July 19, 2018

Best business decision we've made

Verified User

Administrator in Social Media

Non-Profit Organization Management Company, 1-10 employees

Score 10 out of 10

Vetted Review

Verified User

Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Redtwist Theatre in Chicago uses Arts People for all its ticketing and donations. We sell show tickets online and at the box office, season packages, gift certificates and use it for a customer database. It puts all our needs into one, reasonably-priced package. We have complete control over last minute changes and special offer codes. It is completely integrated with Constant Contact for up-to-date marketing. Unlike other ticket management systems, friendly, knowledgable, personal tech support is available whenever we need it, by email or phone. Their staff will walk you through any issues or questions and will set aside training for box office personnel upon request. They send out weekly updates (improvements) which is awesome, and they have even developed a new feature for us by request, which became a system-wide feature.

Pros and Cons

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.

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

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.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Eventbrite, Brown Paper Tickets, Vendini and Constant Contact

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.

Other Software Used

Constant Contact, Adobe Acrobat DC, Google Drive

Deployment Types	Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating Systems	Unspecified
Mobile Application	No
Supported Countries	USA, Canada
Supported Languages	English

Consumers	0%
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)	60%
Mid-Size Companies (51-500 employees)	40%
Enterprises (more than 500 employees)	0%

Arts People

Bizzabo

Cvent Event Diagramming

Neon CRM

Eventbrite

Neon Fundraise

Salesforce.org Nonprofit Cloud

OneCause

Blackbaud eTapestry

Whova

WorkCast Producer+

Bizly

TryBooking