I recently wrote a blog post about what to consider when choosing betwen partnering with a ticketing platform and building your own using woocommerce.
I wrote this article as I deliberated over the right solution for an upcoming project I’m involved with, The Great Lace
The Great Lace is a networking retreat for collectors, creators, distributors, and enthusiasts of a global alternative fashion subulture that began in Japan in the 80s . The venue we are working with is the oldest continually operating hotel in north america, an architechtural marvel, and the birthplace of the brownie. Yes, the brownie.
I’m excited to be a part of the team launching this project.
My primary role in this project is the implementation of technology to manage event planning data
Choosing which ticketing platform was not a decision I could have taken lightly. I worked as a technical project manager for Leap Events Technology and led major SDLC for projects like Ticketleap and Growtix.
Here are the primary reasons we chose regfox
With an absolute max capacity of 400 people, this intimate event is too small to be a good fit for growtix
Ticketleap fastpay will pay up to $25,000 of ticket funds in advance of the event. We are not an enterprise event, 100% of the funds for this event will come from our ticket buyers. Our venue, our caterers, our guest fees, and our guest transportation need to be paid upfront. $25,000 may be enough for some event planners but it doesn’t cover our upfront expenses. We’re too small to not rely on this money and we’re too big for 25k to be enough.
This is becoming really common in the ticketing industry especially since covid, many ticketing providers will not give you access to 100% of your funds in advance of the event.
Regfox stands out for this reason, they do not hold onto funds until after the event.
I considered woocommerce due to the size of the event, we have a relatively small amount of attendees to manage and they could easily be contained within a single spreadsheet.
This make or buy analysis ultimately led me to the decision: buy. We could have saved a little bit of money using woocommerce, but the benefits of using existing software are just too great. Buy ticketing software, it’s worth the hassle.
Regfox also has flexible payment plans for attendees. Running an intimate sized event in a luxury venue is reflected in the price of our tickets, and reducing the financial burden on our attendees by allowing them to place a 50% deposit on a ticket was attractive to us and it balanced our need for committment and buy in with a flexible financial arrangement that benefitted our attendees.
There are a lot of things I love about ticketleap and I’m proud of the work that I did there, but the financial decision that benefited us the most was clear here.
This is a start up event that will exist as a labor of love to a somewhat small community. We wanted to generate interest early, so we established a small number of heavily discounted tickets to go on sale on the day of our ticket launch to thank our earliest supporters.
What we did wrong: We added a last minute question the day before registration went live asking ticket buyers who purchased a ticket that included admission to the tea party if they had a nut allergy (the iconic palmer house brownie contains nuts)
We somehow accidentally made the question required without making it visible, preventing our first registrants from completing their checkout.
This mistake was exacerbated by the high demand for our early bird tickets. and VIP tickets. We fixed the issue within minutes of the first reports, but this meant that the exact time that the early bird tickets went on sale couldn’t have been predicted, and ticket buyers who weren’t among the first to snag an early bird tickets were both naturally disappointed and some blamed the delayed go-live for having missed out on the deal.
This quickly turned into “I survived the nut-pocalypse” jokes in our marketing discord channel. Most of the messages we received about the error were understandable and light hearted. Some were not.
What we could have done to prevent this:
We could have used regfox’s preview feature to test the full checkout flow before going live. This was a missed opportunity on our part. I actually really like the feature that allows you to go through checkout in preview mode and click the button and generate an email. Though regfox was fairly easy to set up, mistakes still get made and it was a mistake on our part to neglect the QA step.
In the moment, our instict was to correct the issue as quickly as possible. Now that I’ve had time to think about it and I’m not acting quickly in a panic, I would approach a similar dilemma differently next time. I think a better move in this case would have been to shut off ticket sales entirely, notify my customers via social media that the ticket sales launch will be delayed by 1 hr, and reset the countdown, giving all participants the same opportunity (or at least the same perceived opportunity) as everyone else to grab a coveted early bird or VIP spot.
Introduction
The Great Lace 2025 project represents a unique venture in the world of alternative fashion. This networking retreat is designed for a diverse community of collectors, creators, distributors, and enthusiasts of EGL Fashion, a style subculture that has its roots in 1980s Japan. The event will take place at Chicago’s Palmer House Hotel – North America's oldest continually operating hotel and the original birthplace of the brownie. (yes, the brownie!)
As part of the team, my role focuses on leveraging technology to streamline our event planning. A crucial aspect of this role was choosing an appropriate ticketing platform. With my background in technical project management and a rich history of navigating event technology challenges, I approached this decision with a keen awareness of its potential impact.
In this blog post, I'll discuss my experience in selecting Regfox. I'll outline the reasons behind our choice, the process we went through, and the lessons learned from this experience.