Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review RegOnline is a great tool for multi-track events. It is very user friendly and the software makes it easy to set up multiple tracks. It's even easy to check the progress of your event and make changes without impacting the registration process. The ability to collect data that can be taken back to the C-suite is also nice.
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review RegOnline is able to handle credit card payments, cashing out once per month by sending a check to me (paid to the university) via mail. This was the main reason that we needed the site, and it is it's best feature. Customizable options were added this year, and though a little confusing at first they have been great at adding additional details in headers on pages (on pages that I formerly was unable to provide additional instructions). The registration system itself has been useful for managing registrants, and being able to easily update those who still chose to pay 'offline' via check or wire transfer (allowing me to still easily see all paid participants). Read full review Cons Anything I've asked for, I've gotten so I don't see any need for improvement at the moment. Read full review You can't easily access a registration unless you click on the edit pencil. It appears that the title of the event is linked but if you click on it you always get an error message. This appearance of being linked should be removed because it causes frustration. Same with the event number. It appears to be a link that can be opened but it goes to the same error message. RegOnline did a big change about 18 months ago which wreaked havoc with registrations. A lot of functionality was lost and it took about a year for them to recover from that. At that time, our education and conferences department got so frustrated, we starting using another registration platform which was not a good experience either and then in early 2018 switched to Cvent. It isn't easy to get in touch with support. Read full review Support Rating We've never had an issue they couldn't resolve in one phone call.
Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.Read full review The Department also uses RegFox for training events as well as conferences. One of the main reasons they use RegFox is because of the price, it only charges $0.99 per registration whereas RegOnline charges $3.55 per registration. Because we are a state agency, that can make a big difference to our budget. That being said it is easier to build multi-track events in RegOnline.
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review Everyone has been incredibly happy being able to pay on credit card! Prior to RegOnline, our only payment options were by check, money order, or wire transfer. I personally had to deposit many, many more personal checks to the university on behalf of participants. So participants have been happy with the credit card option (it was requested by many every year until the switch to RegOnline), but it also has been very helpful at saving me time as well. The negative impact has been that we had a free registration page set up prior to RegOnline, that we dropped fully. So while some participants still pay by check or wire transfer, we still must pay the 'per participant' fee even for participants not paying through RegOnline. Read full review ScreenShots