Eventbrite suits public-facing one-off events where marketplace discovery sells tickets to people who have never heard of you, and free events cost nothing to list.
Communal suits member organizations selling registrations to their own people all year: classes, camps, leagues and member-priced events, with dues, renewals, donations, volunteer shifts and attendance in the same record, and no per-ticket platform fee. If most of your buyers are already your members, both the fee math and the shared record favor Communal. Communal is the author's product.
Membership, programs, facility rentals, donations, volunteers and point of sale in one member database, priced flat by member count.
Ticketing marketplace with free events and per-ticket fees on paid ones.
| Feature | Communal | Eventbrite |
|---|---|---|
| Membership management | IncludedTiers, custom fields, segments | Not offered |
| Automated renewals | IncludedReminders and auto-renew | Not offered |
| Digital membership cards (Apple / Google Wallet) | IncludedIncluded in every plan | Not offered |
| Event registration & ticketing | Add-onPrograms & events, +$50/mo | Included |
| Program & class registration | Add-onWaitlists, capacity, attendance, rosters | PartialTicketed events only |
| Facility booking & rentals | Add-onFrom +$50/mo; approvals, invoices, agreements, iCal | Not offered |
| Volunteer shifts & hour tracking | IncludedShifts, hours, auto volunteer discounts | Not offered |
| Donations & fundraising | IncludedIncluded; donor covers fees option | Partial |
| Automatic tax receipts | IncludedAutomatic | Not offered |
| Member self-service portal | Included | Not offered |
| Email campaigns | IncludedCampaigns and segments | Add-onEventbrite Pro |
| Website builder | Not offeredWorks beside your site | Partial |
| Public API | IncludedREST API, Zapier webhooks, MCP server | Included |
| Detail | Communal | Eventbrite |
|---|---|---|
| Starting price | $75/mo | 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket |
| Pricing model | Flat, by member band (to 250 members at the floor) | Per ticket; free events free |
| Contract | No contracts, prorated billing, cancel any module any time | No contract; pay per ticket. Optional monthly Pro subscription. |
| Payment fees | Card-processing application fee set in your agreement, often 2%; no monthly minimums | Service fee 3.7% + $1.79 per paid ticket;Detailspayment processing 2.9% per order; free events have no platform or processing charges. |
| Free trial | Free trial, no credit card | Free plan (free events are free; no fee until you sell paid tickets) |
Eventbrite sells tickets to the public and takes a cut of each one. Communal sells memberships, program spots and event seats to your own community for a flat monthly price. If your events are mostly free, or you need strangers to find and buy tickets, Eventbrite is the right tool and may cost you nothing. If you sell a season of classes, camps or leagues to members and their families, the per-ticket fees become your biggest software bill and Communal's flat price replaces it.
Work out your paid registrations per year and the average price. At $40 a ticket, Eventbrite's take is roughly $4.43 per paid ticket once you add 3.7% + $1.79 and 2.9% processing. 500 paid tickets a year is about $2,215. Communal for the same organization is $125/mo, $1,500/yr, plus a card fee often about 2% (about $400 on $20,000), so about $1,900, and that includes memberships, donations, volunteers and POS. At 100 paid tickets a year Eventbrite is clearly cheaper. The crossover sits in the low hundreds of paid registrations for most groups, earlier if you already need membership software anyway.
| If you are... | Lean towards |
|---|---|
| A group running free community events and nothing else | Eventbrite (free) |
| A nonprofit selling tickets to the general public for one big annual event | Eventbrite |
| An organization that needs marketplace discovery to reach new buyers | Eventbrite |
| A club or association selling member-priced events and a season of classes | Communal |
| A community league or rec center with camps, leagues and rentals | Communal (programs +$50/mo, facilities from +$50/mo) |
| A charity that wants donations with tax receipts tied to the attendee record | Communal |
| A group that does both | Both: Eventbrite for the public gala, Communal for members |
Migration is free and scoped with you, there is no contract, and the 30-day trial needs no credit card, so you can load last season's attendees and compare the fee math on real numbers.
Short answers, with the numbers where they exist.
Free events are free, with no per-attendee cap. Paid tickets carry a service fee of 3.7% + $1.79 per ticket plus 2.9% payment processing per order in the US, which you can pass to the buyer or absorb. Eventbrite Pro, the email and promotion add-on, starts at $15/mo and nonprofits can apply for up to 50% off Pro. The per-ticket rate itself is not discounted on the vendor's pricing page.
A $40 paid ticket on Eventbrite costs roughly $1.48 service fee plus $1.79 plus $1.16 processing, about $4.43, or around 11%. Communal has no per-ticket platform fee: you pay $75/mo for membership plus $50/mo for programs and events, and a card-processing application fee set in your agreement, often about 2%, so about $0.80 on the same ticket. Below a few hundred paid tickets a year Eventbrite is cheaper; above that the flat fee wins.
No. Eventbrite has no membership records, dues, renewals, volunteer scheduling or facility booking. Some organizations pair it with a membership tool. Communal includes memberships with renewal reminders, household plans, wallet cards, donations with tax receipts, volunteers and POS, and its programs add-on sells member-priced and public-priced registrations from the same database.
Yes. Attendance sheets with bulk marking and CSV export for programs and events, and scan-in check-in for memberships using wallet passes or PDF cards. Eventbrite's mobile check-in and scanning app is mature and built for high-volume doors; if you run a 2,000-person gala, that is a point for Eventbrite.
Eventbrite offers a donation ticket type but no year-end or consolidated tax receipts. Communal includes donation forms, campaign pages with goals, recurring giving, donor-covers-fees and automatic numbered tax receipts with separate Canadian and US templates, at no extra cost.
Many organizations do: Eventbrite for a public fundraiser that needs discovery, Communal for everything sold to members. If you only keep Eventbrite for the public event, its free-event tier costs nothing, and its public API and Zapier can push attendee lists toward Communal's member records.