Why bars switch from Eventbrite and Instagram links
Most bars sell tickets one of two ways: an Eventbrite link in the bio, or 'DM us to reserve.' The first costs your customers 15% on a $25 ticket and teaches them to search Eventbrite for their next night out — where your competitor's event is one scroll away. The second doesn't scale past about 40 people and gives you nothing to remarket to.
TixKarma fixes both. The buyer pays a flat $2 plus card processing on top of your price, so a $25 ticket is $28.35 instead of $30+. Every buyer's name, email, and zip code lands in your dashboard. And the event page is yours — no sidebar advertising the bar down the street.
What a bar actually gets
- Cover charge, table reservations, and bottle service as separate ticket tiers
- Door scanning on any phone — no hardware, no app download for staff
- Repeat-fan tracking: see who's been to 5 nights, and email them first
- Free listing on SceneScout, the local events site for six upstate NY cities
- Discount codes for promoters, birthday groups, and industry nights
- Payout after the event via Stripe, straight to your bank
Real example: a $20 cover, 150 people
On TixKarma your guests pay $23.17 each and you receive $3,000 — every dollar of face value. On Eventbrite they'd pay roughly $23.42 and you'd get the same $3,000, but Eventbrite owns the list. On a reserve-by-DM system you'd likely cap out around 60 confirmed and have no-shows you can't track.
The fee difference is real but small. The difference that compounds is the 150 emails you now own for the next event.
Common questions
Yes. Create tiers — e.g. General Cover $15, Reserved Table for 4 $120, Bottle Service $400 — each with its own capacity and price on one event page.
No. Any phone with a camera scans TixKarma QR tickets through the browser. Multiple staff can scan simultaneously.
Free events cost nothing — no fee to you or the guest. You still capture RSVPs, emails, and can scan at the door.