Selecting A Ticketing Provider For Your Shows

The three main ticketing providers that I looked at were:

1. Humanitix
2. Localtix (a subsidiary of Oztix)
3. TryBooking

These are the main ones that I've seen others use, and also had their pricing most freely available online without having to sign up for anything.

Humanitix
This platform is one of the most popular that I've seen for smaller organisers, up to those putting on several shows a year. Their ethos is pretty simple and obviously helps attract those who would like to be socially conscious in their efforts, as all the profits from fees collected through ticket sales are donated to charities helping disadvantaged children.

Localtix
Oztix has definitely been more popular with larger promoters/venues and have been the dominant ticket platform for the australian heavy, alternative and indie scenes for a couple decades. Localtix is subsidiary of theirs aimed at catching smaller promoters and venues again.

TryBooking
A slightly smaller australian company that at the moment seems to be used more for corporate style events, schools and charities rather than music events. (Though that's probably true of most of these by volume of events, I've just seen more people using Humanitix for their shows lately.)

---

SERVICES

All three platforms have pretty comparable features that they offer.

• Free sign up

• Free email to automatically send people the tickets they've ordered, and reminder emails before the event takes place.

• Access to some simple design software if you'd like to create a more dynamic landing page for your event or a flyer to promote it elsewhere.

• Promotion on their homepage as well as SEO tools to help people find your event when they search for it.

• Breakdowns of info about how your ticket sales are going, demographics of who's buying tickets so you can get some info on what might be working or not with promotion.

• An app to scan tickets for entry, and/or the ability to print off a list of names of ticket holders.

PRICING

Company	Handling Fee	Ticket Fee	Extra Fees
Humanitix	4%	$1	Excl. GST, so an extra 10%
Localtix	2%	Tickets under $50 = $1 fee	After 100 tickets scanned on host app, cost of 10c per ticket scanned
TryBooking	2.5%	50c (paid by purchaser by default)	-

---

BREAKDOWN

With Localtix having the same ticket fee as Humanitix and also imposing a fee for scanning over 100 tickets on their app, they got knocked out in the first round of comparisons.

If you'd like a simple plug and play ticketing platform that incorporates some social good in to the system, then Humanitix has built their whole business around that, and they are definitely used by quite a few people organising shows these days.

However, in considering all this and looking at the pricing break down, I think maybe I can take some inspiration from the wisest and kindest angels in our modern society: billionaire philanthopists.

(WARNING: This next section will contain some basic maths! And please do keep in mind, I haven't organised an event with Humanitix or TryBooking myself, so this is just me running some numbers off the information available on the pricing page of their websites.)

If I were to use Humanitix for the event and sell 100 tickets at $20 it would look something like this:

100 x $20 = $2,000
$2,000 - 4% = $1,920
$1,920 - $1 from each ticket = $1,820
$1,820 - 10% GST = $1,638

If I were to use TryBooking for the event and sell 100 tickets at $20 it would look something like this:

100 x $20 = $2,000
$2,000 - 2.5% = $1,950
By default the 50c ticket fee is paid by the purchaser, but if the organiser chooses to absorb that cost as well, then
$1,950 - $50 = $1,900
GST is already included.

So with TryBooking, I'd be anywhere from $80 - $312 better off than Humanitix in this breakdown, depending on whether my maths is any good and I've read the terms correctly.

Now this is where the influence of our societal angels come in! Much like our benevolent billionaires, I could choose which charities I would like to donate, or gift, a portion of the proceeds to, ensuring it stays within my local community, or goes to charities I align with - and on top of that, as it's now ME making a charitable donation, it can be used as a tax write off to reduce the taxable income of my operation! Bless those billionaires!

I could also communicate directly to ticket holders after the event to whom and how much was given as a result of their patronage, and hopefully help them feel good about attending future events I organise, knowing the impact it's having as well as a good time.

There's obviously myriad organisations that would benefit from consideration, and please remember that some of those may not be set up as charities, as the federal government is placing greater requirements and stipulations on organisations that are set up as charities around the use of donated funds. But hopefully you won't have to look too hard or far to find folks you'd be happy to help out.