Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board: Your feedback on online ticketing systems

Message

   We're researching online ticketing/box office/reservations for our home theater, The Kent County Theatre Guild, and I'd like to use the results of my research for an article on our site here to help out other community theaters. To that end, I'd like to hear from any of you who use or have used online ticket solutions - which company or companies do you have experience with, and is (was) it the best thing since sliced bread, or a Nightmare on Main Street? You can either post your reponse here, or email me privately at cpolo@communitytheater.org (especially useful if there's a company you want to trash, but don't want to do it publicly). Look forward to hearing from you, and to sharing the results with everybody!

Author	Message
Chris Polo Admin Group Community Theater Green Room Joined: 10/01/03 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 166	Topic: Your feedback on online ticketing systems Posted: 4/22/11 at 10:53am
	We're researching online ticketing/box office/reservations for our home theater, The Kent County Theatre Guild, and I'd like to use the results of my research for an article on our site here to help out other community theaters. To that end, I'd like to hear from any of you who use or have used online ticket solutions - which company or companies do you have experience with, and is (was) it the best thing since sliced bread, or a Nightmare on Main Street? You can either post your reponse here, or email me privately at cpolo@communitytheater.org (especially useful if there's a company you want to trash, but don't want to do it publicly). Look forward to hearing from you, and to sharing the results with everybody!
	Chris Polo Visit Community Theater Green Room Originals at www.cafepress.com/ctgr "The scenery in the play was beautiful, but the actors got in front of it." -- Alexander Woolcott

	IP Logged

edh915 Celebrity Joined: 11/19/09 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 325	Posted: 4/22/11 at 6:57pm
	Kent County Theatre Guild in Dover, Delaware? I had the male lead in the very first production presented in the "new" Patchwork Playhouse back in November 1973 - "Butterflies Are Free." Are you still in that lovely little decommissioned church? It was a great performing space. Fond memories... BTW - my current theatre group has just started using Brown Paper Tickets. We've only used them for a couple of shows, but we have no complaints at all; and we anticipate continuing the relationship. It's working just fine.
	IP Logged

Eric.Brandt Player Joined: 7/14/09 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 15	Posted: 5/12/11 at 3:02pm
	ShowTix4U.com has been very good to a number of the community theater groups here in central Wisconsin. I've used it as an administrator for an event, and the set up was relatively straight forward. The only complaint I had was that I couldn't upload graphics. I had to email the graphics files to the site admin and they loaded them where I told them to put them. Weird, but workable and they did it correctly and quickly. Maybe more importantly, I've also used them a number of times as a consumer and the transactions are slick and painless. Select an event, select a seat (when applicable) enter the normal online transactional details, and download the tickets. Two or three minutes to complete an order and have tix in hand. I've had cash transactions at a box office take much longer. It'd good to have a partner that your patrons can interface with easily. The side I've never dealt with was the accounting, but in talking to the administrators who have, reporting is good, payments are timely and accurate and support is effective when needed.
	Eric Brandt The Theater Community
	IP Logged

Cait Walk-On Joined: 1/20/07 Location: United States Online Status: Offline Posts: 0	Posted: 12/06/11 at 7:27pm
	I've worked with some of the bigger ones.. etix.com is pretty good.. though I've heard patron complaints, on our side we rarely had issues.. and they had a decent education system if you had any troubles and their reporting services were great. Hope it helps :) My experience is box office perspective and I don't know the financial comittment to it.
	IP Logged

Tallsor Star Joined: 2/24/04 Online Status: Offline Posts: 63	Posted: 12/07/11 at 9:12am
	You might want to look over this Idealware article about ticketing options: http://idealware.org/blog/world-ticketing-options . I want to also say ArtsMarketing.org did a podcast about ticketing software. Ohh - Technology in the Arts had this: http://technologyinthearts.org/?p=1842 Edited by Tallsor - 12/08/11 at 4:40pm
	IP Logged

Announcements and feedback
Community Theater Green Room Discussion Board :About the Community Theater Green Room :Announcements and feedback