02 — Tickets

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What it is

A ticket tier is one thing you are selling: a name, a price, how many there are, and when they are on sale. Early Bird, General Admission, VIP — each is a tier, and your buyer picks between them.

You can have as many as you like, and you can add more at any time, including after the event is live.

What you control

The basics

When it sells

Each tier has its own sale window, and both ends are optional:

• Start — the tier appears but cannot be bought until then. Use it for an Early Bird that opens at noon on Friday.
• End — sales close. Use it to stop online sales the night before while the event page stays up.

Leave both empty and the tier sells whenever your event is live. Times are your venue's local time, same as everything else.

How many one person can take

Maximum per order caps a single purchase — ten by default. Lower it for a tier you want spread around rather than bought out by one person.

What you ask of the buyer

Requiring a name is worth thinking about. It is the difference between four tickets that say "Sam Rivera" and four tickets with four names on them. For anything where who attends matters — dinners, workshops, anything with an age limit — turn it on.

Fees

The price you set is exactly what buyers pay. Our fee and card processing come out of it, and the editor shows what you'll receive. See Pricing and fees.

Showing how many people are looking

Ticket Preferences → Show How Many Are Looking, on by default. Buyers see "12 people are looking at this right now" above your ticket list.

• It appears only once at least 3 people are on the page, so a quiet moment shows nothing rather than "2 people are looking".

• Large numbers round to "40+", because a figure that jumps around as people close tabs looks made up.

• It never names anyone, and it holds nothing — it is a count of open pages, not of tickets reserved.

• You always see your own count on your event page, however small, and your own tabs are never counted. Buyers also see "3 other people are choosing tickets right now" once at least two people have tickets selected — but only while you have plenty left. The moment stock gets tight that line disappears, because telling a crowd to race for the last few tickets ends with most of them being declined at payment. Nothing is reserved by choosing; it is a count of people, not of held tickets.

• To see how it looks, add ?viewers=12 to your event page's address while signed in. Only you see it, and the number is make-believe — it is there so you can judge the look on a quiet page.

The order your tiers appear in

Ticket Preferences → Ticket Order, at the top of Manage Tickets:

• Price — low to high (the default): cheapest first, which is how most people read a price list.
• Price — high to low: leads with your best seats.
• Manual: arrange them yourself. Arrows appear on each tier; the order you set is the order buyers see.

It applies to your event page and to checkout, so what you arrange is what they see.

Tiers that wait their turn

Tick Hide until these sell out on a tier and choose the tiers it waits for. Until every one of them is sold out, past its sale window, or hidden, the waiting tier is not on your page at all — not greyed out, simply absent.

That is the tier ladder people expect: Tier 1 — Early sells, and the moment its last ticket goes, Tier 2 — Anytime Entry appears at the higher price. Nobody can buy the later tier early, even with its link.

A tier with unlimited quantity never sells out, so anything waiting behind it appears only when that tier's sale window ends. Give the earlier tier a quantity, or an end time.

Hiding a tier behind a code

A tier can be hidden, which means it does not appear on your page at all — not greyed out, not marked private, simply absent — until someone arrives with a code that reveals it.

That is how you run a friends-and-family price, an artist allocation or a pre-sale without publishing that it exists. Share a link with the code in it and the tier appears for whoever opens it.

Revealing and discounting are separate. A code can reveal a tier without taking anything off the price, and usually should — a hidden tier is normally already priced the way you want it. A code that reveals and discounts works too, if that is what you mean.

Free tiers

Set a tier to free and it is free. There is a dedicated Free RSVP tier type that is free by definition, which is the clearer choice when you are collecting names rather than money. If you want a tier called "RSVP" that costs something, make an ordinary paid tier and name it that.

How it behaves

Your tiers are listed cheapest first

On your public page and on your own screens, tiers are ordered by price. This is deliberate and not adjustable: it is the order buyers read a price list in, and having the two views disagree was worse than either order.

Selling out

When a tier runs out it shows as sold out rather than disappearing — unless you have turned on Hide sold-out tiers on your event, which removes them entirely. Both are reasonable; showing them tells the story of a busy event, hiding them keeps the page clean.

It is a race, and nobody is charged for losing it

Tickets are not held while somebody browses or fills in their details. Two people can have the last two tickets in their baskets at once, and whoever presses pay first gets them.

The moment someone presses pay, the tickets become theirs — before their card is charged. Anyone who arrives a second later is told the tier has just sold out, and their card is never touched: no charge, no refund to wait for, and nothing on their statement.

Your remaining count is therefore always real. A tier showing 3 left has three, not three-minus-whatever-is-in-somebody's-basket.

If a card is declined, or the buyer's bank asks them to approve the payment and they do not, the tickets go straight back on sale.

Changing a tier after it has sold

You can edit the name, description and price of a tier at any time. Changing the price does not affect tickets already bought — those were sold at the price in force at the time, and the order keeps its own record.

You cannot delete a tier that has sold tickets. Those tickets need it to exist — your door list shows the tier name against each attendee. Reduce its quantity or close its sale window instead.

Raising and lowering the quantity

Raise it at any time. Lowering it below what has already sold is not possible, for obvious reasons — set it to what you have sold to close the tier off.

Good to know

Some banks ask the buyer to approve the payment. When that happens the tickets are held for them for sixty seconds while they confirm, and the page shows them the clock. If they do not finish in time the tickets go back and nothing is charged.

Unlimited is a real option. Leave the quantity empty and the tier never sells out. Sensible for a free RSVP; think twice for anything the room has to hold.

A hidden tier cannot be found by guessing. It is not on the page, and the purchase is checked again against the code when the card is charged — so a hidden tier cannot be bought by someone who worked out it was there.

Sale windows are per tier, not per event. You can have Early Bird close on Friday, General run until doors, and a VIP tier that only opens for the last week. They are independent.

A tier's ID requirement follows the ticket. If the ticket is transferred to someone else, it still says ID required. That is intentional.

Your maximum-per-order is a guide, not a lock. Somebody can place two orders. If you need a hard limit per person, that is what requiring names and checking ID at the door is for.