Price windows should switch on dates you set weeks ahead, not when someone remembers to edit a ticket. Stack the early bird, standard and door windows on one ticket, let each open as the last closes, and make sure people who already bought keep the price and VAT treatment they paid. Then nobody has to be awake at midnight.
What Does a Sensible Window Schedule Look Like?
Most guides describe the same ladder: a super early bird, an early bird, a standard window and a late or door price. WebMobi's early bird pricing guide (undated, 2026) suggests the super early bird about six months out, optionally capped at the first 100 registrants, early bird three to four months out, standard around two to three months out, and late pricing in the final two to four weeks. It suggests deadlines three to four months ahead for conferences and six to eight weeks for smaller events.
Treat those as a starting grid for a two-day conference, not a law. A trade show with free visitor passes and paid delegate passes runs a different clock entirely, and an AGM with a members-only rate may not need a ladder at all. What matters is that every window has a start, an end and an owner, and that the owner is not you at 23:59.
How Many Tiers Is Too Many?
Two or three early phases, then standard, is the usual advice. An xtix article on structuring tiers (26 August 2025) gives a worked example of 30%, 20% and 10% discounts across three early tiers before the regular price returns. WebMobi's figures run from 20 to 30% for a standard early bird and up to 40% for a super early bird. Both are advice rather than measured results, and neither publishes registration shares per tier, so nobody can tell you what your conference's curve looks like. Your own history can.
The same xtix piece names the mistakes worth avoiding: gaps between tiers so small that nobody notices them, gaps so large that you lose the buyer who would have paid a little more, and discounts nobody was told about. The last one is the easiest to fix. A window is only a deadline if the delegate knows it exists, so put the end date on the registration page and in the email.
How Do Registration Tools Switch the Windows?
There are two common patterns, and a third that nobody admits to.
| Approach | How the Switch Happens | What the Organiser Maintains |
|---|---|---|
| Separate ticket per tier (Pheedloop help article, updated 19 Aug 2026) | One early bird ticket and one regular ticket, each with its own sale start and end date and time; the regular ticket's window begins after the early bird window closes | Two or more tickets per ticket type, kept in step by hand |
| Price edited by hand | An organiser changes the price on the day the window ends | A calendar reminder, and a plan for the person who is on a train |
| Stacked price windows on one ticket (eventcloud) | Each window has start and end dates set in advance and switches itself, early bird to door | The schedule, once |
Pheedloop's approach is perfectly workable, and it has one useful detail: sale times follow the event's configured time zone, which stops a European deadline expiring in the middle of an American afternoon. Whatever tool you use, check which time zone the deadline lives in before you announce it.
Conference Registration Without the Procurement Saga.
Delegate types, early-bird windows, session booking, badges designed in millimetres and check-in from any phone, with no limit on delegates.
What Happens to People Who Already Bought?
They keep what they paid. On eventcloud a sold price keeps its amount and VAT treatment, so the switch to the standard window never reaches back into an existing order. VAT is set at organisation level (inclusive or exclusive) and frozen onto every order, which also means your finance team sees the rate that applied on the day. A sold ticket can still be edited in the usual ways, such as correcting a name, without touching the price.
Events sell in one currency, so the window prices are all in that currency too. Decide it before you publish the first window.
What Else Should Switch with the Price?
Price windows rarely work alone. A few pairings are worth setting up while you are in there:
Capacity per ticket type and event-wide, so a capped super early bird closes when it sells out even if its end date has not arrived.
Promo codes, including codes restricted to named email domains for members or partners, and codes scoped to specific tickets, add-ons or paid sessions. A code can also be set to skip group rates.
Group rates, with up to six "from N tickets" breaks per paid window, counted per pass per order. A team of eight that books during the early bird window gets the early bird group rate, not the standard one.
A waiting list for tickets not yet on sale, which emails everyone the moment the next window opens. That is handy for a launch you have teased on social media.
Our guide to promo codes and affiliates covers the codes in more detail. If you want to see how the early bird deadline itself drives sales, we wrote a separate piece on that: early bird deadlines and the sales they drive.
How Do You Close Registration?
On eventcloud the end date on the last price window is the close: when it passes, sales stop. That makes the last window the one to check twice. Set it to the evening before the event if you want a clean list for the desk, or to the event's end if you plan to sell at the door.
Need a different cut-off for exhibitor passes than for delegate passes? Tell us how your registration works.
A Schedule You Can Copy
For a two-day conference with a 600 delegate target, this is a reasonable first draft. Move the dates to suit your sales history.
Six months out: super early bird, capped at the first 100 delegates.
Four months out: early bird, ending three months before the event.
Three months out: standard, running to four weeks before the event.
Final four weeks: late window, ending the evening before the event or at the door.
Write the dates into the calendar, put the end date on every email, and check that the first window's price is the one you want to be remembered for. Then leave the switching to the schedule and spend your time on the speaker list.
