Software

Re: RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

beatcfsfms — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 19:25:43 GMT

Hi There,

I read your comment on web based event registration tool. We are a small NPO. We are having at least one walkathon on May 16 and probably another related event too. We also may be having a few free meetings throughout the year. Which would you suggest Acteva,Eventbrite or??? I appreciate your input. Techsoup is offering a special on Acteva and it sounds feasible for us, but I want to have a more educated decision.

Thank you

Re: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

TeresaS — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:11:41 GMT

You might want to also look at http://www.events.org. They have a good online registration and donation tools that are free to the non-profits. Their credit card rates are also the lowest.

Teresa

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

effeff — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:24:00 GMT

We use OCS - Open Conference Systems. It's free, manages your whole website, takes registrations and credit cards. It is particularly good for academic conferences because it accepts paper submissions and allows for online adjudication.

http://pkp.sfu.ca/?q=ocs

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

techstev — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:40:00 GMT

We have been using Acteva, Eventbrite and Eventbee for couple of years. Every provider is good and bad on its own. We might just limit to Eventbee as they recently introduced flat $1 per ticket pricing model. We already use eventbee for our complete membership management, so it is easier for us to integrate with their ticketing solution.

We are also reaping the benefits of Google credit card processing, not many providers support Google processing, that is the reason we started using Eventbrite, now Eventbee also supports Google processing, so it was easy decision for us to consolidate our ticketing and membership management with Eventbee

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

RyFi — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:08:00 GMT

Margrete

It sounds like you need something much more customizeable for your events. Try EZregister.com next time you have an event... They will be especially usefully for your "ticket type" problem. They have a few different options for buttons. It looks like they can help you out with your "offline" ticket sales too by being able to mark the check as paid after it comes in. I think EZregister.com is much more versitle than eventbrite could ever be now due to their size.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

Margrete — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:02:00 GMT

Thank you for your responses. I am glad to hear there is a reasonable explanation for the board censorship. However, the postings where I had mentioned a site which was filtered, were deleted within hours - I hadn't violated the Terms of Service, and did not disparage Eventbrite - but simply answered someone's question.
The other issue, is that when I make reference to a URL and it's rewritten to something else - it was a URL I didn't want to be associated with.
As far as my reporting issues, here is a better explanation: The event is held over 3 days. Because of the Ticket Types issue, I had to sell a Ticket for every combination. Sometimes I could sell up to 3 tickets for the same person to the same event. Now try counting the number of attendees - it is no longer the number of tickets. In order to simply count attendees it is necessary to remove duplicate attendees. Creating a unique list by formula is not something which is easy in Excel.
I think there is a way to use Advanced Filter by hand, but I had to create reports frequently from scratch, and would prefer something that updates automatically.
As an example, this is the formula to just know if one person was attending on Thursday:
"=IF(OR(AD2=$AK$2,AD2=$AK$3,
AD2=$AK$4,AD2=$AK$5,AD2=$AK$11,
AD2=$AK$12,AD2=$AK$13,AD2=$AK$19),1,0)"
I did use the Survey questions to gather meal preferences. Again, you have to collate up to 3 tickets for one person just to see if they are having a meal.
As for hiding ticket types, with 36 types on the page at once, it certainly makes sense to hide half of them. I think it took me about 15 minutes to go through them all, which I tried to do as close to 9:00am (the cutoff time) as possible.
Another problem was when I made a mistake and had to rearrange the order of tickets - pressing the UP arrow icon 33 times in a row, and waiting for a Page Refresh is not fun (Guest Speaker had to appear at the top - as they weren't selecting the ticket type properly).
--
ps I didn't really define my combinations -- there are really C(5 3)+C(5 2)+C(5 1)=10+10+5, *2 for early bird and regular, plus two more for guest speakers and staff, or 52 possible combinations. If I had listed every one of them, my reporting problems would disappear as I would have 1 ticket=1 attendee. I don't think I should make someone select between 27 ticket types at a time!

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

Margrete — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:18:00 GMT

Oops

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

gdarter — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:11:00 GMT

Margrete
Online registration is not really intended to be a Customer Relationship Manangement system replacement. However for smaller organizations Online Registration offers a number of benefits.

Most small organizations without very large IT staffs are faced with staff limitations that would not meet the requirements associated with downloding open source code that accepts credit card information onto their servers (even if hosted by an ISP). The requirements associated with the the Payment Card Industry Standards come with high costs in labor, auditing and yearly intrusion tests perfomed by certified testors. https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/

I appreciate that the EventBrite solution allows separation between the NPO information website, the more secured EventBrite Registration site and finally the PCI Compliant site (Paypal or Google pay). No personal information about the attenddee is stored on the NPO web servers. If desired, it can be downloaded by the NPO and put on computers that are not public facing. Most importantly, no PAN (credit card info) ends up at the NPO or EventBrite servers.

