The Three Things You Need To Know About Ticketing Fees

Here are the three things you need to know when looking at a company’s ticketing fees.

1. Payment processing does affect your fees

I get this question at least once a day. To be clear: every event needs a payment processor. This is how debit/credit card transactions get authorized and how ticket revenue ends up in your account.

Payment processors charge a processing fee to perform this function for your event and that fee is in addition to your ticketing fees.

2. Make sure processing (and anything else) is included in the fee you’re seeing

Many companies will make this processing fee hard to find. They want you to only see the fee they charge to make their prices look as low as possible. And, to be clear, they aren’t lying when they do this. When a ticketing company says all they charge is XYZ fee, that is truly all they charge. However, they cleverly neglect to mention that that is not ALL you will be charged. The processor is a separate fee…but it’s still a fee to be paid by you or your attendees.

We try to make this as clear as possible on our site but we still receive emails daily. Many of these emails ask if we charge an annual fee, setup fee, print-your-ticket-at-home fee, and the list goes on. These emails aren’t annoying to answer. They’re important and necessary. Ask them.

The long story short – event ticketing is made up of two fees: the processing fee and the ticketing fee. Make sure you know both.

3. You can pass your fees along to your attendees or cover them yourself For most ticketing companies, Ticketbud included, you have two choices for the fees associated with your event: passing them to your attendee or pay them yourself out of your ticket revenue.

We’ve done market research on passing along ticketing fees and found that the “fee threshold” for your attendees is roughly $10.

In other words, if your fees are greater than $10, attendees may take issue with the fees. If your fees are less than $10, negative feedback on fees is almost none. In fact, most attendees expect fees and view them as a requirement for any online purchase.

To be clear, these are not the three things you need to know about Ticketbud’s fees. These are things you should be aware of no matter who you go with. We’d love it if it was us but we understand each event has a unique set of needs. Just be sure to do your research and ensure your expectations for your ticketing costs match reality.]]]]> ]]>