Best Ticketing Platform for Festivals

If you’re organizing a festival, you need more than just a way to sell tickets—you need a system that maximizes revenue, streamlines operations, and delivers a premium experience for every attendee. That’s why TicketStripe stands out as the best ticketing platform for festivals. With customizable branding, flexible ticketing, seamless check-in, and robust reporting, it empowers organizers to focus on creating unforgettable experiences while the technology handles the rest.

Festival Ticketing Platform Core Features

Customizable at Every Level

Showcase branding, lineup, and atmosphere that turn interest into ticket purchases.

Your event page serves as your festival’s digital storefront, where first impressions determine whether browsers become buyers. Customizable pages that reflect your festival’s unique identity build immediate trust and encourage social sharing, amplifying your reach organically. Drive traffic to your event page, or use the embed widget to sell tickets directly from your website. Feature a single event or showcase all your upcoming events, giving guests and donors a seamless purchasing experience without ever leaving your site.

Beer Festival Success Story

A celebration of craft brewing, drawing beer lovers from across the country for a memorable experience that blends community, craftsmanship, and culture.

Their branded event page featured engaging copy that captured the spirit of the festival, while multi-tier ticketing—Early Bird, Connoisseur, and Beer Lover— featured detailed descriptions of exclusive perks like early entry, premium cask tastings, and specialty brews, giving buyers every reason to secure a spot.

Hidden tickets streamlined access for comped guests and speakers, while low fees, passed directly to buyers, kept costs fair without cutting into proceeds. Post-purchase messaging ensured attendees arrived informed and ready. With these features working together, the festival enhanced its guest experience while simplifying operations, demonstrating why TicketStripe is considered the best ticketing platform for festivals of any size.

Unlimited Ticket Types in 135+ Currencies

Festivals require a wide range of ticket types, from Early Bird and VIP passes to Multi-Day and Sponsor Packages, all in the local currency and without hidden paywalls.

Our platform automatically manages inventory across ticket types and can transition between early bird and regular pricing on predetermined dates.

Community Festival Success Story

A local festival brings together diverse communities for a celebration of music, art, and connection, fostering inclusivity and a welcoming space for families and friends to gather.

Organizers sold multiple tickets in Canadian Dollars—Early Bird, Adult, Youth, and Family Bundles—ensuring accessibility for every attendee. They maximized revenue while keeping tickets affordable by passing along the low fees to buyers. Email updates kept attendees informed about event activities, guidelines, and what to bring, enhancing both engagement and the overall festival experience.

Ticket Bundles for Seamless Group Sales

With Ticket Bundles, package buyers share tickets digitally, allowing each attendee to submit their own information, which saves organizers hours of manual data collection.

Group tickets (Sponsor, Packages, Multi-Day) generate significant festival revenue, but traditional ticket sales platforms don’t offer an easy way to collect individual attendee information from shared tickets. Ticket Bundles are designed to help organizers collect more attendee data effortlessly. Buyers can complete their purchase quickly by entering only their information. After purchase, package holders can share individual tickets through a secure digital wallet. Each recipient enters their information to claim the ticket. And, if someone is unable to attend, the bundle holder can reclaim and reshare the ticket.

Donations to Maximize Fundraising

Studies have found that when people are asked to give a recommended donation at an event, roughly 80% of people will donate without hesitation.

Apart from ticket sales, fundraisers and nonprofits can accept a variety of suggested and flexible donations, each accompanied by a tailored message. Follow these best practices when composing donation copy to connect with donors.

Make it personal: Help visitors understand how their contribution will make a difference.

Use concrete examples: Instead of vague copy like “support our cause,” specify exactly what their participation achieves:

• “Provide 50 meals for homeless families”
• “Fund art supplies for 30 students”
• “Your $100 ticket provides school supplies for 5 children for an entire year”

Music Festival Fundraiser Success Story

One Kentucky Music Festival shows how entertainment can drive meaningful impact, transforming a day of bourbon culture and live music into vital fundraising for local first responders.

Multiple ticket types—General Admission, Kids Admission, and VIP Packages—offered accessible and premium experiences, while donation options generated additional funds for local Volunteer Fire Departments. Low fees were paid by buyers, ensuring the festival collected 100% of ticket and donation proceeds. The custom order form captured valuable insights into how attendees discovered the event, to help optimize future marketing spend. Built-in email tools ensured smooth communication with guests regarding parking, event guidelines, and activities.

In addition to performances, the event generated multiple revenue streams through vendor booths, food trucks, tournaments, and car show registrations, while honoring fallen heroes and celebrating active first responders, veterans, and their families.

Data Collection That Drives Decisions

Collect additional attendee information to streamline the planning process.

Festivals often need attendee information beyond basic contact details. The custom order form can capture dietary restrictions for food vendors, t-shirt sizes for merchandise pre-orders, emergency contacts for safety protocols, age verification, accessibility needs, or any other information needed to plan more effectively and personalize the attendee experience.

All attendee information flows directly into your dashboard for instant segmentation and export, eliminating last-minute data collection at gates.

Secure Team Management

Assign secure roles without exposing sensitive data.

Festivals require numerous staff and volunteers, each of whom needs appropriate platform access without compromising security. Role-based permissions let you add Event Administrators for full event-level permissions via the web and mobile app, Event Analysts for reporting access, Check-in Assistants to scan tickets at the gates with our mobile app, and Box Office users to sell and scan tickets on-site with the mobile app.

