A Waterloo, Ont.-based startup is looking to top companies such as Eventbrite by launching a new event management platform that brings all event-related management functions together in one place.
Eventastic is about more than just selling tickets to an event said Randy Bird, the company’s president – although it certainly does that. But it also provides greater revenue opportunities to event organizers by also giving them the ability to do merchandise sales and silent auctions from the same platform.
“Our biggest difference is that we bundle everything together and we have some things that are unique, such as the gamification of ticket sales to incent your volunteer ticket sellers,” said Bird. “It’s a great tool to gamify sales and reward people putting in the effort, either by giving them a prize or a cut of sales.”
Another differentiating feature Bird points to is Eventastic’s online ticketing kiosk. While some competitors will make event organizers drive registration traffic to the vendor’s website, Eventastic allows organizers to create a widget they can drop into their own website.
“It doesn’t drive people away from your website,” said Bird.
While Eventastic isn’t the only player in this space, Bird said they’re more vanilla and easy to use than some of their competitors.
“We’ve built in video and photo sharing and integrated social media, ticket kiosks, and gamification, and we really want to expand the toolset,” said Bird.
Many of the services provides by Eventastic are free for event organizers. The monetization model is primarily around ticket sales. Stripe is used for payment processing, and organizers pay a ticketing fee of 25 to 99 cents per ticket, and a commission of 2.5 per cent on merchandise that is capped – Bird said the commission never averages more than $9.99 on any one item so a $2,000 item can be auctioned profitably.
Eventastic got its start as software to organize weddings, but Bird said they realized the applications for the platform were broader so it has now been expanded to all kinds of events. He added that it’s been designed to be turnkey for event organizers to begin using right away.
They’re also exploring the white label market, where charities could embed the solution in their website and allow supporters to organize their own fundraising events and campaigns in support of the charity.
