Free to Publish: Our Take on "Free" Event Ticketing

Every ticketing platform in Australia will tell you it's free. Free event ticketing, free to publish, free to you. Then your $30 community fundraiser turns into $34.80 by the time your neighbour's card form loads, and everyone in the hall assumes you added the extra. You didn't. But it's got your logo on the page, so it's your problem now.

So here's my honest take on "free," from someone who has paid for the privilege of "free" more times than I'd like to admit.

"Free to you" and "free" are not the same sentence

Read the fine print on most free event ticketing plans and you'll spot the trick fast. It's free to you, the organiser. The buyer covers a booking fee, a service fee, and sometimes an "order processing fee," each a separate line that only shows up on the final screen.

That's not free. That's a fee wearing a fake moustache.

Here's my one strong opinion for this post, and I'll back it with numbers: if a platform is free to you but adds 7% or more at checkout, it isn't free, it's just billed to your attendees. And they remember it as your event with the dodgy fees, not the platform's. The ACCC has been circling this kind of drip pricing for a while, and for good reason. A price you can't see until the last step was designed to be hidden.

What "free" should actually mean for a free event

If you're running a free event, a genuinely free platform should cost exactly this: $0. To you and to your crowd.

That's how we do it. On Ticketted, free events are $0 — no per-ticket fee, no "free tier" asterisk, no cap on attendees, no cap on how many free events you run. And you get the actual features, not a stripped-back demo: QR check-in, attendee messaging, the reminder email, and the dashboard. The stuff you need on the night, not the stuff behind a "talk to sales" button.

Paid events are just as plain: 3.95% + 95c per ticket, or 2.45% + 45c for charities and schools. Flat, all-in, shown before checkout. Same price whether you sell 50 tickets or 5,000. You can see the full pricing, or run your own ticket through the event fee calculator and watch the total the buyer actually pays, before you announce.

Why give free events away? Because a P&C trivia night, a community info session, a free gig for a local band, that's how people find out ticketing doesn't have to hurt. Charge a school $1.50 a head to run a free morning tea and you've told them exactly what you think of them. Hard pass.

The catch in "free to publish" platforms

Let me tell you about an organiser who came over to us last year. They'd been on a platform that was free to them, and quietly charging buyers roughly 6.95% + $1.79 a ticket. On a $50 ticket that's about $5.27 in fees the buyer never agreed to until the card form appeared.

We moved them to our 3.95% + 95c. On every ticket, the buyer paid less. And here's the part that surprised them: their conversion went up. Turns out a checkout price that stops mugging people at the last step sells more tickets. Who knew. (I knew. I'd been saying it for a year. Nobody listens until the numbers do the talking.)

That's the real cost of "free to publish." Not that it costs you nothing. That it costs your buyers something, at the worst possible moment, with your name on it.

When your free event grows a price tag

Most events don't stay free forever. The free community class gets popular, someone suggests charging a fiver to cover the room, and suddenly you're a paid event. That's fine. Here's the one decision that trips people up.

Decide who covers the fee, on purpose. Per event, you choose: buyer covers, you cover, or you split it. The default is buyer-covers, which keeps your headline price clean and matches what most people expect. But if you're running a members' night and want the price on the flyer to be the price at the till, absorb it, deliberately.

Just don't default by accident. On a $50 ticket, absorbing a ~$2.90 fee across 300 sales is about $870 out of your event budget. That's a decision worth making with your eyes open, not one to discover in the payout report. It's the toggle that costs the most when you forget it exists.

When you might not need us at all

Here's the bit a ticketing company isn't supposed to write.

If you run one free event a year, for 40 people, and everyone RSVPs in the family WhatsApp group anyway, you might not need Ticketted. A free Google Form and a headcount will genuinely do it. No shame in that. Come back when there's a queue at the door or money changing hands, and we'll be here.

We'd rather tell you that than talk you into a signup you don't need. Generic ticketing content never talks itself out of a sale. We just did. (My wife says that's either integrity or a terrible business model. I've chosen to hear integrity.)

If you are weighing platforms, it's worth reading how we stack up against the ones that lean on the "free to you" story, like our Ticketted vs Humanitix comparison, or having a browse of what's already on to see a live checkout for yourself.

Frequently asked questions

Is free event ticketing actually free? For you, often yes. For the buyer, usually not. Most "free" plans make their money by adding a percentage to the ticket at checkout. A truly free event should cost $0 to both sides, which is how Ticketted runs free events.

Is Eventbrite free? It's free to create a free event, but paid events carry a service fee (published around 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket at the time of writing), and buyers usually cover it. Always check the total the buyer pays, not just what you pay.

Do free ticketing sites charge fees? Many do, just not to you. The fee lands on the buyer as a booking or service fee at the final step. Some also cap the number of free tickets, or lock features behind a paid tier. Read the checkout, not the homepage.

Is there genuinely free ticketing for community events and fundraisers? Yes. On Ticketted, free events are $0 with no per-ticket fee and no attendee cap. Charities and schools running paid events pay a reduced 2.45% + 45c rather than the standard rate.

Can I sell tickets for free with no fees at all? If the tickets themselves are free, yes, $0 all round on Ticketted. The moment you charge for a ticket, a card payment has a real processing cost, so paid tickets carry the flat 3.95% + 95c. Anyone promising 0% on paid tickets is making it back somewhere, usually on your buyer.

What's the catch with "free to publish" platforms? The catch is the checkout. Free to publish often means the platform recovers its cost from the attendee, so your ticket ends up dearer and your buyers wear it. Judge a platform by the final price on the card form, not the word "free" on the pricing page.

Will my attendees know who added the fee? Rarely, and that's the problem. Buyers see one total and blame the event, not the platform. Transparent, all-in pricing shown up front is the only way to keep the fee from being remembered as yours.

Still deciding? Give us a call

"Free" is the most expensive word in ticketing, because it usually means someone else is paying and hoping you don't look too closely. My take is simpler: free events should be free, paid events should show the real price on the first screen, and nobody should get surprised at the card form.

If you want a hand working out what your buyers will actually pay, flick us an email at support@ticketted.com or give us a call on 0452 590 455. Usually you'll get me, usually in under an hour. I'll help you sort it. I'll also probably make a pun about free events that my daughter would refund if she could. Consider that free of charge.