In my post above, I mention using the early bird type registration. I intentionally do not hide the later registration options. Keeping them visible may motivate an earlier commitment action by the attendee. However, the "end date" for the early bird registration ticket types ends the ability to purchase those tickets. I do try to log in after they expire and hide them (takes about 1 minute each ticket type), to reduce the number of choices that are presented to the attendee.

EventBrite allows you to ask Survey questions of online registrants. Good examples might include :Have you attended one of our events in the past? How did you learn of this event?

In effect the Survey Answers are user defined fields. I beleive that you can define and then hide the question. I beleive you can do this to create a field to track paid/not paid of offline registration. Check the EventBrite forums. I have not tried this yet.

I doubt that I would have been as surprized to see a competitor filter in a tips and ideas discussion board. URLs may also include Trade Mark or Service Mark names. Their use is a whole different discussion.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

thomast — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:28:00 GMT

It sounds like your event was probably not an ideal fit for Eventbrite. Eventbrite is great for a lot of events, especially events with fewer price points. A couple specific comments:

I found that the system didn't meet my reporting needs very well. For example, I couldn't use it to track offline payments - when receiving a faxed order, I entered it manually, but there was no option to mark the order as "pay by cheque - unpaid". I wanted to later mark the order as "pay by cheque - paid" as the cheque came in.

You can do this when someone registers online with a pay by check/at door/via invoice option. It is odd that you can't do that through the back-end adds, but you could always just use the front-end registration interface to add your paper registrations and then you can mark fees as paid later.

Another issue, is inflexibility in ticket types. You have to create a ticket for each day/combination of days at the conference. When trying to make Excel formulas to determine attendance, it becomes complex to know who is going to be there on what day. And to end an early bird sale, you have to manually hide one set of tickets and unhide another. I ended up with 18 ticket types in total which is a lot of work.

A multi-day conference where registration is available in different packages for different days is definitely a tough event to manage with Eventbrite. If that's the primary type of event that an org runs, then Eventbrite is probably not the right solution.

As far as Early Bird or other sales go, you can set start and end dates for sales on any ticket type. So you can offer an Early Bird ticket type to end on a certain date and then a Regular Advance ticket type to start in that date. However, all ticket types show on the registration page (even those you can't buy yet/anymore) and if you want to only show Early Bird tix during the early sales period, or hide early bird options once that sales period is over, then you have to do the hide/unhide thing. This is a frequently-requested feature that I suspect will come along pretty soon.

Printing badges was also a lot of work. There are many steps involved in getting the data into Avery.

It does a CSV export of all attendees, which is supported by Word, Avery and many other mail-merge type applications. What additional steps did you have to take? Were they particular to the complexity of your event?

Then I discovered something very disturbing. Their forums were programmed to replace "cvent" with "bent". It so happens that cvent.com is one of their competitors. Don't ask what bent.com is - it's not work friendly.

After this experience, I can't recommend them - theoretically, they are still ok if they work for your event - but the implication of dishonesty in censoring their forums is not something I can support.

I was really concerned when I read this particular section of your post. I had run into the competitor word filter once (RegOnline became vegonline), but in that case I mostly thought it was funny. But clearly it was not for you, and it was confusing for me, a pretty experienced web forum user.

I contacted Eventbrite and pointed them to this post. They told me that they have had problems with spammers and posting robots, and that was why they implemented the filters, not ever intending to censor legitimate posters. They acknowledged that it can definitely be confusing for users, and have removed the filters. All this happened within a few business hours - I have always found them to be very responsive.

It sounds like CiviCRM, with its more robust membership and event support, will be better for your organization in the long run. For our own part, we are trying to figure out whether Eventbrite will work over the long term as we want to better track individual and organization participation in our events over time, in our own CRM database. But for simple, or even somewhat complex event registration, Eventbrite is pretty excellent.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

Margrete — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:52:00 GMT

I've recently completed a conference with Eventbrite. I heard about it through this article. After some due diligence it seemed ok.

I found that the system didn't meet my reporting needs very well. For example, I couldn't use it to track offline payments - when receiving a faxed order, I entered it manually, but there was no option to mark the order as "pay by cheque - unpaid". I wanted to later mark the order as "pay by cheque - paid" as the cheque came in.

Another issue, is inflexibility in ticket types. You have to create a ticket for each day/combination of days at the conference. When trying to make Excel formulas to determine attendance, it becomes complex to know who is going to be there on what day. And to end an early bird sale, you have to manually hide one set of tickets and unhide another. I ended up with 18 ticket types in total which is a lot of work.

