I was involved in a ticketing company for four years and quit in July 2019. Which meant I had to find another ticketing company to use, for my upcoming events!
For the past six months, I’ve been researching and testing a bunch of alternative ticketing sites, and decided to blog about my adventures, as it might be useful to other promoters here in Hong Kong.
First, I looked at ticketing apps to plug into the Underground website and there were some cool ones out there but could not find any bilingual ones.
Then I decided to reach out to ticketing companies based in Hong Kong and got the following results:
I really wanted to use Juven, as I had met people working there (who are Underground fans!) and they seemed like a friendly community company, but they were going out of business!
Tickcats.co whom I had to email, as there is no information on their website for promoters, they replied me, after three days, to tell me they are not open to the public to sell event tickets and I should try other ticketing sites!! This is EVEN THOUGH they had (and still have!) several upcoming events on their website which the public can buy tickets for 🙂 🙂 perhaps they thought I was spying for the previous company I was involved with 🙂 🙂
Eventbrite – I could not find out how much they take as commission (in fact never ever found out – despite speaking to someone at a conference who works at eventbrite) and then eventually (in the very small fine print) I found out they take 3 weeks to pay so thought that was way too long. It’s a shame as it was relatively easy to setup the event by myself.
Ticketflap is just too expensive for me. Some people like them cause they have a big database, which is true, however I’ve built up my own database through The Underground, so I can utilise that.
Etickets.hk – It took me seconds to open an account and then could not login after that first day. I contacted their customer support three times and never got any follow up emails or facebook messages, so gave up.
PUTYOURSELF.in – the site looked nice, but I didn’t even try, as they “review” all events submitted and not every event submitted will be posted on their website – er how is that even good for business?? If you try this site and submit your event, they will take 2 days to let you know if you’ve passed their review 🙂 🙂
Ticketdood – confusing plans to choose from (why make it so complicated??) and for my range of pricing, it would cost me 10% (from ticketing fees and Stripe fees) – way too much!
I even spoke to a ticketing company based in the Philippines (ticket2me) which is using blockchain technology for their tickets. They are really nice people and the system looks fantastic but they don’t plan to have a HK-division for a couple of years…
After moaning about my lack of success with finding a ticketing company, I was lucky to be introduced to zicket.co. They have human beings I can speak to, and I get email replies quickly from them. They are fast with creating my event so I can start selling tickets. I found their pricing reasonable and their backend is easy to use and most of all, I really appreciate their event promotions (Btw I was not asked to ‘endorse’ them, this is genuine appreciation for a well-run business with people who have common sense!!!!)
Now I’m ready to focus on promoting upcoming events without worrying about ticketing! YAY!