Camp, class and activity organizers face many options to market their events online.
While most companies have set up their own websites to market and promote their business, deciding which company to partner with for back-end reservation services is more difficult. To help these customers make better choices, we have reviewed two major players, ActivityHero and Eventbrite, and compare their capabilities and costs.
Activityhero vs. Eventbrite Comparison
| Criteria | Activityhero | Eventbrite |
| Create sessions, schedules and availability on the platforms | Yes, Including multi-day sessions capabilities |
Some But, no capabilities for multi-day session |
| Enable checkout and registration bookings on your website | Yes | Yes But, must have the Professional or Premium package |
| Display fully branded landing on partner platform | Yes | Yes Only with Premium package. Otherwise, your landing page is co-branded with Eventbrite even with other (Professional and Essentials) packages. |
| Display customer reviews on events page | Yes | No |
| Ability to filter events by child gender and age on partner platform | Yes | No |
| Collect attendee information with online registration |
Yes, Captures all necessary attendee info out-of-the-box (including parent, pick-up and emergency contacts, medical information, dietary restrictions, etc.) |
Yes, But, all attendee information must be manually set up for each event using custom questions functionality. Must have the Professional or Premium package. |
| Allow one time set-up of registration information |
Yes, Parents can set up profiles for children, which is automatically applied for each registration |
No |
| Purchase extended care |
Yes, Out-of-the-box platform capabilities |
Yes, But, must be manually set up using add-on functionality |
| Apply discounts and pay with credit cards | Yes | Yes |
| Customer service support |
Yes Phone support M-F (business hours) |
Partial, Must have the Premium package for phone support and Professional package for chat and email support. |
|
Cost Structure (for reservations on your website) |
1.7% service fee, plus payment processing fee of 3%
Able to pass-on service fees to the customer |
Essentials Package: 2% + $0.79 per paid ticket service fee, plus payment processing fee of 2.5%
Professional Package: 3.5% + $1.59 per paid ticket service fee, plus payment processing fee of 2.5%
Premium Package: Negotiated
Able to pass on service fees to the customer. US Pricing. |
|
Fee Comparison (for reservations on your website) |
Total Fees per Registration
$25 sale: $1.18 (4.7%) $100 sale: $4.70 (4.7%) $250 sale: $11.75 (4.7%) |
Total Fees Registration
Essential Package: $25 sale: $1.92 (7.66%) $100 sale: $5.29 (5.29%) $250 sale: $12.04 (4.82%)
Professional Package: $25 sale: $3.09 (12.36%) $100 sale: $7.59 (7.59%) $250 sale: $16.59 (6.64%) |
Our Take
ActivityHero has provided digital marketing and eCommerce services for summer camp and after school organizers for more than 15 years. With more than 100,000 summer camps and after school customers, organizers can list on Activityhero.com website, or alternatively with some minimal IT work, easily embed ActivityHero’s widgets onto their own websites to take reservations and payments. ActivityHero caters to kids camps and activities and provides capabilities that address the specific needs of its target market. This includes the ability to search and filter sessions by gender and age, display customer reviews, and set-up online registration profiles once to submit with any reservation, saving time and effort for parents.
Meanwhile, Eventbrite is a well known event management and ticketing company with hundreds of thousands of events and a global footprint. Despite laying off 45% of its staff in April 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the company continues to offer basic event reservation capabilities to any type of event organizer. Like ActivityHero, customers can embed Eventbrite’s checkout code to take reservations and payments on their own websites. However, given Eventbrite’s generic capabilities, their platform lacks certain capabilities that summer camp and kids activity providers find valuable — including customer reviews, registration profiles for children, ability to search/filter by gender and age and multi-day sessions structures, to name a few. In addition, other capabilities that ActivityHero provides out-of-the-box requires extensive manual set-up and customization on the Eventbrite platform. This includes setting up extended care options as add-ons, customizing order forms to capture all needed attendee registration information, automatic generation of attendee list for check-in purposes, etc. Moreover, it is unclear if Eventbrite has some of ActivityHero’s more advanced capabilities, such as the ability to move a registration from one session to another.
Pricing and Support
ActivityHero’s fee structure is straightforward and attractive. For reservations on your website, ActivityHero’s fees are 4.7% of registration revenue (1.7% service fee, plus 3% to cover credit card processing), regardless of volume. For that, ActivityHero customers also get phone support during business hours on weekdays.
In contrast, Evenbrite’s fee structure is complex, as it includes a per-ticket sold fee and varies by package. To provide a meaningful comparison, we calculated the total fees (in dollars and as a %) for three different registration selling prices. Note that Eventbrite’s Premium Package pricing was used here since it includes comparable phone-based customer support as to ActivityHero (whereas Eventbrite’s Professional Package only comes with chat and email support).
Table 1 below clearly demonstrates that, in all cases, Eventbrite’s total fees are significantly higher than ActivityHero — by at least 41% to as much as 161% higher, depending on your registration price.
Table 1: Fee Comparison
| Registration | ActivityHero | Eventbrite | Difference |
| Selling Price | Flat 4.7% | Premium Package | Eventbrite minus AH |
| $25 | $1.18 (4.7%) | $3.09 (12.36%) | $1.91 (161%) |
| $100 | $4.70 (4.7%) | $7.59 (7.59%) | $2.89 (61%) |
| $250 | $11.75 (4.7%) | $16.59 (6.64%) | $4.84 (41%) |
Summary
If you are a camp or children’s activity provider looking to better promote and grow your business, you should strongly consider Activityhero to power registrations and process payments on your website. Activityhero provides more extensive functionality to meet your needs, has more features to make it easier for your customer to make registrations, and is far more cost effective than competitors like Eventbrite.