Fugue Lab vs Eventbrite
Sell tickets on your own site, not on a marketplace
Eventbrite puts your concert on their platform, wraps it in their fees, and keeps the relationship with your buyers. For a music organization that sells the same audience season after season, that trade gets expensive.
The short version
Eventbrite is a general-purpose events marketplace. Listing is easy, and its published US fees stack up per paid ticket: a 3.7% service fee, plus $1.79 per ticket, plus 2.9% payment processing, usually surfaced to your patrons at checkout. Fugue Lab ticketing runs on your own website for a flat monthly rate plus 1.5% per ticket (card processing via your own Stripe account), with QR check-in, reporting, and every buyer landing in your audience record next to your donors and subscribers.
Side by side
| Fugue Lab | Eventbrite | |
|---|---|---|
| Fees per paid ticket | 1.5% per ticket, plus standard Stripe card processing paid to Stripe. | Published US fees: 3.7% service fee + $1.79 per ticket + 2.9% payment processing. |
| Where tickets sell | On your own website, in your own design, on your own domain. | On an Eventbrite event page, alongside other organizations’ events. |
| Your audience data | Every buyer is one record with their email and giving history. Yours, exportable, free. | Buyer relationships live in Eventbrite; attendees are also Eventbrite users it can market to. |
| The money | Straight to your own Stripe account at sale time. | Collected by Eventbrite and paid out on its schedule after the event. |
| Free events and RSVPs | No per-ticket fee. RSVP and check-in included. | Free tickets are free on Eventbrite as well. |
| Event night | QR check-in and reporting, with Concierge covering full box-office staffing if you want it. | Organizer app for check-in; support is a platform queue. |
Comparison reflects publicly available information at the time of writing. See packages for Fugue Lab pricing.
Where Eventbrite fits
Eventbrite earns its fees when discovery matters: a public event that strangers should stumble into while browsing a city’s listings. Some organizations keep a listing there for that reason alone. A season concert series is different: your buyers are your own audience, they come from your email list and your website, and paying marketplace fees on people you already reached is the part that stops making sense.
How switching works
We map your season
Events, tiers, capacities, comps, and how your current Eventbrite checkout is configured.
Ticketing goes live on your site
Your events sell on your own domain with your branding, connected to your own Stripe account, tested before on-sale.
Your audience comes home
Past attendee exports import into your audience record, so next season’s announcement reaches everyone who came before.
Questions that come up
What do the fees actually look like on a real ticket?
On a $25 ticket: with us, 1.5% is 38 cents, plus standard Stripe processing paid to Stripe. On Eventbrite’s published US fees, the service fee and per-ticket charge alone are about $2.72 before its 2.9% processing. Multiply by a season of tickets and the difference funds real programming.
Can patrons still pay the fees instead of us?
Yes. Like most ticketing, you choose whether fees are absorbed in the price or added at checkout. Ours are small enough that many organizations simply absorb them.
We rely on Eventbrite for discovery. Do we lose that?
Nothing stops you keeping a listing there for discovery while your real box office runs on your own site. Organizations that sell mostly to their own audience usually find the listing was doing less than the fees implied.
Who runs it?
Today our team sets up and runs ticketing for you as part of the engagement, with self-serve controls rolling out. Full box-office operations, on-sale management and event-day check-in included, live in the Concierge tier.
More comparisons
Bring the box office home
Book a call and bring last season’s ticket volume. You get the fee math for your actual numbers and a concrete picture of ticketing on your own site.
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