In recent years, event management websites have made it very easy to plan events and manage bookings online, regardless of whether you are a large organisation, small business or sole trader.

With so many options out there for people to choose from, which platform should you use to manage your event? Here at Consortium, we use two different platforms – Eventbrite and Get Invited –  depending on the type of event that we are hosting.

Both platforms have a variety of pros and cons, which we will explore in this blog.

Price

The cost per ticket varies between the two platforms. Eventbrite charges £0.49 + 5.5% per ticket, meaning for a £10 ticket they would add £1.07*.

On the other hand, Get Invited charges 2% + 50p, so a for a £10 ticket they would add 70p*. Therefore, when using Get Invited the ticket price will be cheaper.

* Prices correct at time of writing on 6th June 2019

Payment Process via own system

When managing bookings for events you want it to be straightforward and easy to use when accessing payments. When managing events, details often change and people cancel. When this happens, you need to authorise a refund, and being able to access this information quickly is vital as it can be time consuming.

Eventbrite has its own payment processing system that sends the funds directly to your account, whereas Get Invited has a third-party payment platform called Stripe, which is easy to use but can take time having to go onto a different site, log in and then find what you need.

Ticket sales widget

When people are purchasing a ticket, they want it to be quick and easy, and more than likely they will be on your website looking for events that your business is running.

Being able to purchase tickets for an event without leaving your website helps to speed up the process, and will encourage more traffic to visit your website. Both Eventbrite and Get Invited provide the capability to have a ticket sales widget for your event on your website.

Customisable checkout forms

Sometimes you will need to know things about attendees depending on what the event is, such as special dietary requirements, business names and other details.

Eventbrite and Get Invited both provide the ability to have customised questions on order forms, however Eventbrite provides a lot more versatility with the ability to have ‘optional’ questions that are dependant on attendees’ answers to other questions. This is particularly useful when an order form has a checklist of pre-set options, with an ‘Other’ option at the end, which auto-generates a ‘please specify’ field when selected.

Pay-outs before your event

Getting the pay-out is very important when running an event as you may need to pay for the catering, marketing and other expenses.

Eventbrite’s default payment schedule is to send a single pay-out 5 days after your event, however using their Professional and Premium packages, you can apply to receive payouts before your events take place by requesting scheduled pay-outs.

Eventbrite just needs a few additional details to identify you, and if approved, the pay-out schedule you choose will apply to all the events in your account.

Get Invited transfers the money every 7 days, and this can be useful depending on your situation since it provides a steady income.

Public listing on site and partner sites (with option of Private events)

People sometimes search for events via the booking system. Eventbrite allows you to search for events that are close to you and filter them down to your needs. This is great because when an event is created it will go on the public listing and be visible to people searching for events, which is a great perk! Get Invited has a public listing but does not appear on other pages.

Online help Centre

There is nothing worse than using a system, coming across an issue and not knowing how to resolve it! Luckily both Eventbrite and Get Invited have online help centres, and Eventbrite has an extensive Help Centre which provides answers to frequently asked questions.

Sales Analytics

Within marketing it is always great to track what is actually going on through analytics so you can learn particular trends, advantages and disadvantages. Being able to track sales, such as where they are coming from, the peak times that people book, and more.

This information is great to know as you can use it to your business advantage. Get Invited does have some analytics although they are not particularly detailed, whereas Eventbrite has the advantage of being able to look into the analytics deeper and get valuable information.

Collecting information about every attendee

When I have run events previously it is always good when attendees tell you additional information, such as whether they are bringing an additional guest.

Through using Get Invited you are able to write additional questions for attendees to answer, for example business names, however it does not collect the attendees email address or additional guests who are part of the single booking.

This can be frustrating as attendees will book themselves on twice and you’ll have to contact them to let them know they have booked twice which can be confusing, a waste of time and possibly irritating to the attendee. On the other hand, Eventbrite has the ability to collect email addresses for all attendees, rather than just those who purchase the ticket.

Customisable order confirmation email

After booking onto an event it is very reassuring to receive a confirmation email, so you know everything has gone through and the transaction has been successful. Both Eventbrite and Get Invited have this function.

Discounts and codes capability for tickets

A great way to encourage people to book onto your event is by applying discounts and codes for tickets – everyone loves a good discount!

This is especially great when you create and upload your event early, so that even though people will see that the event is not taking place for a few months, they will not want to miss out on the early bird ticket as it is cheaper. Both Eventbrite and Get Invited enable discounts to be applied to tickets.

Sync Capability with Mailchimp

For those who don’t know, Mailchimp is an online email marketing platform which many businesses use send out emails to clients and customers.

Get Invited has the ability to automatically synchronise the emails of people who have purchased tickets to a particular audience on Mailchimp, which helps to save time by automating your data collection from events.

Similarly, Eventbrite also has the ability to synchronise with Mailchimp and is able to auto-generate invitations based on an event, which may be a preferred option for people who would like to apply more automation to their email invites.

Unlimited ticket types/multiple dates enabled

On Eventbrite you can have free tickets, paid tickets or ‘donation’ tickets. Donation tickets are really useful when you are running a charity event because the money goes straight to the charity and Eventbrite doesn’t charge fees. You can also have as many different ‘types’ of ticket as you like. This is useful when booking more than one person at a time or a group of people (for example Eventbrite enables you to create tickets ‘Per person’ or ‘Per group’). On the other hand, Get Invited will only allow you to purchase a single type of ticket, which can be frustrating for those who would find it useful to have more ticket types.

In-house email invite capability

If you do not wish to use an email marketing platform such as Mailchimp, it can be difficult to promote the event through invites, unless you manually email them out.

On Eventbrite you can upload email contacts and then send out invites using Eventbrite’s own in-house email marketing platform, similar to Mailchimp, although the emails are auto generated and therefore aren’t as customisable.

Get Invited does not have its own email marketing platform, however Mailchimp does offer more features than Eventbrite for email invites, so it depends on your own personal needs and preferences.

Multiple website integrations/widgets (such as Event Calendar hosting on website, Buttons etc) –

On Eventbrite you can connect different website and apps, such as Mailchimp, SurveyMonkey, Facebook/Instagram Ads, which can then be used to automatically send information about the event to social media platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram ads. This could be a great way to promote your event depending on what platforms your target audience uses.

Similarly, after the event you will want to get feedback from the attendees and what better way than sending them a SurveyMonkey link through Eventbrite. By contrast, Get Invited only connects with Mailchimp and a couple of other sites.

Custom Link tracking

Creating customised ‘promotional tracking links’ will enable you to record how many people have clicked links to the event that you have sent out. For example, if you send an email to a list of contacts – you can then see on Eventbrite how many people clicked the link that you sent them. Whereas with Get Invited you can’t customise links.

In conclusion

To sum up, both Eventbrite and Get Invited are very easy and simple to use and they both enable different functions, however Eventbrite is undeniably more useful than Get Invited!

I think that both are great to use depending on what you need them for – if you would like to just simply create an event, then Get Invited could be the one for you since their fees are lower than Eventbrite’s.

On the other hand, if you are willing to invest a bit more money or have a free event (since neither Eventbrite nor Get Invited charge for free events), then Eventbrite would be better. It is unlikely that you will use all of the features it offers, however overall it definitely does provide more value for those who wish to organise and sell tickets for events online.

If you require any assistance with organising and promoting your event please contact Consortium at 01903 530787.

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