Editor Review: EventBrite

by Rob Pannoni
published on: 08/19/08 3:52:31 PM

If you have read my previous software reviews, you know that in addition to my role as Director of Customer Experience at Etelos, Inc., I moonlight as President and CEO of Affiliated Sandwiches, the Bay Area's largest fictitious purveyor of sandwich supplies. I confess that being president of a make believe company is a bit of an odd hobby. But it provides a source of realistic business scenarios that I use for my hands-on testing of on-demand business software.

My target for evaluation this time is EventBrite, a web-based application for managing event registration. In order to give EventBrite a thorough run-through, the Affiliated Sandwiches team (that would be, um, me) has decided to put on a one-of-a-kind promotional event: CheeseFest 2008. The event will take place at the Centennial Oil Change and Event Center in Winnemucca, Nevada on November 1, 2008. I chose Winnemucca because, well, I liked the name. And because at 5:56pm on this fine August evening the temperature in Winnemucca is 96°F--perfect conditions for impromptu fondue.

What does it do?

EventBrite covers a broad spectrum of activities relating to putting on and publicizing an event. You set details such as event descriptions, ticket prices, discount schemes and the registration information you want to collect from participants. EventBrite builds a web page where your attendees come to purchase tickets and register. EventBrite also provides tools for promoting your event, including managing affiliate programs (where others promote your event on their web sites in return for a cut of the ticket sales that come through their site) and providing ready-made HTML snippets for web ads.

What do I need?

To setup your event, just a web browser and internet connection. If you want to charge for your event, you will need either a Google Checkout Merchant Account or a Paypal Business Account (a Paypal Premier Account will also work).

How much does it cost?

EventBrite charges 2.5% of the ticket price with a minimum $.99 and a maximum $9.95 per ticket. This does not include any charges from Google Checkout or Paypal. There is no charge for using EventBrite for free events.

What similar software should I consider?

Evite is probably the best known consumer event management site. But it doesn't handle ticket sales and lacks the business and promotional features of EventBrite. EventBee has some of the features of EventBrite, but doesn't have the polished user interface or feature set. It specializes in promoting events through its network of affiliate web sites. Eventsbot, Acteva and 123Signup are competitors aimed at the same market niche as EventBrite. RegOnline is a higher-end application that includes things like managing agendas, rooms and hotel accommodations.

Hands-on

As CEO of Affiliated Sandwiches, I'm much too important to be planning events. But Nancy, our VP of Gouda, is on vacation. So that leaves me to handle CheeseFest 2008 on my own. Fortunately, EventBrite makes it all quite easy.

Creating Events

After going through a brief sign-in process, I clicked a button to create a new event.

The edit event screen is intuitive and has clearly labeled steps. Since Cheesefest 2008 is free, I created a ticket type called “Free Admission” with a price of $0. EventBrite let me set details for ticket sales like start date, end date and quantity of tickets available. The ticket pricing is quite flexible. For example, there are options to add the EventBrite fee to the ticket price or use a “donation” format that allows customers to set their own price for tickets.

Further down the page are additional options that allow you to specify a location for the event, including a checkbox that adds a Google map to your event page. You identify yourself--or if you're feeling mischievous, someone else--as the “host” so that visitors can easily locate all events that you put on. Finally, you set privacy parameters such as whether the site should be available on the internet and in EventBrite's public event listings, whether it should be password protected, or whether registrant names should be displayed. You can also specify a custom URL for the event page and change the colors, either by choosing a theme or setting colors manually.

Oooh, colors....Not being inclined toward subtlety, I chose the “Azul” color theme and clicked the “Preview” button. It was not subtle. But fortunately I could return to the edit page and tweak the colors. I added a sort of “cheese orange” to the mix. After a few cycles of changing colors and previewing, I got a result that walked the fine line between being striking and being nauseating. Or so I thought, until a colleague saw the preview and started running toward the bathroom...

Having entertained myself sufficiently experimenting with color schemes, I was ready to publish my event. A single click and my event registration site was live. I was happy to see that if I changed my mind, it was equally easy to unpublish an event.

Managing Events

I was already feeling pretty good about what EventBrite could do when I clicked the “Manage” button to see what other tricks the application had up its sleeves. I was surprised to see a full menu of management features for aspects of event hosting I hadn't even considered. Apparently, when you run an event, you have to publicize it to get people to come. Hmmm. Maybe it's time to interrupt the vacation of our illustrious VP of Gouda. I could be getting out of my depth here.

You can tell that EventBrite was designed by people who have actually run events. The features provided are exactly the ones that you need the most for real world event management. The first section of commands relate to sending out invitations. You can import contacts from a variety of sources or enter them manually.

Once you've created a contact list (or more than one if you want to send different messages to different audiences) you compose an email in a simple editor and send out your invitations. The invitations include a link that takes the recipient to your event page where they can respond to the invitation with a “yes”, “no” or “undecided”. They can also include a message. EventBrite tracks the results of invitations you send out so you can see where you stand. So far, I've only sent a Cheesefest 2008 invitation to my mom. She's not sure she wants to come.

Another group of menu items allows you to manage attendees. This starts with specifying what information you want to collect on your registration page. You can select from predefined fields or add questions of your own.

EventBrite also allows you to manage ticket orders. If you have lots of orders, you can use filters to locate a specific order. You can change the name of the ticket holder, delete orders, issue refunds or resend confirmation emails. A separate menu item allows you to edit the confirmation message sent to registrants.

