Eventbrite vs. Stride Events

When you’re looking for a platform to use for your event, Eventbrite probably comes to mind. Savvy customers often compare a few options to ensure they’re getting the service they need at the best deal.

Eventbrite and Stride Events have similar offerings with ticketing and reporting. Going beyond these features, each company has a different approach.

When reviewing Eventbrite’s website, its primary strengths are a flexible payout structure, integrations, and marketing to Eventbrite’s audience. However, its service fee is high.

In contrast, Stride Events offers robust event management services all in one place: merchandise and concessions sales and volunteer management. It also offers scalper and chargeback mitigation tools that help you prevent chargebacks. Stride Events’s service fee is noticeably lower than Eventbrite’s fee.

Fee and Payment Schedule

Eventbrite’s fees are 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket + 2.9% processing fee. There are no fees for free events. Event organizers can opt to pass the fee on to the cardholder or cover the fee themselves. Eventbrite collects all of its fees automatically.

Eventbrite also allows users to select their payout schedule. Options include twice per month, after each event, weekly, and instant.

In contrast, Stride Events is much cheaper. Its fee is 4.97% + $1.25 per ticket/registration. This fee includes credit card processing fees. It’s lower than Eventbrite’s overall 6.5% + $1.79 overall fee. Stride Events’s low fee makes it easier to appeal to a cost-sensitive audience.

Stride Events also does not charge its fee on cash or check transactions – it only applies to credit card transactions. Event organizers have the option to cover the fees themselves or pass them on to the credit card holder. Stride Events also collects all of its fees automatically. 

When it comes to the payout schedule, Stride Events pays event organizers twice per month. Events over 4,000 tickets or 3,000 registrations may be paid weekly.

Data Privacy and Security

Eventbrite and Stride Events are PCI-compliant, which means that financial transactions are processed securely and data is protected.

Stride Events also takes data privacy seriously. You put a lot of work into creating your email list, and it should belong to you. At Stride Events, all of your attendee and participant data is yours – Stride Events does not market third-party offers to your list and does not share it with any other event. This approach ensures that your marketing materials and messages don’t compete with other events.

In contrast, many of Eventbrite’s marketing tools rely on gathering attendee information through account creation and app use so they can market other events to Eventbrite users, or your attendees. While you may benefit from marketing to attendees at other events, this data sharing makes it hard for you to retain your audience event after event.

Marketing Tools

Eventbrite has many marketing tools that you can use to sell tickets and registrations. You can market to Eventbrite users through listings on the website, including its Collections pages, and in Eventbrite’s consumer app. Eventbrite also makes personalized recommendations of events to its users. Event organizers can even buy ads and use retargeting in your ad strategy.

Furthermore, people who’ve liked or followed your event on Eventbrite get automated notifications about your event.

In addition to these onsite marketing tools, Eventbrite offers email messaging. There are no contact limits, though daily send limits are 6,000 or 10,000. Eventbrite also offers integrations with other email service providers and social media marketing. For example, it offers an integration with Facebook and Instagram ads – when you’re running a multi-event ad, it automatically updates when your event sells out or you add another event.

Each Eventbrite event gets a customizable event page to market their event. It also offers promo codes.

Similar to Eventbrite, Stride Events offers email services to its users. You don’t have any limits on contacts or daily sends. You can also benefit from customizable email templates to take your emails to the next level.

Stride Events offers customizable marketing pages to each of its events. These pages include links to your ticketing, registration, and merchandise pages. They are also customizable with photos, videos, and text. You can display reviews of your event and a map of where it is. It’s also easy to add sponsor logos and offers to your marketing page. Even if you have a separate website for your event, these marketing pages help you appear in search engine results.

Stride Events also offers customizable promo codes, so you can set the number of uses allowed and the discount available. If you’re offering a group discount, you can create that separately so it automatically applies when an order meets the criteria. You can even display the group deal on your ticketing or registration page to encourage larger orders.

You can also buy display ads on Stride Events’s home page and event calendar page. We only allow one ad per page, so you’ll have exclusive access to our page visitors.

Additionally, Stride Events offers other marketing and growth tools that focus on turning your attendees into marketers for you. With its referral program, attendees can get a free registration or their ticket order free depending on how many friends and family that they get to buy tickets. You set the rebate rate for each ticket or registration. You can even see the ROI for how much you spent in rebates to how much revenue you generated.

Stride Events’s Share and Save feature makes it easy to generate organic buzz around your event – offer a $1-$2 discount for attendees in the purchase pathway when they share a link to your ticketing page with their Facebook friends.

Abandoned orders are a headache for event organizers. Stride Events tackles this challenge in two ways: a simple order process and automated emails to people who haven’t finished their order. The simple online order process is quick and easy to understand so it boosts your conversion rate. With automated email reminders, about 10-20 percent of incomplete orders become completed.

