Arts People vs. ThunderTix

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

The capability to check in customers using a simple phone app allows offloading a lot of box office tasks to unskilled ushers and volunteers. It's just circumspect for all our ticketing needs.

• 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

• Thundertix is a WONDERFUL price that allows us to sell more tickets and increase our profits. The pricing of Thundertix is lower cost than anything else in the market.
• Thundertix is always innovating and adding to features relevant to the current market.
• Thundertix has great customer service, especially if you are willing to pay the premium price for over the phone customer support.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

• For the money, I honestly don't have a single critique. Some of the larger companies offer a few more features, but we believe that most of those bells and whistles are not worth a significant increase in price.
• Our venue is a 160 seat venue. Thundertix is ideal for this. I do not know how Thundertix would translate to a 15,000 venue. It is not what we deal with. We are involved in some higher ticket events, but those are all General Admission so I do not have to deal with 15,000 reserved seats.

Incentivized

We have been with them for over a decade and have no interest in leaving.

ThunderTix is designed to work where you need it to work regardless of device or platform.

They are quick to respond to both calls and email. They also have a robust online set of documentation and tools that offer the possibility of finding your own answer. But, even if you don't use it, ThunderTix never asks the "did you check our online resources" questions. They never complain about emails or calls. They are there to help and do a fantastic job!

It was an easy transition that took less than a month from planning to implementation

• 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

AudienceView has some of the oldest and least efficient user interfaces I have ever seen. Theres 5 different websites for the same account to access different things that are all interlinked and need to be accessed together. Ticket Spice charges a higher per ticket cost for most ticket price ranges. ThunderTix is a flat rate while ticket spice is a percentage.

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

• It has greatly increased online sales
• We are break even but with only 1 event ran so far
• It has made teaching box office sellers easy

Incentivized