# Elements vs Eventbrite

Eventbrite is a ticketing platform and event marketplace made by Eventbrite, Inc. An organizer publishes an event page, sells tickets by type and quantity, emails tickets to buyers and checks them in at the door with Eventbrite's organizer app. Eventbrite also lists events on its marketplace, which it says reaches a [consumer audience of 90M](https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/), and offers email campaigns, promo codes, ads and reporting. Free events are free to publish. On paid tickets, Eventbrite charges a service fee on each ticket, a share of the price plus a fixed amount, and a payment processing fee on each order, and the organizer chooses whether the buyer or the organizer pays them ([pricing](https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/)). Eventbrite Pro, for email marketing, is a monthly subscription.

Elements is not a ticketing marketplace. It is an integrated app environment for building web apps with an AI agent, and it includes the parts a ticketing app is made of: a Postgres database for shows, ticket types and orders, Stripe Checkout for payments, email templates sent through an SMTP provider such as Postmark, file uploads for posters, sign-in for staff, and live counts that update on every open screen. A venue can ask an agent for its own box office and run it on a server the venue controls.

On Eventbrite, the ticketing, the marketplace and the buyer's account belong to Eventbrite, and the price is a fee on every ticket. A ticketing app you build is yours, at a fixed monthly cost plus Stripe's fee per order, and it can share one database with your website and mailing list, so every buyer is on your list. What you give up is Eventbrite's marketplace. Eventbrite passes its fees to buyers by default, and for venues that keep that default, most of the saving goes to the buyers. A venue that passes the fees on pays more to run its own app, unless it charges a smaller fee of its own.

## What Eventbrite Gives You That Is Hard to Build

Eventbrite is a marketplace as well as software, and the marketplace half does not come with a box office you build.

- **Discovery.** Eventbrite lists your event where people browse for things to do, and puts its [consumer audience at 90M](https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/). A site of your own sells to the people you bring to it.
- **Free events cost nothing.** Eventbrite charges ["No fees for free events"](https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/). If your events are free, nothing here beats that.
- **Promotion tools.** Eventbrite offers ads in select markets, promo codes and audience tools tied to its marketplace.
- **No upkeep.** Eventbrite keeps ticketing running on the night a show sells out. With your own box office, that night is on you, even if an agent does the routine work.

## What Building It Looks Like

A ticketing app is a small set of parts: shows, ticket types, payments, tickets by email and a door list. What replaces each Eventbrite feature:

| Eventbrite feature | In an app you build with Elements |
|---|---|
| Event pages with posters, dates and ticket types | Pages in Elements HTML, with shows and ticket types in your Postgres database and posters uploaded through a form ([html](/learn/man/html), [database](/learn/man/database), [file upload recipe](/learn/man/recipes/file-upload)) |
| Ticket checkout without an account | [Stripe Checkout](/learn/man/payments/checkout), a payment page Stripe hosts, with tickets issued when the payment is fulfilled ([payments](/learn/man/payments)) |
| Tickets by email with a QR code | A background job that renders each ticket email in Elements HTML and hands it to an SMTP service such as Postmark ([email](/learn/man/email), [jobs](/learn/man/jobs)) |
| Tickets remaining | A LiveTable that updates every open browser as tickets sell ([livetable](/learn/man/livetable)) |
| Door check-in with a live count | A check-in page for staff phones, with checked-in counts kept in sync across every door ([livetable](/learn/man/livetable)) |
| Staff accounts | Sign-in with admin and door roles ([authentication recipe](/learn/man/recipes/authentication), [admin roles recipe](/learn/man/recipes/admin-roles)) |
| Sales reporting | Per-show sales figures, refreshed by a job and pushed live to the admin screen ([live dashboard recipe](/learn/man/recipes/live-dashboard)) |
| Email campaigns to past buyers | Email templates sent to the buyers already in your database ([email](/learn/man/email), [jobs](/learn/man/jobs)) |
| Sales tax | [Stripe Tax](https://stripe.com/tax/pricing) adds tax at checkout in the places you are registered |
| Fraud screening | Stripe [Radar](https://stripe.com/radar/pricing) |
| The marketplace, its browse and search, and Eventbrite's ads | No equivalent. This is Eventbrite's audience, and it stays with Eventbrite. |

Stripe charges a share of each successful card payment plus a fixed fee ([pricing](https://stripe.com/pricing)). Because tickets, the website and the mailing list are tables in the same database, every buyer of every show is on your list, and you can announce the next show to the people who came to the last one.

