ToGather vs Eventbrite: ticketing with a community attached
Eventbrite sells tickets. ToGather sells tickets too — and gives your community a home between events.
Eventbrite is the default ticketing platform for paid events worldwide. The marketplace works. The check-in app works. The mobile experience is mature.
It's also the platform whose fees keep showing up in event-organizer complaint threads. Here's the trade we're proposing instead.
Fees, the unvarnished version
On a $50 paid ticket, Eventbrite charges:
- $3.64 service fee (3.7% + $1.79)
- $1.45 processing fee (2.9% of order)
- Total: $5.09 — about 10.18% of face value
On a $20 ticket the per-ticket flat fee dominates and the effective rate climbs to ~13.6%.
ToGather's target is single-digit on paid events, with no monthly subscription required to reach it. The same paid event runs cheaper for the organizer, or the same ticket price costs the attendee less. Both, in most cases.
What you get besides tickets
| Eventbrite | ToGather | |
|---|---|---|
| Free events | Free | Free |
| Paid event effective fee | ~10–14% | Single-digit % goal |
| Native community / channel layer | – | ✓ (channels w/ admins, members, balance, social links) |
| Recurring paid memberships | – | ✓ (subscription type + frequency on channel) |
| Sponsor inventory in-platform | – | ✓ (sponsor entity + tiers) |
| Map for in-person events | Address text | Native map |
| Email marketing | Pro add-on ($15+/mo) | Channel announcements (broadcast on roadmap) |
| Languages | EN-first | EN / TR / DE / FR / ES / IT |
| Discovery marketplace | ✓ (large) | – (early stage) |
| Eventbrite Ads / paid placement | ✓ | – (roadmap) |
The line we care about is the community one. Eventbrite events are atomic — an event lives, sells tickets, then becomes a record in your dashboard. Your audience exists between events; Eventbrite doesn't surface that.
ToGather treats your community as the unit and your events as what the community does. The same audience that bought tickets is the audience you can announce to next month, message in the channel feed, sell a paid membership to, and welcome at the next gathering.
The fee absorption choice, removed
Eventbrite makes you pick: pass fees to attendees (default) or absorb them yourself (~10–14% off your revenue). Most organizers pass through — which means the $50 advertised ticket actually costs the attendee closer to $55.
ToGather's lower percentage means the pass-through hurts less either way. We'd rather your attendees see the price you set than the price plus 14%.
What Eventbrite still wins
The marketplace. Eventbrite Search and Eventbrite Explore drive real organic traffic to events. If you need a discovery channel and don't have your own audience yet, that's a meaningful moat.
Eventbrite Ads. The most mature paid-placement system in the event space. ToGather doesn't have an equivalent yet.
Email marketing depth. Pro plans ($15/$50/$100 monthly) include capacity (2K/6K/10K daily emails) we don't match today.
The trade
Eventbrite if you need the marketplace, the ads platform, and don't care about owning the community surface.
ToGather if your community already has its own audience and you want the events, the tickets, the sponsors, the members, the memberships, and the announcements in one place — at a lower long-term fee, in your own language.