Arts People vs. Zoom Events & Webinars

Arts People is one of the best business decisions our theatre has ever made. It relieves staff of some of the tedious, time-consuming tasks while increasing the ease of selling tickets and subscriptions. That's our goal--to sell tickets easily, in a user-friendly manner at a reasonable cost. That's what Arts People allows us to do. It works for tiny venues (to greet each guest personally) as well as huge venues (ticket scanning solution). It is less appropriate for a one-time event. An Arts People user should have an ongoing series of events to take advantage of all the features (it even has a membership feature) and the time for training.

Incentivized

I had an issue with my calendar syncing to Zoom Workplace for a while, that was annoying, but it resolved itself someway. Maybe an update. The invite feature is week when in a call, my team never receives them, I manually always have to send a link. I also do not get Zoom call notifications so I am late to meetings often. Too much work to manually find that feature, wish it was a default setting like Teams. I prefer Zoom Workplace because I think it works faster, is smoother, and I prefer the video settings UI over other platforms. Everyone else makes it too complicated to change backgrounds or blur as necessary. The adjustment for low light is also a huge win.

Incentivized

• Their customer service is unsurpassed. Sometimes several folks will be working on different aspects of a complicated request, to address all the details. Once things are exactly the way I want it, as in season subscription package sales, a representative checks in to make sure we're satisfied. Only then is the ticket closed.
• They have a very comprehensive, full featured ticketing system for all types of events and venues. Their dynamic door list is our favorite feature--no static printed door lists for us. That helps us greet each patron with up-to-date information and check them off the list. While my box officers are doing that, I can be at a remote location and see in real time who has arrived. We can make collaborative decisions about, for instance, holding the curtain for a critics arrival or adding a chair for an unexpected guest of a ticket-holder. We can keep a couple of tickets on hold for box officer discretion to address those unforeseen ticket window requests. Great flexibility which allows us to be efficient while giving good customer service to our patrons.
• Even though the system is full-featured, it is not beyond the skills of those who considers themselves non-technical. Two sessions of training will get a box officer up-and-running. Because there are different levels of access, we don't have to worry about someone changing essential programming while they are checking in patrons.
• They made their ticket landing page look like our website, so people don't even realize that they have been taken somewhere else. Plus, the patron can easily navigate back to our actual site, seamlessly.

Incentivized

• Easy data entry using imported CSV files
• Full speaker and session images and text, with individual itineraries for attendees.
• Duplicate the structure and format of an existing event for your next event, or create an event template to easily replicate future events
• Automated language caption translation on-the-fly for a growing list of languages

Incentivized

• Anything I've asked for, I've gotten so I don't see any need for improvement at the moment.

Incentivized

• I will we could add registration disclaimer language to the Webinar templates.
• Some of the customization and setup features are difficult to find.
• I would like to add someone to help me run webinars without paying for them to have their own webinar platform. We should be able to buy one platform and both of us log into it and setup and run webinars from it.

Incentivized

We will be renewing with Zoom as long as it continues to meet our needs for client and lead outreach needs in a robust manner. With little error and an easy to use interface, Zoom has met our needs and exceeded our expectations. The cost is right and with a short learning curve, Zoom has been an easy decision to make and maintain.

Incentivized

Zoom [Video Webinar] is easy and secure to use. It has all those feature which can make a virtual meeting go smooth. Zoom [Video Webinar] provides one click join option and easy screen sharing. It also has strong tools to restrict meeting controls and is secure enough to let you start with it. Zoom [Video Webinar] in relation to other video webinar application is easy to use and lightweight, its mobile application is also easy to use.

Zoom Video Webinar provides users with updates on their newest functions as part of an email subscribed list. They provide you with up-to-date information on all their latest changes and functions for ease [in] transition. Zoom Video Webinar can be contacted easily for any questions or concerns you may have with the platform and the response is timely.

Incentivized

Implementation was very feasible during our initial usage of the Zoom after COVID-19.

Incentivized

• Eventbrite is better for single, one-time events but isn't as full-featured as Arts People.
• Brown Paper Tickets is clunky to use and harder to change globally when an event changes or adds shows.
• Vendini--never used it because when I researched 10 different ticketing companies, they were the least helpful. They didn't listen to our needs, and instead told us what we should have. They were much more expensive than Arts People as well.
• Constant Contact is truly great as a marketing tool. But their events feature was awkward and the payment method was Paypal. However, since it's integrated with Arts People, we can use Arts People for sales and Constant Contact for marketing.

Incentivized

Zoom is a good option compared to these other softwares as it is more universally accepted. The advantage of this is that most people use Zoom, making it easier to arrange a call with external stakeholders. Microsoft Teams is often very unreliable, and Zoom seems to work more consistently compared to the other options.

Incentivized

• Positive - Our online vs phone call or in-person sales have increased steadily over the past 4 years since using Arts People. Less labor for us, more sales.
• Positive - People are buying their tickets earlier than they used to - to reserve a coveted seat in a possible sold-out performance. That makes planning our marketing easier--whether to offer HotTix or special coded offers for shows that have fewer sales.
• Negative - Some older folks still have problems with redeeming their subscription tickets for individual tickets without our personal assistance. We've been trying to pinpoint what that is--and Arts People helped us make a few adjustments. Sometimes people don't like to log in. That's one of the challenges of an integrated system. If the patron's profile changes in a way that impacts their subscription links, we need to step in. However, the overall time it has saved us in managing subscriptions is immeasurable.

Incentivized

• Our main need that Zoom Webinar meets is the need to have frequent company video webinars, and it's a need that Zoom meets far better than any other tool available.
• The branding features available allow us to keep branding for internal and external webinars strong, unlike other tools which have minimal branding capabilities for webinars.
• Zoom's new Events offering makes it easy to set up engaging and interactive hubs for multi-day webinars.

Incentivized