Concert ticketing software that never takes a percentage of the ticket price

Most community ensembles sell tickets the hard way: an account on a general-purpose events platform, a listing rebuilt by hand for every concert, fees that take $2 to $3 out of every $20 ticket, and revenue that arrives days after the concert it paid for.

Those platforms were built for conferences and club nights. Your season is different: the same venue three times a year, an audience that comes back, patrons you want to recognize, and a volunteer treasurer who explains every dollar to the board. Ticketing should be part of running the ensemble, not a second business you operate on the side.

Where the money and hours go

What a general-purpose platform costs an ensemble, beyond the fee line:

Your event page already exists

In EnsembleBase, ticketing starts from the events you already scheduled. The concert on your calendar, with its date, time, venue, and program, becomes a public event page where anyone can buy tickets. When the date or venue changes, the public page follows. There is no second copy of the concert to keep in sync.

Reserved seating, general admission, or both

If your hall has assigned seats, you can sell from a seat map on the Scale plan: buyers pick their seats, and you can hold blocks for patrons, comps, or the choir's families. If your venue is folding chairs in a church nave, general admission (on both Pro and Scale) works with a simple capacity. Either way, remaining capacity is visible on the dashboard.

What a $20 ticket costs, and who pays it

The service fee is a flat $1.00 per paid ticket, added at checkout, plus standard Stripe card processing of about 2.9% + $0.30, which buyers can choose to cover. When buyers cover both, your ensemble receives the full face value: sell a seat for $20, and $20 is yours. There is no platform percentage taken from your ticket price and no fee-cap fine print. Ticketing comes with the Pro and Scale plans, so there is no separate ticketing subscription. The full platform-by-platform math is in our 2026 fee comparison.

How the money moves

Where does ticket money land? In your organization's own Stripe account. You are the merchant of record; EnsembleBase collects its $1.00 per ticket and touches nothing else.

When? Sales land in your Stripe balance as they happen, before the concert, and Stripe pays out to your bank on its standard rolling schedule. You can watch the balance and recent payouts inside EnsembleBase. New Stripe accounts have onboarding and a slower first payout, so connect your account well before sales open.

What happens on a refund? You record the refund in EnsembleBase, which releases the seats and invalidates the tickets, and complete the payment in your Stripe dashboard. Stripe keeps its processing fee, and the $1.00 service fee stays with EnsembleBase.

Who handles a disputed charge? Disputes go through your own Stripe account, like any other charge your organization processes, and Stripe charges a dispute fee (around $15) win or lose. That is the flip side of being the merchant of record: the money is yours from the moment of sale, and so is the responsibility. The order history and check-in record in EnsembleBase are the evidence you'll want when you respond.

Concert night, worst case

Every ticketing page describes the happy path. Here is the other kind of night, and what actually happens:

The lobby wifi dies at 6:40. Check-ins need a connection, so the insurance is paper, and it costs one click: export and print the attendee list every concert afternoon, whether you expect trouble or not. If the network drops, check people off the printed list and mark them checked in from the attendee search once it returns. Nobody waits in the cold while a volunteer reboots a router.

Someone shows a screenshot of a ticket you already checked in. Each ticket can be checked in once; the second attempt shows it has already been used. Your door lead makes the human call, with the facts on the screen instead of two people's word against each other.

The December concert gets snowed out. Email every buyer first, from the same system, because the buyer list is already there: announce the reschedule date and let tickets carry over automatically. Then refund only the buyers who ask (the flow above). The order matters, because a refund costs you real money: on a $20 ticket the processing and service fees are not returned, so a full refund runs your organization about $1.90 per ticket. Some groups refund face value only; decide that in your refund policy before the season starts, not in the parking lot during a snowstorm.

The buyer list is your next audience

Online buyers are added to your People records automatically, matched by email to anyone already there. The family that bought four tickets in December is visible when you plan the spring donation ask, next to your members and donors, and the thank-you email after the concert goes out through the same system that sold the tickets. Walk-up door sales are recorded with the order itself, so attendance and revenue stay complete even when the buyer stays anonymous.