Selling your own event: which platform fits which scale?

Anyone planning a first workshop for 30 attendees has different requirements than an association with 800 concert-goers a quarter. And yet organisers of both sizes often end up on the same platform — sometimes with the result that smaller ones overpay and larger ones hit feature ceilings.

When is a professional ticketing platform actually worth it?

The threshold isn't attendee count, it's the payment flow. As long as tickets are sold by invoice or bank transfer, a Google Sheet plus a PDF generator is enough. Once credit cards or PayPal enter the picture, the effort grows fast: payment processing, refunds, bookkeeping, cancellations — each needs to work separately.

A platform handles all of that from the first ticket sold. The question is not "do I need one?" but "which platform scales with me?". Concretely:

• Up to ~50 attendees per event and irregular scheduling: Eventbrite or evensos. Neither has a monthly fixed fee, only a per-ticket charge.
• 50–500 attendees and regular sales: Reservix or evensos make sense because the service fee per ticket is lower than Eventbrite's and the accounting exports are more robust.
• Above 500 attendees or for recurring tour logistics: specialist providers like Eventim Light or a white-label system pay off because the per-ticket margin starts to matter.

What do the common providers actually cost?

The fee structures differ in ways that aren't always obvious at first glance.

• Eventbrite typically charges 3.7 percent service fee plus €1.79 per ticket, plus 2.5 percent for payment processing. On a €25 ticket that's roughly €4.30 in fees.
• Reservix asks about 9 percent service fee from the buyer plus €1.90 advance sales fee; the organiser pays no direct fee.
• evensos sits at 5 percent platform fee plus Stripe processing (1.5 percent + €0.25). On €25: about €2.40.

The question of who carries the fee — buyer or organiser — is separate from its size. Eventbrite and Reservix pass the fee to the buyer by default; evensos shows it transparently as a separate line.

What matters besides price?

Three points rarely get checked properly before signing on.

Payout timing. When does the money arrive? Eventbrite typically pays out 4–5 working days after the event. Reservix only after the event ends, all together. Stripe Connect-based solutions (planned at evensos) can support daily payouts — relevant during long pre-sale periods when the organiser needs liquidity for preparations.

Buyer data. Which platform gives me what data? Eventbrite provides full attendee lists. Reservix only restricted lists because they run their own marketing campaigns to buyers. A question worth asking: am I allowed to contact attendees for my next event without going through the platform? The answer directly affects building an in-house marketing list.

Refund handling. When an attendee returns a ticket, the platform fee usually doesn't come back — it stays with the platform. For small events this is a footnote; for tours with high cancellation rates it becomes a significant cost. Some platforms allow no-refund policies, others enforce a 14-day withdrawal window — which is legally usually required for consumer transactions anyway, but implementations vary.

A pragmatic order of evaluation: first project expected attendees over 12 months, then run the numbers on a concrete example ticket, then answer the question of long-term attendee access. Only after that compare UI — it's secondary, because a bad UI hurts less after familiarity than two percent of unnecessary fees.