Selling tickets for a small event without losing your margin.

A community show, a pottery workshop, a house concert in someone’s living room, a gallery opening with a few dozen guests: these events usually exist because someone cares about them, not because they make much money. After the room, the artist, the materials and the drinks, the profit on a 60-person night might be a couple of hundred dollars.

That’s why fees hurt more here. A platform cost that barely registers on a 2,000-person festival can wipe out a real share of what’s left after a small night. Every dollar per ticket counts, and so does any fixed cost like a monthly subscription or a card reader you only use a few times a year.

Jamrats charges a flat fee per paid ticket, with no percentage, no monthly fee and no setup fee. For events with a set capacity of 200 or fewer, that fee drops to 50¢. The discount applies automatically based on the capacity you set, so make sure you actually set one. An event with no capacity limit is treated as a large event.

Here’s a US example. Say you run a 40-person workshop at $35 a ticket. The Jamrats fee is 50¢ per ticket, so $20 across the whole event. Stripe’s standard US card rate (about 2.9% + 30¢) adds roughly $1.32 per ticket, which you’d pay on almost any platform that takes cards. A percentage-based platform fee on top of that would cost more with every dollar you add to the ticket price. A flat fee stays the same.

If your gallery night is free to attend and you only want a headcount, a free ticket type still gives you a guest list and door check-in. Our guide to running a free event has more on free events.

For small events we’d usually say absorb it, and that’s the default on Jamrats. The buyer sees $20, pays $20, and nothing is added at checkout. When the fee is 50 cents, folding it into a round price is easy, and people who come to small events tend to notice and appreciate not being hit with extras at the last step.

You can still pass the fee to buyers on any ticket type if you prefer. It’s a per-ticket-type setting, so you could absorb it on a standard ticket and pass it on for a supporter ticket, for example.

Small events rarely have a box office, and they shouldn’t need one. Every buyer gets an email with a QR code for each ticket. At the door, you or a friend scan them with the Jamrats Organizer app on iOS or Android, or with the browser scanner if you’d rather not install anything. Any phone works.

Scanning does need an internet connection, so if your venue is a basement with no signal, have a phone hotspot ready as a backup. If someone shows up twice with the same ticket, the scanner flags it as already checked in. More than one person can scan at once if you get a rush at the start.

• Set a realistic capacity. It keeps you on the small-event fee and stops you overselling a room you can’t fit.
• Offer a limited early bird tier. Early sales tell you whether to spend money on promotion or save it.
• Export your customer list after each event. It’s yours, and emailing the people who came last time is the cheapest marketing you’ll ever do.
• Use the duplicate feature for recurring nights so setting up the next one takes minutes.

Money from sales goes straight to your own Stripe account, and by default you’re paid three business days after your event ends. If this is your first time running ticketed events, start with our page for first-time organizers.