As you can see, my mom is a good sport. She decided to come after all. She even paid $100 for a free ticket. Okay, EventBrite doesn't actually allow someone to pay for a free ticket. But it does allow you to manually enter orders for cases where you distribute tickets outside the EventBrite system. So if I wanted to charge my mom $100 dollars to come to a free event, I could do so offline and then enter the information in EventBrite for tracking. There's no fee for tickets you sell outside EventBrite.

Promoting Events

Perhaps the most impressive set of EventBrite features are those relating to promoting your event. Nothing's worse than throwing a party and not having anyone show. EventBrite has a number of features to help assure that this doesn't happen.

I was particularly excited about the affiliate management feature. If you're not familiar with the concept, affiliates are web sites that point traffic to your web site by displaying advertisements or other click through links. They don't do this because they like you (I'm not saying they don't like you—just that it's not their primary motivation in this case). They do it because you pay them a fee for any visitors they send who end up making a purchase. Affiliate programs are a well-established promotional technique on the internet. Many leading sites such as Amazon have such programs. Being able to easily manage an affiliate program to your event is a nice edition to your marketing tool set.

EventBrite allows you to set up different affiliate programs and specify the amount to be paid to each type of affiliate. A unique HTML link is created for each affiliate. The affiliate puts this HTML link on their web site. EventBrite automatically tracks any sales that come through that link and report the totals to you and to the affiliate. You pay the referral fees to your affiliates via PayPal.

Or at least that's what's supposed to happen. When I tried to create an affiliate program I got an error message. One of those really useful ones that says it didn't work but doesn't say why. Perhaps it's because I didn't specify a PayPal account when I set up my EventBrite account. But that's just a guess. It would have been nice to get a specific error message pointing me in the right direction. It would have been even nicer not to have an obvious bug in a major function—particularly a cool one like affiliate management.

Affiliate programs are just the beginning of the promotional tools available on EventBrite. You can create discount codes with start and end dates. You can also create unique tracking links that allow you to monitor referring sites that you don't plan to pay through an affiliate program. You'll be able to see which online promotions are working. And to make it easy to create online promotions, EventBrite gives you a pre-built event promoter “bug” showing your upcoming events as well as a library of sample promotional links, complete with cut and paste HTML.

The list of event buttons may be a bit of overkill. (Do we really need separate buttons for “Buy a Ticket” with and without an exclamation point?) An interface for changing the text on buttons would probably be more efficient. But this approach works well enough. Armed with so much promotional muscle, I'm sure I'll have no trouble selling out Cheesefest 2008. Assuming you create an equally compelling event (a high standard, I know), EventBrite should be able to help you make your business event a success as well.

Ease of Use

You can tell that the EventBrite folks paid a lot of attention to ease of use when designing their site. Steps for creating an event are clearly numbered. The features included are compelling, useful and straightforward. No mounds of “pseudo features” designed to look good on a spec sheet. Everything here adds value.

Help icons are available for features that need more explanation. Moving the mouse over the icon gives a brief description of that part of the screen. “Learn More” links are provided to give more expansive explanations of how certain features work.

In addition, at the bottom of each page, EventBrite provides a link to tutorials and a forum where you can ask questions. There is no explicit “Support” link, but the “Contact Us” link brings up a form you can use to submit a question. Also on the “Contact Us” link, behind a tab, are answers to frequently asked questions. The amount of helpful content on the website is impressive. But even more impressive is that I rarely felt the urge to refer to it. For the most part, EventBrite worked they way I expected it to work.

Limitations

EventBrite offers a rich set of features that are easy to use. But it isn't the last word in high-end event management. It's visual customization options are limited. You won't be able to make it blend seamlessly into your existing web site (unless, of course, you've built your website to look exactly like an EventBrite template—which I don't recommend). Nor can you use your own merchant account for credit card processing. It doesn't manage wait lists. It doesn't do any during-event management tasks such as printing name tags, managing agendas, or room scheduling. It lacks any support for managing lodging accommodations or reserved room blocks. It doesn't easily accommodate different types of attendees such as vendors and speakers. And it doesn't have post-event followup tools such as surveys or photo galleries.

The fact that there was an obvious bug in a major feature—creating a new affiliate program–-gives me pause about reliability and quality. But given the way the rest of the site performed, I'm inclined to believe this was an anomaly rather than an indication of major quality problems.

The Verdict

EventBrite focuses on the core tasks that are most useful for small to medium events. It doesn't have all of the features of a high-end event management application. But it also doesn't have the complexity. It's easy to use and has enough features for events that don't require managing guest accommodations or scheduling rooms for sessions. It even has a few features, such as affiliate management, that are lacking in some high-end applications.

EventBrite isn't the cheapest product on the market for managing events. But it's fees are in line with its feature set and degree of polish. An event gone wrong is not a pretty thing. So skimping on your event management software may not be the wise play. For its intended market, EventBrite is a best-of-breed application. Unless you're running a full scale conference and have the time to master a more sophisticated application, EventBrite is an application that should be on your short list.

If you want to check out what EventBrite looks like from a user perspective, feel free to go to the Cheesefest 2008 registration site at http://cheesefest2008.eventbrite.com/. You can even register. It's free. But please don't show up in Winnemucca on November 1 looking for the Centennial Oil Change and Event Center. Like Affiliated Sandwiches, Cheesefest 2008 is really just a state of mind.