Online ticketing is clearly an important question for all of us that comes up often. Maybe there is a way to combine all the threads that have dealt with this into a FAQ? Or, perhaps there might be a way to create an info sheet that compares all the choices.
The cost savings of online ticketing are substantial. We used to pay about $350 to print a show set of tickets to sell. Now all the cost of online are covered by purchaser fees. Everyone accepts this as a way of life in 2015. Our ticket prices are just $5 student/$10 adult. AMC theaters is charging $12 or more for a movie.
Once I switched to online, I never looked back. We hardly run a physical box office any longer. I put the online site up at least a month earlier than we could run a box office in the past. I leave the online site up until show time, so if someone arrives and finds a line at the theater, they can use a phone to buy tickets and send them to an ap - without dealing with the box office at all.
For the record I used showtix4u and then switched to vendini.
Brownbag was another choice I remember researching.
Showtix was fine and simple to use. Vending is just more robust a system with real-time door checking and better reports. People can use their phones for the tickets, and you can use an iPod touch as a door scanner.
I did not have time to look in all the other choices we have heard about here. I expect that if something were going wrong with any of them, we would hear about it.
John
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John Hauer
Hillsborough CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-07-2015 10:32
From: John Plough
Subject: Online Ticketing
We are staging our high school production off-site next month, and the venue has been having difficulty with their ticketing system.
Has anyone had success with any online ticketing systems that were cost-effective and easy to use?
Thanks!
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John Plough
Rome GA
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