Everything about Eventbrite is friendly, reassuring and clean. With its cheerful orange buttons and instant accessibility, setting up my event page was fun and satisfying. It took me just 45 minutes to produce a very smart registration form complete with a google map and social media buttons for sharing my events.
One of the great features of Eventbrite is that you can get started right away, you don’t have to talk to a sales agent or put in your credit card details you just enter your email address and go. The set-up process is simple and options like taxes, deadlines, vouchers and setting number limits are provided without being overwhelming.
If you are organizing an event with a fairly simple registration process then you’ll need to look a long way to find anything better than Eventbrite. They have nailed it in terms of being modern, simple and functional. However, Eventbrite is limited if you need to do more than just sell tickets – for example you want people to register for meals, workshops, collect travel information or book someone into a round of golf. If you are orgnanizing a conference or expo, then Eventbrite is probably not going to work for you.
As far as how your registration form looks, you have a fair amount of freedom to customize the colours, logos and graphics. Alternatively, you can embed your form in your own website or blog by grabbing the HTML code. However, no matter what you do, you can’t avoid the persistent Eventbrite logo which appears not once – but twice – on your registration form. Eventbrite’s shameless self-promotion is, perhaps, the most annoying aspect of their system. From the registration form itself, to the confirmation emails and printable tickets, your attendees can’t avoid being blasted with Eventbrite promo material.
Eventbrite has lots of great add-ons, such as mobile applications and a check-in service. They have released a developer toolkit, which means we can expect Eventbrite to keep on evolving and providing additional services in the future.
The social media integration is very nice. For example, after I registered for the event I was encouraged in big, bold letters to ‘share this event with my Facebook friends.’
Overall, Eventbrite is very impressive. They have done a great job of making online registration easy.
Pricing
Eventbrite is not the cheapest system on the market, but at 0.99c + 5.5% the pricing is attractive and you get great bang-for your buck. However, if your ticket price is in the hundreds of dollars or you are expecting hundreds of attendees be sure to do the math because at this level Eventbrite can get to be expensive.
For online payment processing you can either use Eventbrite’s merchant account or Paypal. The first option will provide a seamless experience for your users but you won’t see any of your money until a week after your event is over. If you use Paypal then the fees drop to 0.99c + 2.5%. However, once you factor in Paypal’s cut then the savings don’t amount to much and the experience is not quite as nice for your attendees. However, you do get the big advantage with Paypal that your money comes directly to you with no delay.
Summary:
Ease of use: 5 star
Registration options: 3 stars
Add-ons: 5 star
Price: 4 star
Website: www.eventbrite.com
Summary: An easy to use, attractive and convenient registration service with great add-ons including social media integration and mobile apps. Highly recommended for any type of one-day event (e.g. a gala dinner, one-day workshop, concert or fundraiser) but does not have the functionality for more sophisticated conferences.