## The Demo: Gatestub

[Gatestub](https://elements.dev/demos/01a0f43a-6df4-7722-a448-0d34d942bb2f) is a ticketing app for a small music venue, built with Elements by an AI agent from one prompt. Fans see upcoming shows with posters, dates, door times and ticket types such as general admission and balcony, buy tickets with an email address and a card, no account needed, and get an email with one QR code per ticket. Admins create shows and ticket types and see sales per show. Door staff open a check-in page on a phone, scan a ticket with the camera or search by name, and see valid, already checked in, or not found, with a live count of checked in against sold.

Gatestub's prompt is on its demo page. Hand it to your agent and you have a box office on your laptop to adapt to your room.

## Adding It Up

*This is an example, not a customer.* A small music venue sells tickets on Eventbrite, runs its website on Squarespace and emails its list with Eventbrite Pro.

| Cost | How it charges |
|---|---|
| [Eventbrite](https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/) service fee | A share of each ticket's price plus a fixed fee per ticket |
| [Eventbrite](https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/) payment processing | A share of each order |
| [Eventbrite Pro](https://www.eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing/) | Email marketing, by plan |
| [Squarespace](https://www.squarespace.com/pricing) | By plan |

The venue's own app costs $100 a month for [Elements](/pricing), plus a server ([DigitalOcean pricing](https://www.digitalocean.com/pricing/droplets)) and an email provider to send the tickets ([Postmark pricing](https://postmarkapp.com/pricing)), and Stripe charges a share of each order plus a fixed fee ([pricing](https://stripe.com/pricing)). That one app replaces the website and the email tool too. Add up a month on each side at your own ticket volume.

Both sides charge something per ticket. Eventbrite charges a service fee and a payment processing fee on each one. With your own app, Stripe still charges for processing each order, but there is no service fee on top, and Elements charges nothing per ticket. So who pays Eventbrite's fees matters most. If the venue absorbs them, the service fee it no longer pays grows with every ticket it sells.

If the venue passes both fees to buyers, as Eventbrite does by default, Eventbrite costs the venue only the website and the email tool, and the venue's own app costs it more. In that case, what your own app offers is cheaper tickets for your fans and the list of everyone who comes. A venue that sells enough tickets can add a small fee of its own that covers the app while fans still pay less than they did in Eventbrite's fees. The [subscriptions overview](/vs/subscriptions) has other cases.

## When to Keep Eventbrite

- **Your events are free.** Eventbrite charges nothing for free events.
- **The marketplace sells your tickets.** If many of your buyers find you by browsing Eventbrite, your own site would start without them.
- **You pass the fee on and your buyers do not mind.** Eventbrite then costs you little, and running your own app costs more.
- **You run a few events a year.** The fees on a handful of shows can be less than running your own app every month.
- **You would rather not run software.** Eventbrite does the upkeep.

## Questions

### How does Eventbrite charge?

On paid tickets, Eventbrite charges a service fee on each ticket and a payment processing fee on each order. Free events are free. The organizer chooses whether buyers or the organizer pays the fees. Its rates are at eventbrite.com/organizer/pricing.

### Who saves money with a ticketing app of my own?

It depends on who pays Eventbrite's fees today. If the venue absorbs them, the venue saves. If the venue passes them to buyers, as Eventbrite does by default, the saving is mostly the buyers', who no longer pay Eventbrite's fees on each ticket, while the venue takes on Elements at $100 a month, a server and an email provider, plus Stripe's fee on each order.

### Can an Elements app email tickets with QR codes and check people in?

Yes. The Gatestub demo, built by an agent from one prompt, emails one QR code per ticket and has a door check-in page for phones that scans tickets with the camera and keeps a live count of checked in against sold. Elements sends email through an SMTP provider you choose, such as Postmark.

### Will my events still be discovered without Eventbrite?

Not through Eventbrite's marketplace. An app you build sells to the people who reach your site through your own mailing list, social posts and word of mouth. Some venues keep listing on Eventbrite for discovery while selling to regulars through their own app.

### What does it cost to run my own ticketing app?

Elements is $100 a month, which covers two licenses, one for the computer you build on and one for the server you deploy to. Add a server and an email provider such as Postmark, each priced on its own pricing page, and Stripe's fee on each order, listed at stripe.com/pricing. The build or buy overview at /vs/subscriptions explains how to add up the subscriptions it would replace.