Early birds, regular presales and door sales: one capacity plan

A pricing phase or a discount code?

An early bird is a separate ticket type with its own price, quantity and sales period. It works when the same admission costs more later. A discount code is useful for a specific promotion. Choose the simplest arrangement your team and visitors can understand.

Explain whether early birds provide exactly the same admission as regular tickets. Avoid names such as ‘VIP’ without a real difference in access or benefits. Too many near-identical types make choosing harder.

Example: allocate 300 permitted places

This example includes volunteers and guests within an agreed limit of 300. Check who counts towards capacity at your venue. Deliberately reserve door stock; it is not extra capacity on top of online tickets.

Do not make 300 early birds and another 300 regular tickets available. The limit applies to your whole event, not separately to each price phase.

Set up sales phases in Tickgetr

Check for unintended overlaps or gaps. Do not assume the next phase opens automatically when the previous one sells out: check your configured dates and ticket states. Volunteer tickets use the remaining capacity of the selected type, so do not count those places as available again.

• Create an Early bird ticket type with the agreed price and quantity.
• Set its sales start and end dates.
• Create regular presales with their own price, quantity and period.
• Check the state of each ticket type and open the public sales page.
• Record the places reserved for volunteers and door sales separately.

What happens to unsold early birds?

Suppose 45 of 60 early birds sell, leaving 15 unused places. To sell these at the regular price, close early-bird sales first, then adjust regular stock. Keep a record of sold, available and reserved places.

If those 15 places remain available in two active types, you can offer them twice. Assign one person to make the stock adjustment and check the public page immediately afterwards.

Calculate the cost of your discount

60 tickets at €8 and 190 at €10 produce €2,380 in online ticket revenue before fees. Selling all 250 at €10 would produce €2,500. The early-bird offer therefore costs €120 in ticket revenue in this example. Decide whether earlier sales and more certainty are worth that difference.

Use real deadlines and quantities. A ‘last chance’ that repeatedly restarts makes your communication less credible.