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 The OneCause auction platform works well for events of seemingly varying sizes (we are a mid-sized organization, but it seems to scale well). You can run a variety of things within the platform (live auction, silent auction, fund appeal, raffle, etc.), but one should be aware that there are limits to the software and we were forced to worked around these limitations.
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 Easy online bidding process for our participants (especially using the older software). Detailed tracking and organization for our auction staff to manage everything in one place. Excellent and proactive customer service in the months leading up to the event and in-person at the event itself. 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 Options to personalize the text descriptions used in the registration process. Some of the wording is confusing and there's no option to edit those text boxes. The set-up for the silent auction options is not exactly the easiest to follow for new users. Having some concrete examples or use cases to consult when first setting up would be helpful. It would be great to have a "check for errors" functionality when you're going through the auction set-up. For example, for some reason when our live auction was set up, two items didn't have "Apply Sales Tax" checked and so they got erroneously listed without the sales tax. Given that ALL the other items had sales tax applied, it seems like it should be easy to have something run in the background that flags potential errors for review. Read full review Likelihood to Renew It is ultimately not my call, and we are switching Donor CRMs/fundraising platforms so not sure what that will mean for OneCause.
Read full review Usability I give it this rating because when I first started using OneCause, I was concerned it might be complicated and I could make mistakes that would negatively impact our organization. OneCause's usability has made me feel confident and stress-free in every event we use it for because it is easy to use.
Read full review Reliability and Availability Support staff is there to help out and it is nice knowing there are available on event day as well
Read full review Performance This feature is amazing. Nice to have reports immediately when the event (auction) is over
Read full review Support Rating They have a fantastic tech support team who typically responds to your questions and concerns within minutes. They are available for emails, phone calls, and have also created videos that walked me through my problems. When you initially get started with their peer2peer platform, they provide you with a consultant whose job is to walk you through setting up your first campaign. You al so receive a specific to you Customer Success Manager who is there for any and all questions and will help you until you find the answers needed!
Read full review In-Person Training Very thorough and made sure I understood the process. Staff were very patient as well listening to my questions and understanding certain procedures. As an older person, I can be scared of technology, but this process was very easy to understand and I feel very confident using it.
Read full review Online Training Very thorough and nice to have a refresher when needed. Nice to see when I haven't used in a little while and refresh my mind how to update.
Read full review Implementation Rating I don't know if my insights are key but I can say that implementation was done in-house without any outside support for the solution. The staff influencing the solution had very little technical expertise and ability as well which showed just how easily the software was to implement.
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 We had used
GiveSmart in the past and had issues with connectivity during our event, when our contract was up we decided to investigate other platforms, we looked at more than just those 3, but can't recall the others.
Givebutter - I absolutely LOVE
Givebutter , so simple to use, but it does not offer an auction component and we didn't want to have 2 different systems to use.
Classy - this platform seemed nice but extremely pricy and we still had to do "add-ons". We could not afford it. We went with OneCause in the end because of the simplicity, and training provided and wanted to give the product a try over sticking with
GiveSmart . We are so happy to have made the switch.
Read full review Scalability The product has everything I need
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 Once we joined OneCause for our event fundraising platform we never looked back. Each year we've experienced growth with not only the funds raised but also in the improvement of the event execution. We've learned a tremendous amount for in-person fundraising success through the OneCause team and that has led us to explore virtual and campaign options. The onsite event support has proven so valuable to our event success we have begun budgeting to have that same level of support at all our in-person events. The OneCause event team guides you well during the planning phase and then provides top-notch support and peace of mind the night/day of the event. Read full review ScreenShots