A conference with 2,000 paying delegates at $450, 150 exhibitors at $1,200 and 300 free guests costs about $43,809 in platform fees on Eventbrite's published rates, about $24,809 on Humanitix's, and a flat $11,800 to $17,999 a year on the two seat-priced enterprise tools. On eventcloud it is $1,250 per user per year. Registration should not turn into a revenue share.
Why price a conference registration with three kinds of attendee?
Because almost no real conference has one kind. Delegates pay, exhibitors buy a package, and a few hundred guests, speakers and sponsors' friends walk in free. Per-ticket price tables usually test one $50 ticket, which tells you nothing about a registration desk with three queues.
So here is the scenario used throughout this piece: 2,000 delegates at $450, 150 exhibitor packages at $1,200, and 300 free guest registrations. That is 2,150 paid registrations and $1,080,000 of ticket revenue. Every figure below is the platform's own fee only, before card processing, which every platform passes on in some form.
What does that registration desk cost on each platform?
On per-ticket platforms the free guests cost nothing and everything else scales with the till. On seat-priced platforms the bill is the same whatever walks through the door. Fees are calculated from each vendor's published page, checked this week.
| Platform | Published fee model | This event: 2,150 paid, 300 free | Same mix at ten times the size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eventbrite | 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket, plus 2.9% processing per order | $43,809 (4.1% of revenue) | $438,085 |
| Humanitix | 2.1% + $0.99 per paid ticket, plus 2.9% + $0.30 processing | $24,809 (2.3% of revenue) | $248,085 |
| Ticket Tailor | GBP 0.60 per paid ticket pay as you go, from GBP 0.22 on credits | GBP 1,290 pay as you go, GBP 473 on credits | GBP 12,900 or GBP 4,730 |
| Swoogo Professional | From $11,800 a year, one full and one reporting user | $11,800 | $11,800 |
| Bizzabo Event Experience OS | From $17,999 a year, three-user minimum | $17,999 | $17,999 |
| eventcloud Team | $1,250 per user per year, or $125 per user per month | $1,250 for one user, $3,750 for three | $1,250 for one user, $3,750 for three |
The inputs come from Eventbrite's organiser pricing page (the same rate appears in a third-party breakdown updated in April 2026, which notes that large events are directed to Eventbrite sales, so a negotiated quote may differ), Humanitix's pricing page, Ticket Tailor's pricing page, Swoogo's pricing page, Bizzabo's pricing page and eventcloud's own pricing page. Ticket Tailor bills in pounds, so its row is not converted.
Is unlimited registration just a billing trick?
No, but it is a different model, not a discount. On eventcloud, events, tickets and registrations carry no caps and no per-registration, booking or overage fees, and revenue goes to your own Stripe account. The price is the same whether you register 500 people or 50,000, because the thing you pay for is a user, not an attendee.
That is why the last column of the table is boring on purpose. Ten times the delegates is a new problem for your catering budget, not for your registration invoice. At 21,500 paid registrations Eventbrite's published rate would reach about $438,000 against a flat seat, and the maths is the whole argument. It is also fair to say the vendors on either side of the table sell different things. Swoogo and Bizzabo bundle extras, and Bizzabo's page lists virtual events and networking among its features. Those are not part of the eventcloud package.
How does one event handle delegates, exhibitors and free guests?
With one ticket group per attendee type. eventcloud lets you attach a different form to each ticket group, so delegates answer delegate questions, exhibitors fill in a company and stand-package form, and free guests get a short one. Fields can be text, dropdown, multi-select, radio, date, time or country, each required or optional, with validation as people type.
What Would Zero Booking Fees Save You?
eventcloud charges a flat subscription, not a cut of every ticket. Compare it with what your current platform takes.
The same structure covers the free side. Free visitor registration can sit alongside paid exhibitor packages in the same event, and speakers or invitees can have private-link-only passes that never appear on the public page. Capacity can optionally be set per ticket group or per session, so 150 exhibitor places can stay 150 even when the delegate page is busy. One registration per email applies on named passes. The detail is on the registration features page.
eventcloud has no conditional form logic. If your registration depends on branching questions, the workaround is a separate form per ticket group, which is exactly what this scenario uses anyway.
What does the free guest list cost on each platform?
On the per-ticket tools, almost nothing: Eventbrite's page says free tickets carry no platform fee, and Ticket Tailor lists up to 5,000 free tickets a year at no charge (its own FAQ quotes a different threshold, so confirm with support before relying on it). Free registrations matter more on a seat-priced platform only if the seat count rises, since nothing else is metered.
The free guests have a hidden cost on any platform, and it is not the fee. It is the badge, the data and the no-show rate. Badge templates on eventcloud are fed from the form data (name, company, role) per ticket group, and QR check-in at the door shows the attendee's name, type, transaction details and custom form answers. When the event is over, you filter by field and export to Excel (.xlsx), which also opens in Google Sheets.
What is the catch with a flat seat?
Seats are the meter. A registration desk team of ten staff each needing their own login is ten seats, not one, so a team of ten costs $12,500 a year on the annual Team plan. The honest comparison therefore depends on headcount as well as attendance, and a small team running a very large event gets the best of it.
Bizzabo's own page states a three-user minimum, and a comparison from Rework points out that its $499 per user per month does not quite multiply out to the $17,999 headline, so ask for a quote for your real headcount. Swoogo does not publish the price of extra seats, and add-ons on both are listed without prices. Even a seat-priced platform has a meter. It is just a smaller one.
Who this is not for
eventcloud does not do virtual or hybrid events. If most of your programme happens on a screen with a studio layer behind it, Bizzabo will serve you better. Stripe is the only connector eventcloud offers. A team that lives in Salesforce or HubSpot will move the Excel file across by hand.
White-label, a fully branded experience and single sign-on sit on the Enterprise plan, not the Team plan. And if you run a single small event a year with a dozen registrations and no staff, a pay-as-you-go tool such as Ticket Tailor on credits may simply cost less, and that is fine.
Where eventcloud fits
If your registrations are many, your team is small and you would like the bill to stay put when the event grows, the flat seat is the model built for that. Everything above is on the pricing page, and the registration side is on the registration features page. Trade show organisers running visitor and exhibitor registration together can see the trade shows and exhibitions page.
