Event ticketing software, priced honestly

Almost every page that compares event ticketing software is a list of vendors with adjectives attached. This one is the arithmetic, on a ticket price you choose, with the row where we are the wrong answer left in.

Published 20 September 2026

What the phrase actually returns

Search “ticketing software” and you will get SolarWinds, SysAid, Zendesk and osTicket. Those are help desk products: a ticket there is a support request from an employee whose laptop will not connect to the printer. It is the same word for an entirely different object, and it is worth knowing before you spend an afternoon in a comparison grid wondering why every product is talking about SLAs.

The thing you want is event ticketing software: a system that publishes a calendar, holds inventory while somebody types their card in, takes the money, delivers something scannable, and lets a person on a door decide in under a second whether to let somebody in. Those five jobs are not equally hard, and the fifth one is where most of the difference between products actually lives. The rest of this page is about the first four, because that is where the money is, and a separate guide covers everything that happens after the sale.

The four ways this is priced

Under the marketing, there are only four fee models in this industry, and knowing which one you are being quoted tells you more than any feature list.

1. Percentage plus a flat amount, charged per ticket

The default. Eventbrite is 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket in service fees, plus 2.9% per order in payment processing. Prekindle is $1.59 + 3%. The percentage is the part that matters: it means a sold-out Saturday at $95 costs you roughly three times what a Tuesday at $30 does, for an identical amount of work by the software.

2. Flat amount per ticket, no percentage

Ticket Tailor is $0.85 a ticket pay-as-you-sell, falling to around $0.30 on prepaid credits. Gatehouse is $1.00 a paid ticket plus a subscription. Under this model the price of the ticket is irrelevant to the cost of selling it, which is the correct shape, because it costs the software exactly the same either way.

3. Negotiated, with no published rate

Ticketmaster, Tixr, See Tickets and DICE do not publish an organiser rate card in the US. You get a call, and then a number that depends on your room, your volume, and how well you negotiate. Sometimes it is a good number. You will not know until you have spent three weeks finding out, and you cannot compare it to anything, which is the point.

4. Bundled, where processing is inside the percentage

One rate covering both the platform and the card. It looks simpler and it is usually more expensive, because it hides the two components from each other. Ask what the split is. A vendor who will not tell you which part is Stripe’s is telling you something.

The trap in comparing these. “Their fee vs our fee” is meaningless when the two are charged on different bases and paid by different people. The only comparison that means anything to a venue is: hold the fan’s total constant, then ask how much of it reaches the building. Every figure below is built that way, and every one of them assumes a single-ticket order, which is the worst case for a flat fee and the best case for a percentage.

What each model costs, per ticket

Eventbrite against Gatehouse, holding the buyer’s total identical on both sides. “Venue keeps” is what actually lands in the bank after the platform and the card processor have taken theirs.

Single-ticket orders, US card rates. Eventbrite figures from their published organiser pricing, read 20 September 2026. Gatehouse figures computed from the same pricing module the checkout uses.
Face value	Buyer pays	Eventbrite: venue keeps	Gatehouse: venue keeps	Difference
$10.00	$12.51	$10.00	$10.85	+$0.85
$15.00	$17.85	$15.00	$16.03	+$1.03
$20.00	$23.18	$20.00	$21.21	+$1.21
$25.00	$28.52	$25.00	$26.39	+$1.39
$35.00	$39.19	$35.00	$36.75	+$1.75
$50.00	$55.20	$50.00	$52.30	+$2.30
$75.00	$81.88	$75.00	$78.21	+$3.21
$95.00	$103.22	$95.00	$98.93	+$3.93

The difference grows with the ticket price, and that is the whole story of percentage pricing. At $10 it is 85 cents. At $95 it is $3.93, on a transaction that cost the software the same to process.

A $35 ticket, worked all the way through

Abstractions hide things, so here is one ticket, both ways, with every line shown.

On Eventbrite

Face value: $35.00
Service fee, 3.7% + $1.79: $3.09
Payment processing, 2.9% of $38.09: $1.10
Buyer pays $39.19. The venue receives $35.00.

The $3.09 service fee is Eventbrite’s revenue, not yours. That is not a criticism, it is their business model stated plainly, and their pricing page says so.

On Gatehouse, charging the fan exactly the same $39.19

You set a $4.19 service fee, which is yours
Stripe, 2.9% + $0.30, billed to you directly: $1.44
Gatehouse: $1.00
Buyer pays $39.19. The venue receives $36.75.