Printing badges was also a lot of work. There are many steps involved in getting the data into Avery.

Overall it took a lot of time and some numbers were easier to count by hand.

When I tried to use the system for memberships, I realized it's just impossible. The reason is, without customizing, I felt the screens were too confusing by referring to "tickets".

They have launched new features in May 2008 and continue to improve the system. They are inexpensive and the system works fine for simple events.

Then I discovered something very disturbing. Their forums were programmed to replace "cvent" with "bent". It so happens that cvent.com is one of their competitors. Don't ask what bent.com is - it's not work friendly.

After this experience, I can't recommend them - theoretically, they are still ok if they work for your event - but the implication of dishonesty in censoring their forums is not something I can support.

I've since given up and switched to Drupal with CiviCRM. This is a long-term solution and will take time, but it will give you a fully integrated system with self-serve profiles, automated membership renewal, integrated with event signups, and many other features.

I also tried Brown Paper tickets, but it's very specific in the style of ticketing. It's not something you could ever twist into another type of event. I feel it would be too confusing to try to use for a conference, for example.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

gdarter — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 21:17:00 GMT

Here are a couple lessons we learned that might fit your situations too.

1) EventBrite lets us have different ticket types. This benefits us in two ways.

First we can get a quick summary by type. example Car entry, Truck entry, Motorcycle Entry
Don't use too many types or you will confuse your guests. Make it easy for them to register.

Second: We have Early Registration for $25 and then a second set of ticket types for "Late Registration at $30. Basically, that $5 pays for the online registration costs for both early and late registrants. EventBrite allows us to set an "End date" for each ticket type. We then can go in and EventBrite allows us to change the ticket type from "active" to "hidden" after the early registration is over.

Another option might be to offer a gift, like an event T-Shirt, goodie bag or other gift for early registration and then "hide" those tickets after the first xxx entries or a particular date. Motivate and reward those earlier decision makers.

With an outside February event, the weather is important, so rewarding those who commit early is quite appropriate and helps with our planning. For us 20% register the last three days.

The "gate" or "door" registration is even a little higher. This encourages the last minute online registration. It is easier to have a printed (EventBrite providesin Excel or other format) Attendee Report for each person checking at the dor versus trying to take cash, credit cards at the "door".

Since we are on a remote location, I have not tried this. Yet it would seem quite feasible to have a computer with internet connection set up at the "door" of the event to allow day of event registrants to enter their own info and charge it to their credit cards.

Don't overlook this point. About a year ago, I decided that I would add three extra tickets. Bascially, these are "I would like to donate an additional $25" then $50, Then $100. How nice that some visitors decided they cannot make the event, yet still made a donation for the event. Some who registered for the event, love the event and helping the cause and then add an extra donation amount. Make this easy for your supporters.

I look forward to your thoughts on leveraging online registration.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

gdarter — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 20:51:00 GMT

We have been using EventBrite for two events each over the last three years. Our most recent event, our 5th Annual CARe SHOW benefiting homeless cats and dogs saw a 35% increase in online registration over 2007. Part of this comes from the "Tell a Friend" and ability to recall email addresses from previous events for customized "Invitations". Additionally, we will follow up through EventBrite with a thank you communication, letting entrants know that this was our most successful Car Show and how much their entries helped to raise funds.

One extremely nice thing is the HelpDesk. This is a small company, with the founders answering many of the requests so that they stay in touch with requests and opportunities to make things even better. They also have been responsive to requests for future enhancements.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

redcrew — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 15:34:00 GMT

Just following up on Brown Paper Tickets - has anyone else had experience using their service. Given our requirements, it seems they have the best service with online and phone orders available. I spoke with their customer service representative earlier this week, and was very impressed.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

thomast — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 01:13:00 GMT

We've been using Eventbrite for several months with great success. We do a mix of free and paid events, and Eventbrite's generous free processing for free events is great.

They're also incredibly responsive, through e-mail support and customer forums, and their s/w is in active development, with new features being released on a regular basis.

All our events are one day, non-recurring workshops, rather than classes or situations where there is a lot of choice involved beyond whether or not you're coming.

RE: What Web-based event-registration tools have you tried?

gfiorillo — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 13:30:00 GMT

As a national organization with lots of chapters doing events (and a shoestring budget) we work with Brown Paper Tickets a lot. The chapters like it because its free and easy and they don't need to go through the national office to coordinate processing of credit cards. We've had some great discussions with the staff there and I would wholeheartedly recommend them.
---------------
Gina Fiorillo
Managing Director
Slow Food USA
www.slowfoodusa.org