How to Sell Event Tickets Online in South Africa (Without a Ticketing Agency)

Ticketing agencies are built for stadiums. If you run a supper club, a craft market, a comedy night or a workshop, you can sell tickets from your own shop, keep the customer details, and let people in with your phone.

What you need before you start

• A date, a venue and a capacity. Know how many people the venue holds. That's your hard limit.
• Your ticket types. Early bird, general, VIP, or one price for everyone.
• A way to get paid online. A payment provider for cards and instant payments, or bank transfer if you're happy to check payments by hand. See How to choose a payment provider.

Set up your tickets

1. Create the event with the date, time, doors-open time and address. Add a poster: it's what people share.
2. Set the capacity. Sales stop when it's full, so you never sell a seat that doesn't exist.
3. Add ticket types, each with its own price and number. Give early bird a cut-off date to create urgency.
4. Decide what to ask each guest. At minimum their name. Add phone, email, age or ID number if the event needs it, for example an 18+ night.
5. Add the line-up or running order if there is one. It answers "what time is the main act?" before anyone asks.

What your guests get

After paying, each guest gets an email with a QR code and a typed code for every ticket. In ShopEazy the tickets are also attached as a PDF, so they still work at a venue with no signal. That matters more than you'd think at a farm or a basement venue.

On the night: scanning at the door

You don't need to buy a scanner. Open the door scanner on your phone and point the camera at each ticket.

• A good ticket shows Come in with the guest's name, so you can greet them by name.
• A ticket that's already been used shows when it came in and who scanned it. Screenshots shared with friends get caught here.
• Unpaid and cancelled tickets are refused with the reason.
• Two people can scan at the same door on two phones. A ticket only gets in once.

A counter shows how many are in and how many are still to come.

Selling more tickets

• Share the event page, not a poster. A link someone can tap to buy beats an image they have to screenshot.
• Use WhatsApp. Most of your guests will come from a forwarded message.
• Run an early bird with a real deadline, then stick to it.
• Tell last year's guests first. Their details are already in your customer list.

The legal bits

Online sales in South Africa fall under the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act. Your event page should show the full price, including any booking fee, and your refund policy. The seven-day cooling-off right for online purchases doesn't apply to bookings for a fixed date, but say clearly what happens if the event is postponed or cancelled.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Try it

Events and tickets are on every ShopEazy plan. See Sell tickets and scan them at the door or the tickets feature page.

Sources

• Michalsons: consumer protection provisions of the ECT Act