTickets is particularly compelling in this area, as they'll send your patrons actual paper tickets via mail, if desired.
Box office staff could certainly buy tickets for patrons that call in via the same interface, but there's no particular support for this, so it may be awkward. These tools don't offer anything in the way of fundraising support, so you'll have to integrate the data to with another system to do most any donation solicitiation. You can export a file to import into any donor management system, or EventBrite or BrownPaperTickets both integrate with Salesforce.
Stand-Alone Solutions for Reserved Seats
If you just need to sell reserved seats for your venue, and it's not critical to you to easily pull your event patrons into your fundraising process, there's a lot of small online software that will allow you to easily sell tickets. These websites -- like Tix.com, TixHub, TicketTurtle.com, and Vendini --- allow you to sell tickets, often including box office functionality to print tickets to box office printers. BrownPaperTickets has also recently added reserved seating functionality. In a similar vein, New Concept Software's Tick-It! Trak Pro and Center Stage Software's WinTix/WebTix provide both installed box office software and online solutions.
None of these systems will support any kind of robust fundraising, however, such as tracking pledges or gifts in kind.
Integrated Constituent Tracking and Ticketing Solutions
Even for a small organization, it can be very useful to have a single system that allows you to track not just tickets but also a full fundraising process -- from pledges to gift-in-kind to major donor cultivation processes. Easy-Ware's TotalInfo and Arts Management Systems' Theatre Manager are both interesting options in this realm, tailored for nonprofits. They provide affordable software which is installed on your own computer, with integrated online ticketing functionality.
Patron Technologies, best known for the broadcast email tool PatronMail, has just introduced a new system called PatronManager which is built on top of the Salesforce platform to include reserved seating ticketing and box-office functionality. It’s an interesting option especially for small to medium sized organizations who have a number of constituents to track in addition to their patrons.
For medium sized and larger organizations, Choice Ticketing Systems and AudienceView Ticketing provide more sophisticated functionality. Neither of these tools specializes in donor management, but each provides some constituent tracking functionality as well as the ability to take and track donations. Paciolan, recently acquired by Comcast, provides ticketing and fundraising functionality for larger organizations. Blackbaud’s The Patron Edge also provides box office functionality, with some ability to integrate into The Raisers Edge.
Last but certainly not least, Tessitura is the Cadillac of the arts management world. It's very well respected for highly usable functionality that truly integrates complex box office, online ticketing, and fundraising and more. It's a complex system that's much more appropriate for organizations with multi-million dollar budgets than for small ones -- it requires considerable customization, training, and staff time to use.
Solutions Specializing in Commercial Venues
If you have complex box office needs but don't need a lot of fundraising functionality, you may find that the ticketing systems used primarily by stadiums and commercial venues work well for your needs. These systems -- like ProVenue by Tickets.com, Ticketmaster Classic or Ticketmaster Archtics -- don't tend to have much sophisticated functionality to track donor interactions, pledges, or a donation made with an event payment, but instead focus on complex online and offline box office functionality needed by venue.
What Else?
We’re still in the midst of researching, so your comments would be very helpful. Know the ticketing space? Who have we missed? What did we get wrong? (Please note that this isn’t intended to be a comprehensive list of EVERY ticketing option, just an overview of some of the most widely used).
By the way, if you’re interested in ticketing, check out Technology In The Arts’ 2009 Ticketing Software Satisfaction Survey, for a useful look at what’s important to organizations and system usage, divided by size of organization.
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Comments
Ticketing option that waives cancer related events
Great article! The online ticketing industry is turning into a crowded market so its nice to see all of the pros and cons from different ticketing solutions. Just to add another ticketing option into the mix, Ticketbud (ticketbud.com) is geared towards non-profits and charitable organizations. They have an upfront flat rate and waive all setup fees for any cancer related event. Their pricing isn't on a per ticket basis which is nice.
Ticket Tailor: A Ticketing System with No Per Ticket Fees
Ticket Tailor (http://www.tickettailor.com) is a hosted ticketing platform for promoters and venues to sell tickets online without paying any per-ticket fees – we allow you to set and keep your own if you wish. This means you can sell as many tickets as you like and only pay one small subscription price.
