Should I Build It Should I Build It
27 Apr 2025
Events

Open source event ticketing platform to sell tickets to events

Confidence
Engagement
Net use signal
Net buy signal

Idea type: Freemium

People love using similar products but resist paying. You’ll need to either find who will pay or create additional value that’s worth paying for.

Should You Build It?

Build but think about differentiation and monetization.

Your are here

You're stepping into the event ticketing platform space with an open-source approach. The good news is that there are similar products out there (n_matches = 6), suggesting a validated market. However, this also means you'll face competition. With an average of 13 comments per product, you can expect high engagement from people checking out your launch. Given you're in the "Freemium" category, anticipate users loving the free aspects but potentially resisting paying. The core challenge will be convincing them to upgrade to a paid version or finding alternative monetization strategies.

Recommendations

  1. Given the open-source nature of your platform, prioritize building a strong community around it. Engage actively with users, solicit feedback, and encourage contributions. This can provide valuable insights, accelerate development, and foster a sense of ownership, making it more difficult for users to switch to competitors.
  2. Carefully identify which users or event types benefit the most from the free version of your ticketing platform. This involves understanding their specific needs and pain points, which can be gathered through surveys, user interviews, and analysis of platform usage data. Use this data to refine your product and target your upselling efforts.
  3. Based on your findings, create premium features that significantly enhance the experience for those high-value users. Examples include advanced analytics, priority support, whitelabeling, or integrations with other marketing and CRM tools. Hi.Events users appreciated detailed analytics, this is something to keep in mind. Make the upgrade a no-brainer for them.
  4. Explore the possibility of charging teams or organizations instead of individual users. This can provide a more sustainable revenue model, especially if your platform offers features that facilitate collaboration and event management for larger groups. Highlight the value proposition for teams, such as centralized billing, access control, and team-specific reporting.
  5. Offer personalized help, consulting, or training services to event organizers who need additional support. This can be a valuable source of revenue and can also help to increase customer satisfaction and retention. Position yourself as a trusted advisor and provide customized solutions to their specific event needs.
  6. Experiment with different pricing tiers and models to find the optimal balance between revenue and user adoption. A/B test different approaches with small groups of users to gauge their willingness to pay for different features and benefits. Consider offering discounts or promotions to incentivize early adoption and gather feedback.
  7. Address concerns around data privacy and security early on. Implement robust security measures and be transparent about your data handling practices. This is especially important given the sensitive nature of event ticketing data and the increasing focus on data privacy regulations. Make sure to include integrations beyond Stripe.
  8. Focus on providing excellent documentation and tutorials. According to the analysis of similar products, a lack of documentation is a major hindrance to adoption, so great docs will give you a major competitive advantage. Also, the easier you make it for them to use your solution the more likely they are to stick around. Consider adding shareable event pages for organizers.

Questions

  1. Given the concerns around data privacy expressed by users of similar platforms, what specific security measures will you implement to ensure the safety of user data, and how will you communicate these measures to your users to build trust?
  2. Considering the mixed feedback on PHP and Laravel in the Hi.Events discussion, what are the key technical trade-offs of your chosen technology stack, and how will you address potential scalability or performance challenges as your platform grows?
  3. Based on the identified needs of your target users, what are the three most impactful premium features you plan to develop to drive conversions from the free to paid version of your platform, and how will you measure their effectiveness?

Your are here

You're stepping into the event ticketing platform space with an open-source approach. The good news is that there are similar products out there (n_matches = 6), suggesting a validated market. However, this also means you'll face competition. With an average of 13 comments per product, you can expect high engagement from people checking out your launch. Given you're in the "Freemium" category, anticipate users loving the free aspects but potentially resisting paying. The core challenge will be convincing them to upgrade to a paid version or finding alternative monetization strategies.