A difference of $1.75 a ticket. Over 400 tickets a month that is $700, less the $49.99 subscription, so just over $650 a month and a little over $7,800 a year. You can also spend it the other way: drop the buyer’s price by $1.80 and bank exactly what Eventbrite was leaving you, which for some rooms is the better trade.

Where a flat fee loses

A subscription is a fixed cost, and a fixed cost is a bad deal until you have the volume to spread it over. Here is the volume, per ticket price, at which Gatehouse starts being cheaper than Eventbrite. Below that line, we are the more expensive option and you should not buy us.

Paid tickets a month at which the per-ticket advantage covers the $49.99 monthly plan. The annual plan lowers every one of these.
Face value	Advantage per ticket	Break-even, tickets a month
$10.00	$0.85	59
$15.00	$1.03	49
$20.00	$1.21	42
$25.00	$1.39	36
$35.00	$1.75	29
$50.00	$2.30	22
$75.00	$3.21	16
$95.00	$3.93	13

And there is a cheaper product than ours. Ticket Tailor charges $0.85 a ticket with no subscription at all, dropping to about $0.30 on prepaid credits, and like us they let you use your own Stripe account. On fees alone they beat us at every volume and every ticket price, by 15 cents a ticket plus our whole monthly plan.

If the only question is the lowest possible fee, that is the honest answer and you should go and read their pricing page. The reasons to choose us over them are a custom domain included rather than extra, wallet passes that update when a show moves, a door scanner that works with the signal off, and holds, comps, exchanges and settlement built for a room rather than an event. Those are worth $49.99 a month to some venues and not to others.

The question underneath the fee

Fees get the attention and payouts cause the switching. The question that decides both is: who is the merchant of record?

If the platform is, then the fan’s card is charged by them, the money lands in their account, and you are paid afterwards on their schedule, which is frequently after the show has happened. Your money exists, for a while, as a number in somebody else’s ledger. That number can be held for review. Most venue operators who have moved platforms moved because of this and not because of a percentage.

If you are, then the charge is on your own processor account, in your own business name, and it settles on your own payout schedule. The trade is real and worth stating: chargebacks are yours, your tax position applies, and your name is on the card statement. Nobody can hold your money for the same reason nobody else is handling your disputes.

Gatehouse takes the second arrangement. Charges are created directly on your Stripe account with our dollar attached as an application fee, so there is no Gatehouse balance holding your ticket income, because there is no point at which it arrives here.

Nine questions for any vendor

Print this and ask all nine, including of us. The answers are more diagnostic than any feature grid.

Who is the merchant of record, and whose name is on the buyer’s card statement?
When exactly does money reach my bank: on the sale, or after the event?
Can you hold, reserve or delay a payout, and under what conditions?
What do I pay to issue a free ticket or a comp?
Do I own the buyer list, can I export it today, and will you email those people?
Is there a contract term, a notice period or an exclusivity clause?
What does the door do when the room has no signal?
Is the custom domain included, and what happens to my URLs if I leave?
What is the card processing rate, and is it marked up from the processor’s?

The fourth one catches more platforms than you would expect. Charging a venue to give a seat away is common, and it is how a guest list quietly becomes a line item.

How Gatehouse is priced

$1.00 a paid ticket. $49.99 a month, or $449.99 a year. No percentage of face value, so a $95 ticket costs the same to sell as a $15 one. No fee on free tickets or comps. Custom domain included. Every feature on every account, because there is no tier where the good scanner lives. No contract, no exclusivity, no minimum, no setup fee.

Card processing is Stripe’s, billed to you by Stripe at whatever rate you have with them, and we do not mark it up, because it never passes through us.

Below roughly thirty paid tickets a month, the subscription is not worth it and the tables above will tell you so. The calculator on the pricing page takes your own ticket price and volume and shows you where your line is, including when the answer is no.

Sources

Eventbrite organiser pricing, read 20 September 2026: eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing
Ticket Tailor pricing, USD, read 20 September 2026: tickettailor.com/pricing
Prekindle pricing, read 20 September 2026: prekindle.com/pricing
Gatehouse figures computed from the pricing module used by the checkout, and asserted by an automated test on every change.

Gatehouse, in one paragraph.

White-label ticketing for independent venues. $1 a paid ticket and $49.99 a month, or $449.99 a year. No percentage of face value, no fee on a comp, no contract and no exclusivity. Tickets sell on your own domain and the charge lands on your own Stripe account, so the money was never in ours to hold. Card processing is billed to you by Stripe at your own rate, and we do not mark it up, because it never passes through us.

Open a box office Work out your own numbers

No demo gate and no discovery call before a price. If you would rather ask a person something first, hello@gatehouse.app reaches one.