How to Avoid Eventbrite Fees

Most event management and ticketing platforms are not transparent about all the ticketing fees that they charge an event organizer to use their event management platform to sell tickets. Eventbrite pricing is no exception; they downplay their two types of fees: 1) service fee, and the 2) payment processing fee.

Eventbrite hypes how an event planner can sell tickets, which you could do with any other platform, but with Eventbrite you’ll pay higher fees than if you use an Eventbrite alternative like Event Smart.

Don’t be fooled by the lack of transparent pricing from Eventbrite.

Eventbrite also encourages you to pass on their fees to your attendees. If you sell tickets and pass on the Eventbrite service fee to your audience, you’re effectively making your tickets more expensive for attendees. People really do about ticket fees because it impacts how much tickets cost and how much they end up paying.

So, this article will help you better understand how with Event Smart you can avoid all of the Eventbrite service fees, and instead of waiting for Eventbrite to pay out after your event, you can connect your ticket sales to your own bank account with competitive rates and get paid directly.

Understanding Eventbrite’s fees will help you avoid paying extra fees and a better event registration process can help you have a more successful event.

How are Eventbrite Fees Calculated?

There are two types of fees for paid ticket sales: 1) service fees and, 2) payment processing fees.

I prefer to think of the service fee more as a commission fee that can be avoided by a smart event organizer.

Eventbrite Service Fees

What are Eventbrite Service Fees? – The service fee is the commission that Eventbrite charges you (or your attendees) to use their event management system. Depending on your ticket sale price, this fee ranges from 1-15%.

Currently, Eventbrite pricing has several packages that CHARGE YOU FOR EVERY TICKET YOU SELL FROM YOUR EVENT PAGE. The total amount of their service fee is based on the actual ticket price:

• Essential Package: 2% + $0.79 per ticket sale
• Professional Package: 3.5% + $1.59 per ticket sale

THE EVENTBRITE COMMISSION FEES DO NOT INCLUDE THE FEES THEY ALSO CHARGE FOR PAYMENT PROCESSING! You can avoid Eventbrite organizer fees when selling a paid ticket type! These fees do not apply for an event organiser if they are selling tickets to a free event or free ticket.

Payment Processing Fees

What are Eventbrite payment processing fees? – The payment processing fee is the cost for collecting money from an event attendee credit or debit card(s) or other forms of electronic transactions online. This transaction fee is normally 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction.

Accepting online payments from customers almost always requires a payment gateway and a merchant account. Payment gateways and merchant accounts are the computer systems that communicate between your event page, the event organizer‘s bank account, and the attendee’s bank account to process and transfer money securely between all the parties involved.

For those really interested in the processing payments online, we cover what are payment gateways and merchant accounts in more detail in our support documentation.

Example of All of Eventbrite’s Fees

How much does it cost to use Eventbrite? Here is a simple ticket fee calculation of Eventbrite fees (service + payment processing) compared to Event Smart. We will use an example of selling 100 tickets for $100 each.

Eventbrite Online Event Ticketing:

Eventbrite charges fees for each ticket you sell plus payment processing fees, based on the package you choose.

Essential Package:

• Eventbrite Service Fees (2% + $0.79 per ticket): (100*$100)*.02+(100*$0.79) = $279
• Payment Processing Fees (2.5%-3.2%): 100*$100*0.025= $250-$320
• Total Fees for Essential Package: $529-$599

Professional Package:

• Eventbrite Commission Fees: (100*$100)*.035+(100*$1.59) = $509
• Payment Processing Fees (2.5%-3.2%): 100*$100*.025= $250-$320
• Total Fees for Essential Package: $759-$829

In this example of a general admission ticket, we will show how you could save 100% of the Eventbrite service fees, or save $279-$509 if you used the Event Smart platform instead of the Eventbrite platform.

If that isn’t clear how much you You can use our Eventbrite fees calculator to get an idea of how much Eventbrite costs you.

Event Smart Online Event Ticketing:

Event Smart DOES NOT charge a per-ticket nor per-event transaction fee. Which means an event planner can sell tickets and you’ll have more funds for your organization. With Event Smart can create unlimited events and sell unlimited amounts of tickets for no extra cost. For accepting payments you’ll pattern with a secure service like PayPal or Stripe or another supported service and use your own account for only $10mo by subscribing to that specific feature.

This means that you would enter your credentials for payment service in your Event Smart settings and then you would receive those funds for each paid registration to your merchant account. The funds would then be deposited into your bank account less the transaction fee from the payment service provider (e.g. Stripe or PayPal) that the payment service charges.

• Payment Gateway Integration: $10/mo
• Payment Processing Fees: (100*$100*.029)+(100*$0.3)= $320
• Total Fees for Selling 100 tickets at $100 each: $330

Event Smart does not set the prices or charge the fees for payment processing. Notice the payment processing fees are the exact rates charged by Stripe or PayPal, and you can negotiate the payment processing fees with your merchant account provider.

YOU COULD SAVE 100% OF Eventbrite FEES WITH Event Smart without having to charge your event ticket buyer. In this simple example you can save $279 dollars or 53% of all your fees by using Event Smart instead of Eventbrite. And the more paid events you sell and the higher the ticket cost the more you can save with Event Smart.

Total ticket fee commission and payment processing fees for selling 100 tickets at $100 each:

• Eventbrite: $529-$759
• Event Smart: $330

Advantage goes to Event Smart to avoid over $229 – $429 in ticketing fees.

Avoid 100% of Eventbrite Service Fees

What are some Eventbrite alternatives? Naturally, Event Smart or Event Espresso (our other platform for WordPress websites).

With Event Smart an event manager like you can truly save 100% of Eventbrite ticket fees. As mentioned above, to collect payments with Event Smart for event registration and ticket sales only requires a $10/mo upgrade to connect to your event website to your payment gateway and merchant account. Then you pay your payment gateway fees directly.

And you get to choose from more than 20 different payment gateway options, so you can select the one that is right for you or your business.

To sum it all up, yes, you can avoid all the Eventbrite ticketing fees by using Event Smart.

No billing information is required to start your complimentary 2-week trial of the business plan for Event Smart. It’s free to get started, so event creators like you have nothing to lose! Click here to get started.