Fee per Ticket Charge vs Software Purchase

Essentially, an organization interested in adopting a box office ticketing software system has to decide whether to purchase the software outright and host the system on their own computers/servers, or pay an ongoing usage or licensing fee (generally based on ticket sales) for a system which is hosted on the ticketing company's own servers.

Since the total market for ticketing software systems is relatively limited compared with Microsoft software for example, the high initial development cost and ongoing product development means that fully featured, high-quality ticketing software can be very expensive to purchase outright.

Unless the venue is selling hundreds of thousands of tickets per year, and requires a customized solution, the best option for most small and medium-sized venues in particular is normally the fee per ticket model. Not only does this keep the initial capital outlay to the minimum level possible, but it also normally ensures that the software provided will be fully supported and subject to regular updates and enhancements. Of course, it generally means that the software cannot be freely customized to suit particular requirements, but the more advanced ticketing software that is available today probably contains many more features than the average venue operator will ever use.

With the fee per ticket model, whilst some ticketing software companies may require fees to be passed on to your customers purchasing tickets online, with HandyTix, you have total flexibility on applying online charges - you can make your own choice whether to apply any charges, and if so, the amount of any charges you wish to pass on. So in fact you have the option of effectively reducing the cost of implementing a sophisticated online ticketing system to zero.

And with fee per ticket pricing, there will generally be no long term contracts, no monthly fees or any set up charges (apart for possibly some charge for creating seating charts)

On the other hand, some ticketing companies prefer to offer a monthly fee plan rather than a fee per ticket model. Whilst this may suit venues who have regular monthly events throughout each year, for smaller organizations including schools, community theatres, non profit groups etc. it means you will paying out monthly fees irrespective of whether you have any scheduled events or not.

So its very important when considering a ticketing software system and evaluating the various pricing models, to take into consideration the number of events you hold each year, the frequency of your events, the number of tickets you expect to sell and the price of your tickets.