With Facebook & Website integration, options to reserve seating and real time order tracking, Ticket Tailor frees you from the hard work of collating customer data in way that no other ticketing service offers.
Packages start from £9/month with no hidden or extra costs. You can also upgrade and downgrade to suit your usage – perfect for events which happen a few times a year. Follow on twitter: @tickettailor, find on facebook or email Ticket Tailor at info@tickettailor.com.
Another integrated Ticketing and donor managment system
www.FundRaiserSoftware.com integrates with with Wintix, Tixsales, and Webtix from www.CenterStage.com. The integration software automatically updates in two directions, from FundRaiser to Wintix, and from Wintix to FundRaiser.
Ticket Turtle - Software for the Performing Arts
Built specifically for the Arts community by experienced arts professionals, Ticket Turtle is the leading choice for integrated performing arts management solutions by organizations across the US and Canada.
Functionality for Ticketing, Fundraising, Marketing, Mailing List Management, Retail Sales, Class Enrollments, Volunteer Management and more is included in a unified, easy-to-use, database driven solution that is affordable to nonprofits of all sizes.
And because our software is cloud based, there is no expensive server hardware to buy and maintain. Your staff and volunteers can access the system remotely anytime from any location with a computer and internet connection.
To learn more about how Ticket Turtle’s software and services can help your arts organization reduce costs, grow your audience, increase contributions, and streamline your operations, visit us online at http://www.ticketturtle.com. Or call 1-866-788-7853 x5 to speak with one of our arts-based solutions consultants today.
We look forward to learning more about your organization’s mission and consulting with you about how Ticket Turtle may be able to help.
Marc Ross
Director of Sales
Ticket Turtle - Software for the Performing Arts
1.866.788.7853 ext. 130
marc@ticketturtle.com
www.ticketturtle.com
Reserved seating
An option for reserved seating events is TicketPeak. Patrons can view seating maps, and select their own seats.
Best Charity Event Ticketing = CharityHappenings Ticketing
We've looked at all the options and hands down the best online ticketing software for nonprofit events is CharityHappenings Ticketing. It's ticketing software that is exclusively for nonprofit events. They launched recently and their pages are exquisite and elegant, not these junky generic pages that are good for yoga classes. Set up is painless (their designers put it together for you for no cost) and the price is 25% less on the max fee than EB plus they offer no fee on donations. http://charityhappenings.org/ticketing
TicketLeap offers free ticketing for smaller events
TicketLeap is another great ticketing option for non profit event organizers. We just launched a brand new ticketing platform that features social media integration, event page customization and in-depth reporting unlike any system out on the market. Better yet, we are free for smaller events. We're dedicated to small and growing events, so we are offering our services free of ticketing fees to events that sell less than 100 tickets a month. You can learn more at http://www.ticketleap.com/info/free/.
Tick-It! Trak Pro 3.0
The Newest Version of Tick-It! Trak Pro, offers Fundraising and Food/Concession Sales. Fundraising allows you to track donations made in-house as well as online, offering many different types of donations, including pledges or gifts in kind. Also Trak Pro allows you to host your own website on your own computers saving over a hosted solution.
General Admission
For general admission ticketing and online event registration there is also www.eventarc.com.
Another Online Ticketing & Donation Option
ThunderTix is also in the event management and ticketing space for small venues and non-profits. We follow the subscription model that imposes no ticket fees on venues or their customers, yet allows you the opportunity to create a new revenue stream by adding fees to your ticket prices. We accept patron donations as a part of the event checkout process. As a low cost alternative to some of the higher priced, fee per-ticket models, ThunderTix is especially appealing to non-profits and community theaters.
Our Experience
We are implementing Salesforce.com with EventBrite integration and a barcode scanner for a small theater in Memphis. I would be happy to share the process with you.
Tal
Salesforce with EventBrite
Tal: I would love to know how the process goes. We are a classical music festival. We dont have subscriptions, but do have reserved seats in multiple venues. I am looking at switching from Raisers Edge to Salesforce, but would like an integrated ticketing system as well. We use Ty-tix and we are looking to change that. Thanks everyone for great information.