This granular control maintains security while enabling efficient operations across large teams.

Swift Check-In

Checking in hundreds or thousands of attendees across multiple entry points is fast with simultaneous ticket scanning using our app on any iOS or Android device. Real-time synchronization prevents duplicate entries and tracks attendance across all gates.

Payments Built for Festivals

Payment Options That Increase Conversions

The best ticketing platforms for festivals understand that offering multiple payment methods directly impacts your bottom line.

Online: Credit and debit cards remain standard, but digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Pay increasingly drive mobile purchases. PayPal integration adds familiar Venmo and PayPal Checkout options.

Buy-now-pay-later options through Klarna and PayPal make higher-priced tickets accessible to more attendees. Customers appreciate breaking large purchases into manageable installments, while you receive full payment immediately. This payment flexibility is particularly beneficial for festivals where tickets cost hundreds of dollars.

Onsite: Instantly accept digital, wallet, and cash payments at the door with our mobile app when you connect to a Stripe account.

Transparent Fee Options

Organizers have the option to absorb all fees, pass them to buyers, or absorb the payment processing fee while passing on the service fee. Most organizers pass all fees to attendees, making the TicketStripe free to use while maintaining transparent pricing.

The ability to set custom organizer fees provides additional flexibility. If your festival incurs facility charges or other per-ticket costs, you can add these transparently rather than inflating base ticket prices. This honesty in pricing builds trust with attendees who appreciate understanding precisely what they’re paying for. Contact us to enable this custom feature on your account.

Immediate Access to Your Money

Unlike platforms that hold funds until after your event, immediate funding following each sale provides the cash flow necessary to organize a festival. This financial flexibility lets you secure vendors, book talent, and cover pre-event expenses.

Powerful Promotional Tools

Channel Attribution

Understanding which marketing channels drive sales informs promotional strategies.

Promoter accounts track sales from different sources separately, essential for measuring ROI across influencer partnerships, sponsors, or paid advertising campaigns.

Create unique links for each marketing channel, artist, or individual promoter. When sales flow through these links, you see exactly which efforts generate revenue. This data proves invaluable when negotiating future sponsorships or deciding where to allocate marketing budgets.

Meta pixel integration tracks paid campaigns, providing deeper insights that are only available with Meta reports.

Strategic Discounting

Discount codes serve dual purposes: they incentivize purchases and track marketing effectiveness. Creating platform-specific codes such as “INSTAGRAM20” or “RADIO15” reveals which channels drive the most valuable customers, not just the most traffic.

Hidden tickets excel at creating exclusivity while managing capacity. Share special access links with your most engaged followers, VIP customers, or sponsor guests to build community while rewarding loyalty. Hidden tickets can also be used to offer exclusive add-ons only available to qualified ticket buyers.

Tailored Communication

Message after purchase allows the organizer to include a message that is displayed on the ticket. Messages can be a heartfelt thank you or important event-related information.

Email tools enable efficient communication with attendees before, during, and after the event. Use this direct line of communication to share essential information, ensure your event runs smoothly, and build lasting relationships with your attendees.

Export customer data by ticket type or any additional information you collected to use with external marketing tools and departments.

Food & Drink Festival Success Story

A festival featuring over 20 meaderies from around the US demonstrated the power of these promotional tools. The festival brought together community while delivering an unforgettable experience, with the ticketing platform ensuring everything ran seamlessly from ticketing to check-in.

Organizers offered a variety of ticket types—from Presale and VIP Extras to Designated Driver passes—while hidden tickets allowed them to reach select audiences with tailored offerings. Tickets included a swag bag with commemorative glass, stickers, and more, adding to the excitement and experience. The automated “Message After Purchase” feature shared important updates, ensuring guests were informed and engaged before arrival. On event day, multiple check-in assistants equipped with TicketStripe’s mobile app efficiently processed hundreds of attendees, with each staff member having secure access that protected sensitive data while enabling smooth operations.

A Ticketing Platform That Scales

Festivals succeed when the ticketing experience is seamless, flexible, and scalable. For festival events drawing crowds in thousands, TicketStripe offers additional features:

• Custom delivery methods for wristbands or physical tickets
• Custom barcodes enable seamless integration with third-party ticketing systems
• Dedicated account manager

Large Music Festival Success Story

For over a decade, a California-based promoter has trusted TicketStripe to power dozens of events annually, from 6,000-person gatherings to massive 50,000-attendee festivals.

The promoter maximizes attendance through strategic ticket tiers—Presale, General Admission, VIP, and limited-edition Festival Chairs—ensuring options at every price point. When coordinating with multiple promoters for an event, custom barcodes enable seamless integration with third-party systems. Custom organizer fees cover the cost of shipping physical tickets, while buyer-paid fees ensure revenue targets are met without cutting into margins.

Their success demonstrates how our platform adapts to the demands of high-volume events. From processing thousands of simultaneous purchases to coordinating multi-promoter logistics, we deliver the reliability that festival organizers need to focus on creating unforgettable experiences.

TicketStripe is the best ticketing platform for festivals because we offer core features festival organizers need, including unlimited ticket types in 135+ currencies, custom attendee data collection, ticket bundles, multiple payment options, fast payouts, and seamless check-in. The platform is free for organizers when the low fees are passed to buyers and can scale as your events grow. When technology handles the complexities, you’re free to create the magical moments that keep attendees returning year after year.