Eventgrid: Online Ticketing Platform [Review]

Eventgrid is an online registration and ticketing platform for conferences, seminars, concerts, tours and festivals. Here is our review.

The online event registration market is a highly competitive area which is constantly developing and evolving to meet the demands of Event Planners. A number of emerging providers are now challenging the stronghold traditionally held by a few key players in the market.

Eventgrid is one of these new challengers. Their platform offers a well designed interface and a great range of features within a reasonable price-per-ticket model.

Let’s have a look at the tool in more detail.

Eventgrid: What Is It?

Eventgrid offers a fully branded and a white label solution to manage events from a single platform. The platform offers registration, ticketing, CRM and marketing solutions.

Eventgrid allows for group bookings, multiple bookings, team memberships, and discounts. It is possible to sell event merchandise and for attendees to add different paid sessions or tracks.

It is possible to sell reserved seating via a bespoke seating chart, which can be created using their online design tool and can note seats with a restricted view and accessible seats. The different rows or tiers can also have different prices set to reflect the best seats.

Payments can be handled via Stripe.com, Authorize.net, or through PayPal. You can choose to include the service charges or fees ‘in the price of a ticket’ with ‘Pass-Through’ technology, so there is no cost to you or your company. If you prefer you can choose to accept donations to the charity of your choice instead of charging for entry to your events.

The Main Categories of Features Are:

. Eventgrid enables you to create branded event pages which can be customized in terms of colours, logos, images and personalized web addresses. It is possible to sell reserved seating via a bespoke seating chart and offer different ticket prices, group bookings and discount codes. Attendees receive barcoded or iPhone Passbook tickets.

Marketing. Through Eventgrid you can send personalised emails and track correspondence. 300 marketing email credits are included with your plan each month for email marketing campaigns and additional credits can be purchased as required. Events can be shared via the main social media channels. You can track links and affiliate marketing to see which are sending the most traffic and add landing pages to use split testing.

CRM. The CRM allows attendee info to be saved in one place with the opportunity to segment the lists to target marketing messages more effectively. It is possible to sync contacts with Salesforce and other CRM systems automatically.

Review

Eventgrid offers a modern and clean design which allows you to upload your own large header image and customize to your branding specifications. It can be a white label solution so your brand is at the forefront. Every element of the site can be customized. You can simply drag and drop the components you want to appear on your site. The site is responsive and mobile-friendly to work on mobile, tablets and computers. The event description uses rich text formatting which enables you to insert different objects such as images, tables and hyperlinks.

It is easy to create an event quickly and to the level of complexity your event requires. You can add multiple days, tracks, VIP packages or specify event dates that repeat.

For group bookings you can choose to collect the lead ticket purchaser information only (contact and billing information are completed only once even if several tickets or registration types are chosen) or specify individual details must be completed for each ticket.

The bespoke seating tool provides you with some of the most common seating blueprints which can be adapted, or you can create your unique seating map from scratch using the online design tool. The seating plan does take a little time to set up or you can commission Eventgrid to create this for you. This functionality and level of customization is something often overlooked by competitors in the same space. Venues, Promoters and Event Planners that sell tickets for seated events and performances will be particularly interested in this feature, as there is no additional charge to use it.

You can easily add multiple users to manage the event, which is important if several members of your team are involved in the event. Currently there is no automatic invoice or receipt feature which may be an issue in terms of tax accounting and B2B events.

The tool is based on the cloud and you can answer questions from attendees directly within the application. All communications can be managed through the portal so that it tracks communication and interaction. You can send email invitations, create campaigns and customize emails for your attendees. Drafts are prepared within the tool ready for you to adapt and communications can be scheduled in advance.

This platform works as a mini CRM and segmentation tool and allows you to store all your attendee’s data there. The data can be exported and integrates with Sales Force. However, if you are a loyal user of MailChimp you will be discouraged as Eventgrid does not integrate with this platform.

Eventgrid offers full set up APIs and web-hooks for Developers, so the workflow can be fully customized and integration with a third party system is easy.

The mobile box office allows for tickets to be printed, name badges to be created and payments to be collected. You can allow the user to manage their tickets. If this option is checked, the manage tickets button will be added to event page to allow the attendee to log in to their account and print their confirmation.

Eventgrid enables on-site check-in at the event by searching for their name or scanning the QR code with the iPad and iPhone app. Offline mode is available. There is no Android app available at this time.

A really cool feature is the geofencing functionality. Using iBeacon and Passbook integration it is possible to provide auto check-in functionality of people as they arrive at the event. At large conferences and events this could completely eliminate queues at the registration desk.

Features

The main features of the platform are:

.

– Quick setup event web pages with no coding or HTML skills required
– White label platform
– Bespoke event URL
– Fully hosted, web based and secure
– Multiple ticket types
– Professional ticketing system
– Simple online registration
– Sell tickets from your website
– Payments via card or PayPal
– Unique seating chart creation tool
– Collect Information
– Name badges and check-ins
– Secure credit card processing
– Pass-through fees
– Accept donations
– Group buying
– VIP packages
– Mobile friendly registration
– Box office
– On site mobile app– sell tickets at the door, credit card swipe, mobile check-in
– iPhone passbook tickets
– Waitlist and option to transfer an attendee ticket to another person

Marketing.

– Email marketing (300 emails per month included)
– Social media integration with Facebook and Twitter
– CRM and Segmentation
– Tracking and affiliate marketing
– Embed custom widgets
– Landing pages
– Reporting and analytics
– Respond to Questions
– E-commerce store for product and merchandise sales
– Geofencing functionality and marketing
– Integration with Google Analytics
– Provides tools for developers

CRM.

– Sales Force integration
– Export data
– Membership management
– Mini CRM within the platform
– Segmentation tool
– Allows you to store attendee data and track communications

Who Is It For?

Eventgrid is for Event Planners working on events of all sizes and complexity. The custom seating plan tool also opens this ticketing platform to concert promoters, theatres, sporting events and concert venues.

Pros and Cons

Pros
– Bespoke seating chart and ticketing capability
– Geofencing functionality
– Personalised emails and correspondence tracking

Cons
– No invoice feature available
– The check in app is only iOS compatible
– No integration with Mailchimp

Pricing and Plans

There are no setup or monthly fees.
The price charged is based on ticket sales:
2% online ticket fee up to a cap of $7.99
2.9% plus 30 cents credit processing fee. Or this can be processed through Paypal.
Free events are free up to a limit of 100 tickets.

In Conclusion

Eventgrid offers a design-oriented online registration solution. Some Event Planners will be deterred if an automatic invoicing/receipt tool is a requirement but overall it compares well against many of the registration providers in this competitive market. The amount of features offered for the very reasonable pricing sets Eventgrid apart from the competition.

Eventgrid offers all the main features Event Planners demand from a ticketing platform, with some unique and cool selling points such as the bespoke seating chart, integrated CRM and geo-fencing technology.

Disclosure: Startup Reviews are paid for placements. While Event Manager Blog receives a fee to extensively look at the tool and review it in detail, the content of the review is independent and by no means influenced by the startup. If you have any question please use the contact us section.