The Masterplan for Ticketsmith

Selling tickets online should be boring in the best way. Creating a page, setting up the ticket types, checking people in, and managing your money need to be simple and straightforward.

There's also the issue of platforms punishing you when you're successful by taking a large cut of all your sales. Not to mention hijacking your customers with "recommended events" and turning your community into their marketing list.

We think that is ridiculous.

Ticketsmith exists to fix these issues. We going to build the plain ticketing software for small creators, workshop hosts, indie venues, pop-up chefs and niche groups - basically anyone selling tickets for events from 5 to 5,000 attendees - that we wanted to use ourselves. After all the best way to build software is to build for yourself.

Most ticketing platforms are built around corporate venues and giant marketplaces. We want to flip that around and make the box office cheaper, clearer, and easier to run for you and your small business.

Here is the masterplan.

1. Complexity is the enemy

You shouldn’t need a tutorial series—or a weekend of trial and error—just to sell your tickets. It’s your event; the tool should bend to you, not the other way around.

We believe in "setup in minutes," and we mean it literally. We'll make it as fast as possible to get up and running. There's some complexity still in 2026 around accepting payments online, but we'll make it as simple as can be.

Say you run a 12-person “Sourdough for Absolute Beginners” class next Saturday. With Ticketsmith, you punch in the title, set 12 spots at $65, and paste your Instagram handle. In under ten minutes, you grab a clean, ready-to-share link. You drop that link into your bio, and you’re done. People start signing up while you go back to preheating the oven.

We stripped all the complexity away so you can get back to work.

2. You are the brand, not us

Your event shouldn’t feel like it’s been co-opted by a massive ticketing conglomerate. When a guest clicks your link, it should feel like you.

We hand you the reins without you needing to be a web developer. You upload your logo and pick your colors. You write the page in your own words. If you are hosting a "Poetry & Wine Night," you want a warm beige palette and a minimalist vibe, not the big blue marketplace interface.

We'll stay in the background as much as possible. There will be a subtle “Powered by Ticketsmith” note somewhere as it helps us out a lot. We will however make sure that you can remove it. We aren't interested in splashing our logo all over your hard work.

3. The math should be simple

Most platforms lure you in with “free to set up,” only to hit you with percentage fees and "processing" add-ons that turn your pricing into a math problem. Suddenly, your $40 ticket balloons to $48.37, and your attendee feels nickel-and-dimed before they even walk in the door.

We're doing it differently with Flat, transparent pricing.

You pay us to do a job. To issue a paid ticket.

We don't take a percentage cut of your business revenue. You did the work to get your customer, not us. Whether you sell a ticket for $20 or $200, our costs are the same, so your fee should be too. You pay us for the simple service we provide.

We know that for a lot of businesses that cash flow matters too. Too many tools hold your money hostage for vague "security reasons." We partner with Stripe to send money directly to your account. If you are running a pop-up ramen shop and you need that cash upfront for ingredients, we make sure you get it quickly.

4. Scale without the migration

Whether you’re hosting a whisper-quiet gathering or a buzzing crowd, you shouldn’t have to swap tools just because you grew.

Ticketsmith handles the full spectrum. It works for the 5-person writing workshop in a living room, the 150-seat comedy show in a brewery, or the 2,000-person niche conference. It’s the same intuitive tool and the same smooth flow. You won't hit an “enterprise-only” wall that forces you to talk to a sales rep just to add more seats! Ew.

Why another ticketing tool?

We're very excited about in person events. With the ways the world are going with all the advances in tech, people crave more in-person events.

The ticketing world has also drifted. Lots of other sites started with good intentions but then got swallowed by growth-at-all-costs. They optimize for their own marketplaces, their own bottom line, treating your hard-earned ticket buyers as fresh leads to spam with unrelated promotions. They slip in dark-pattern upsells and bury you under a mountain of features you never asked for.

They forgot who they are for.

We think there is a way to build a sustainable business without the VC rocket fuel that destroys the incentives. From one small business to another - we're here to help you run your events and sell tickets, without being annoying or extractive, where our incentives are aligned with yours.

Where we are right now

There's a few final touches to make while we get ready to go live for a small group of early users. We’d rather nail something great for 100 dedicated humans than blast a half-baked version at 100,000 people.

If you host events—or dream of starting—and you hate overcomplicated tools, you are exactly the kind of person we want to build this alongside.

What we are aiming at

We want to change how independent events are run. We have set two hard numbers to judge ourselves against:

1. Help 50,000 creators launch their first event. Many people never host because venue logistics, payments, and check-in feel like too much admin. We want the first event to feel small enough to try.

2. Power 1,000,000 events worldwide. From backyard workshops to sold-out shows, we want Ticketsmith to handle the ticket page, payment, and door list for one million events.

If that sounds up your alley, we'd love to hear from you.