Recommendations

  1. Given the open-source nature of your platform, prioritize building a strong community around it. Engage actively with users, solicit feedback, and encourage contributions. This can provide valuable insights, accelerate development, and foster a sense of ownership, making it more difficult for users to switch to competitors.
  2. Carefully identify which users or event types benefit the most from the free version of your ticketing platform. This involves understanding their specific needs and pain points, which can be gathered through surveys, user interviews, and analysis of platform usage data. Use this data to refine your product and target your upselling efforts.
  3. Based on your findings, create premium features that significantly enhance the experience for those high-value users. Examples include advanced analytics, priority support, whitelabeling, or integrations with other marketing and CRM tools. Hi.Events users appreciated detailed analytics, this is something to keep in mind. Make the upgrade a no-brainer for them.
  4. Explore the possibility of charging teams or organizations instead of individual users. This can provide a more sustainable revenue model, especially if your platform offers features that facilitate collaboration and event management for larger groups. Highlight the value proposition for teams, such as centralized billing, access control, and team-specific reporting.
  5. Offer personalized help, consulting, or training services to event organizers who need additional support. This can be a valuable source of revenue and can also help to increase customer satisfaction and retention. Position yourself as a trusted advisor and provide customized solutions to their specific event needs.
  6. Experiment with different pricing tiers and models to find the optimal balance between revenue and user adoption. A/B test different approaches with small groups of users to gauge their willingness to pay for different features and benefits. Consider offering discounts or promotions to incentivize early adoption and gather feedback.
  7. Address concerns around data privacy and security early on. Implement robust security measures and be transparent about your data handling practices. This is especially important given the sensitive nature of event ticketing data and the increasing focus on data privacy regulations. Make sure to include integrations beyond Stripe.
  8. Focus on providing excellent documentation and tutorials. According to the analysis of similar products, a lack of documentation is a major hindrance to adoption, so great docs will give you a major competitive advantage. Also, the easier you make it for them to use your solution the more likely they are to stick around. Consider adding shareable event pages for organizers.

Questions

  1. Given the concerns around data privacy expressed by users of similar platforms, what specific security measures will you implement to ensure the safety of user data, and how will you communicate these measures to your users to build trust?
  2. Considering the mixed feedback on PHP and Laravel in the Hi.Events discussion, what are the key technical trade-offs of your chosen technology stack, and how will you address potential scalability or performance challenges as your platform grows?
  3. Based on the identified needs of your target users, what are the three most impactful premium features you plan to develop to drive conversions from the free to paid version of your platform, and how will you measure their effectiveness?

  • Confidence: High
    • Number of similar products: 6
  • Engagement: High
    • Average number of comments: 13
  • Net use signal: 11.7%
    • Positive use signal: 11.7%
    • Negative use signal: 0.0%
  • Net buy signal: 0.0%
    • Positive buy signal: 0.0%
    • Negative buy signal: 0.0%

This chart summarizes all the similar products we found for your idea in a single plot.

The x-axis represents the overall feedback each product received. This is calculated from the net use and buy signals that were expressed in the comments. The maximum is +1, which means all comments (across all similar products) were positive, expressed a willingness to use & buy said product. The minimum is -1 and it means the exact opposite.

The y-axis captures the strength of the signal, i.e. how many people commented and how does this rank against other products in this category. The maximum is +1, which means these products were the most liked, upvoted and talked about launches recently. The minimum is 0, meaning zero engagement or feedback was received.

The sizes of the product dots are determined by the relevance to your idea, where 10 is the maximum.

Your idea is the big blueish dot, which should lie somewhere in the polygon defined by these products. It can be off-center because we use custom weighting to summarize these metrics.

Similar products

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Hi.Events – Open-Source Event Management and Ticketing Platform

07 Jul 2024 Events

Users are impressed with the one-click deployment and ease of use for non-tech individuals. They appreciate the passion behind the project and its feature-rich nature, despite some broken links in guides. The domain cost is considered reasonable. There's interest in the project's goals, its backstory, and improvements over the creator's previous project, Attendize. Hi.Events is seen as a flexible and customizable alternative, inspired by Tito. Questions were raised about the choice of PHP and Laravel for the backend, with the latter chosen for its ecosystem. A beta cloud version is anticipated.

Users reported issues with the product, including broken links in the 2nd and 3rd guides, high domain costs, abandonment by new owners, missed opportunity for a complete rewrite, poor code quality making customization difficult, and cumbersome coupon management and ticket stages aggregation.

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Introducing Hi.Events 🌟 An open-source, feature-packed event management platform. Perfect for all events, from conferences to yoga classes 🧘 Say goodbye to crazy service fees, and take back control of your events and data 🚀

Hi.Events' Product Hunt launch garnered overwhelmingly positive feedback, with users frequently praising its open-source nature, affordability, and flexibility as an Eventbrite alternative. The embeddable ticket widget and seamless event management features were repeatedly highlighted as valuable, especially for small event organizers. Users appreciated the lack of service fees, customization options, and features like detailed analytics, Stripe integration, XLSX export, and intuitive check-in tools. Some users inquired about replacing existing platforms like Luma, Evvnt, and Meetup and requested detailed tutorials and mobile app.

Users expressed concerns about Hi.Events' data privacy and security. There were inquiries regarding integrations beyond Stripe, analytics features, and a cloud-based version. A suggestion was made to create shareable event pages for organizers. Some users were uncertain about Hi.Events' capabilities compared to existing platforms, and the lack of detailed tutorials was noted as a hindrance to new user onboarding.

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SQUIZITO is a decentralized event ticketing platform that lets organizers keep 100% of ticket sales. Powered by NFT-based tickets and gSQUI governance, it revolutionizes events with transparency, no fees, and long-term value growth through Web3.

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