Big Change!
Today we put a huge update live on Ticket Tailor that I’m really excited about. It has been in the planning for months and today we did a smooth, quiet rollout of our new pricing! That doesn’t sound too radical but for a company that’s tagline used to be No ticket fees. No fuss. it feels pretty radical to introduce a ticket fee option.
I’m so excited about this because it is a huge step forward in our mission to make life easier for event organisers and become a mainstream ticketing company.
Our pricing has changed from having monthly plans based on various factors to having a simple Pay as you go option (per-ticket fees!), or a Pay monthly that saves you money on a quota of ticket sales. It’s a lot like your options when signing up for a mobile phone service except we don’t tie anyone into contracts. If you have unpredictable ticket sales you’ll probably want to pay as you go, if you have regular predictable sales then it would be worth upgrading to save up to 50%.
We’ve also updated our handy pricing calculator so that potential customers can clearly see how much they can save, including payment processing:
Why did we change and how does this make life easier?
When talking to event organisers about Ticket Tailor, the conversation would go something like this:
Them: How are you different?
Me: We don’t charge ticket fees and we also … (they are distracted by the first statement).
Them: So how do you make money?
Me: We charge a monthly fee based on usage.
Them: Okay that sounds interesting but a monthly commitment wouldn’t really be for us because [insert any reason why wouldn’t want to commit to a monthly plan].
Me: But there’s no commitment, you could sign up for one month, pause whenever, and in any case, we always work out at a fraction of the cost of Eventbrite.
The conversation has gone on a tangent about a detail for far too long, they are not convinced and although I’m not trying to make a sale I really want them to understand that we are much better value than the incumbent (which we really really are).
Monthly pricing does work for some event organisers. We know that because thousands of people use our product. But it can hold them back and we have conversations with event organisers every day who are frustrated about having to upgrade because they want to put one more event on sale. Even though we are much cheaper than the competition, it still doesn’t feel good to be told you have to upgrade to the next plan and pay double just for adding an extra event. Ultimately our old pricing was at times making life more difficult for event organisers which is the opposite of what we want to do.
We want Ticket Tailor to truly make life easier for event organisers. If we have hit on anything as a business it’s a recognition that event organisers don’t want to give away a disproportionate part of their revenue for their ticketing when there are so many other costs to factor in when organising an event. It’s only ticketing after all. It has to be cheap. And not cheap in a bad way. Cheap in a pay-less-money-but-get-something-awesome way. Our new pricing allows for the flexibility of just paying a small fee for each ticket sold but also has monthly options for those who prefer it.
So, how are we different now?
We are still really cheap (like up to 25% of the cost of Eventbrite cheap). But we are about empowering event organisers to make their life easier when it comes to selling tickets. Here are a number of ways we do that, where the likes of Eventbrite don’t:
On Ticket Tailor, you ticket buyer data is owned by you.
On Eventbrite, they own the data and may send marketing emails to your customers.
On Ticket Tailor, you can remove our branding completely.
On Eventbrite, your customers have to go through an Eventbrite branded experience.
On Ticket Tailor, your event pages and checkout are dedicated to you.
On Eventbrite, your competitor’s events are shown to your ticket buyers.
On Ticket Tailor, everyone gets premium speedy support.
On Eventbrite, you have to be on the professional or premium to get more than access to an online help centre.
On Ticket Tailor, charities get a 20% discount on everything.
On Eventbrite, charities have to suck up their full price tag.
We are still ‘leaving money on the table’
Something I’ve been told about our pricing is: “You are leaving money on the table!”. What they mean is that some of our customers would be willing to pay more for our service, and because we are not asking for it, it’s left on the table. But it’s not on any table, it’s in the pocket of the event organiser. We don’t want pricing that is optimised for extracting as much money as possible. If we did our mission statement would say: We are on a mission to make as much money as possible from event organisers. Being cheaper makes life easier for event organisers because more money means more freedom.
It’s an experiment
Like many things we do, we don’t know if we have got our pricing right but we feel it’s a step in the right direction. We will probably tweak it as we go, or we may radically change it again, but always in the service of making life easier for event organisers.