Stride Events also makes it easy to build an email list. Once you have a ticketing or registration page completed, you can start collecting emails even if you’re not ready to sell tickets or registrations yet. When you turn on this feature, people who visit your page to buy tickets can sign up for an email notification when sales open. They’ll receive an automated email when sales open, so they can make their purchase on your first day of sales.

Reporting

Eventbrite offers robust reporting tools – you can track onsite sales, check-in, and marketing stats. You can also customize your reports to get the data you need. All reports use real-time data. 

Similar to Eventbrite, Stride Events offers robust reporting tools. You can see onsite sales reports by box office, track retention rates, see financial performance year over year, heatmaps of where sales are, and more. You can also create custom reports so you have the details you need.

Support

Eventbrite offers support over the phone and via online chat. Stride Events offers dedicated support from your account manager listed at the bottom of your event dashboard.

Connected Apps

Eventbrite offers an app for event organizers and participants. Its consumer app helps people find local events, sign up for events, and see what events friends are going to. Its organizer app makes it easy to monitor ticket sales and event attendance.

Stride Events also offers apps for both attendees and organizers. Attendees can manage their tickets and orders through the app – including ticket transfers and sending scanning access for tickets.

Organizers can scan tickets, sell tickets and registrations, and sell merchandise or concessions through the Stride Events app. 

Ticketing and Seat Maps

Eventbrite’s tools allow you to design your own venue map and embed its forms on your website. You can sell different types of tickets, including group tickets, and you can design the appearance of your tickets. Eventbrite also uses QR codes with its ticketing.

Similarly, Stride Events makes it easy to embed your ticketing or registration forms on your site. It’s easy to work with your account manager to create and set-up your seat map. You can include accessible seating and reserved seats in your seat map. You can even create early access codes to allow sponsors or loyal customers access to tickets early.

You can also design your tickets by adding sponsor logos and your logo. You can also create QR code posters to streamline ticket sales – reduce lines at the box office or even work with local businesses to sell tickets with posted QR codes.

Registration

Like with its ticketing forms, Stride Events makes it easy to embed your registration form on your site. With Stride Events’s registration forms, participants can register multiple people at a time so they have an easy checkout process. Stride Events also supports series registration so that people can register for more than one event or program at a time.

You can also use the registration form to create teams. This capability is especially useful if you’re organizing a tournament. Stride Events registration forms also support multiple categories (e.g. vendor, sponsor, performer, etc.), so anyone who wants to participate at your event can.

Eventbrite’s website focused on its ticketing features, so there was limited information on its registration capabilities.

Merchandise and Concessions

Eventbrite supports onsite merchandise sales, which is helpful for any items you sell at your event.

Stride Events also supports onsite merchandise sales. Its software can also handle concessions, too. Beyond onsite sales, you can opt to add merchandise to your registration or ticketing forms, and even sell them separately from an online store.

These robust capabilities make it easy to sell swag year-round and make sales at the same time as people buy tickets or register.

Additional Services

In addition to its ticketing and registration services, Eventbrite offers AI-powered tools and integrations with social media and other marketing platforms. Organizers can also benefit from the ability to create and use its software for its event. Eventbrite also offers organizers a personal profile that they can use to connect with attendees.

In addition to its ticketing and registration services, Stride Events also offers membership software for processing annual memberships for clubs and other organizations. 

You can also use its volunteer management software Come Volunteer to organize and coordinate with volunteers. Create jobs and shifts. Then, use an online form to get volunteers signed up. Send emails to communicate effectively with volunteers. All while tracking progress towards filling your volunteer needs.

Stride Events also offers several features that help you mitigate scalping and chargebacks. You can limit the number of tickets someone can purchase in a single order and delay emailing tickets until the day of the event. You can even block buyers who are scalpers or have issued chargebacks in the past – they won’t be able to buy tickets to your event through Stride Events’s platform.

Stride Events also offers white label services, so you can use Stride Event’s services with your logo and branding.

Conclusion

Eventbrite and Stride Events have similar offerings when it comes to ticketing and reporting. Beyond that, Eventbrite’s strengths lie in its integrations and audience of users that you can tap into to increase your attendance.

In contrast, Stride Events offers more robust event management tools including merchandise and concessions sales, scalper and chargeback mitigation, and volunteer management software. Stride Events protects your attendee information by not using it for our own marketing or marketing for any other event. Instead, you can use Stride Events’s tools to increase conversions by turning your attendees into marketers for your event.

Stride Events is an excellent fit for you, especially if you’re looking to protect your attendee list and need robust event management tools that are all in one place. 

Plus, Stride Events offers a lower fee than Eventbrite.