Best Brushfire Alternative: TicketingHub

Selling tickets every day? Stop paying by the head

Brushfire is well built for what it was designed for: registering and ticketing single events, especially for churches, schools and conferences. But if you run recurring, timed admissions — tours, tickets, day passes — week after week, a per-attendee fee structure works against you: the more people you get through the gate, the harder the fees bite, and the cheaper your tickets, the worse it gets.

TicketingHub flips that. You pay a flat 3% per online booking — no setup fee, no monthly fee, no per-head charge — so your cost scales with what you actually earn, never with how busy you are. It's built for operators who sell the same product every day, it's rated 5.0 on Capterra, and operators using its OTA channel manager grew their reseller sales 401% between 2022 and 2025.

What is Brushfire?

Brushfire Technology is a Fort Worth, Texas-based event ticketing and registration platform, founded in 2003 by Stan Coker to serve churches and ministries whose event needs - group registrations, volunteer check-in, multi-session conferences - did not fit mainstream ticketing tools. It is a privately held US company; no public ownership or acquisition history is disclosed.

Its customer base leans religious and educational: churches, schools, conferences and one-off event organizers. Brushfire cites large-scale partnerships with organizations including Hillsong, Gateway, Prestonwood, James River and Joyce Meyer Ministries, alongside touring speakers such as Tim Hawkins.

What Brushfire's pricing costs you

Brushfire's standard rate is 1.50 dollars per paid attendee plus 1% of the ticket price, and 1 dollar per free attendee. There is no setup fee or annual fee on this pay-as-you-go plan, though a flat monthly or yearly option is available by talking to their sales team. Add-on services such as virtual events or attendee support cost an extra 1 dollar per attendee, and standard card processing fees apply on top of all of this.

Run the numbers for your own gate. Say you sell 10,000 dollars of tickets in a month at an average price of 20 dollars - 500 paid tickets, ignoring add-ons and card processing, which both platforms incur separately. Brushfire's fee is 1.50 dollars plus 1% of 20 dollars per ticket - 1.70 dollars per ticket, 850 dollars for the month, or 8.5% of revenue. TicketingHub charges 3% of the same 10,000 dollars: 300 dollars. That 550-dollar monthly difference is a part-time guide's wages. And the gap widens at lower prices, where the fixed 1.50 dollars per head matters more: at a 10-dollar average ticket, the same 10,000 dollars in sales costs 1,600 dollars on Brushfire, 16% of revenue, against TicketingHub's 300 dollars.

Brushfire vs TicketingHub, side by side

• Pricing - Brushfire: 1.50 dollars plus 1% of ticket price per paid attendee, 1 dollar per free attendee. TicketingHub: 3% per online booking, no per-attendee fee.
• Monthly fee - Brushfire: none on the pay-as-you-go plan; a flat monthly or annual plan is available by custom quote. TicketingHub: none.
• Booking widget - Brushfire: hosted event registration pages with branding options. TicketingHub: one line of code, brand-matched, multi-language, multi-currency.
• OTA channel manager - Brushfire: not published; built for direct registration, not reseller distribution. TicketingHub: real-time OTA channel manager syncing Viator, GetYourGuide and other resellers; operators' OTA sales grew +401% between 2022 and 2025.
• Magic Link - Brushfire: not published as a self-serve customer feature. TicketingHub: Magic Link lets customers reschedule, cancel or convert a booking to a voucher themselves.
• Point of sale - Brushfire: not published as a core feature; built around pre-registration, not walk-up sales. TicketingHub: iOS and Android POS, works offline, connects to printers, cash registers and PDQ machines.
• Support - Brushfire: Capterra reviewers describe support as fast and hands-on. TicketingHub: 24/7 support via chat and email, plus free migration help.
• Reviews - Brushfire: 4.7 out of 5 on Capterra from over 150 reviews. TicketingHub: 5.0 on Capterra.

Why operators switch to TicketingHub

Keep more of every busy day

Per-attendee fees add up fastest exactly when you're doing well - a sold-out Saturday of 20-dollar tickets is your best day and Brushfire's best day too. TicketingHub's flat 3% scales with revenue, not headcount: a 10,000-dollar month costs 300 dollars whether you sold 200 tickets or 1,000. Your busiest weeks stop being your most expensive ones.

Fill slots you can't sell yourself

Brushfire is architected around registering people for a single event or conference, with no published OTA or reseller distribution feature. TicketingHub is built around recurring, timed capacity: its OTA channel manager pushes live availability to Viator, GetYourGuide and other resellers, so the quiet midweek departures get sold by the biggest marketplaces in travel - with no double-bookings to apologize for. Operators using it grew OTA sales +401% between 2022 and 2025.

Get your evenings back

Brushfire's tools are aimed at the organizer running registration. TicketingHub also hands work to your customers: Magic Link lets them reschedule, cancel or convert their booking to a voucher on their own, so a change of plans becomes a new date or a voucher instead of a refund email you answer at 10pm. An email validator catches typos at checkout, so confirmations actually arrive and no-shows drop.

Simple to run, with help whenever you're open

Capterra reviewers praise Brushfire's customer service as fast and hands-on - a genuine strength worth matching - but several also describe its backend as confusing for first-time users. TicketingHub is built to be picked up in an afternoon, and real humans answer chat and email 24/7, because tours run on weekends and evenings, not office hours. As Jodie B., a business manager, puts it: "It is a huge relief to be with TicketingHub. We are really thrilled after having been with a system that was difficult to use for too long."

What reviewers say about Brushfire

Brushfire holds a strong 4.7-star rating from more than 150 reviews on Capterra. Reviewers consistently praise its customer service, calling it responsive and hands-on during setup and troubleshooting, along with its customization options and pricing that undercuts consumer platforms like Eventbrite. The recurring criticism is on the admin side: several reviewers describe the backend as confusing for first-time users, with a steeper learning curve for organizers than for attendees, plus some noted design limits on e-tickets and lighter analytics for virtual events. A confusing backend is a real cost for a daily business - it's your staff's time, every single shift.

Who is Brushfire right for?

• Churches, ministries and faith-based organizations running conferences, services and one-off events.
• Schools and event organizers who need group registration, check-in and volunteer management for a single event.
• Organizers comfortable negotiating a custom flat-fee plan for very high attendee volumes.

Who is TicketingHub right for?

• ✅ Operators who sell the same product every day and want their busiest weeks to stop being their most expensive ones.
• ✅ Businesses that want online, walk-up and OTA sales landing in one calendar with no double-bookings.
• ✅ Operators who want one flat, predictable 3% instead of a per-head charge that compounds with every ticket.
• ✅ Teams that want reschedules and cancellations handled by the customer, not the inbox.
• ✅ Anyone who wants a real human answering at 9pm on a Saturday without giving up transparent pricing.

Proof it works

TicketingHub is rated 5.0 on Capterra. Lions Water Adventure Park in Kinston, North Carolina went from around 50,000 dollars to 260,000 dollars in online revenue in a year on TicketingHub. Egypt's Sound and Light Shows grew ticket sales more than 500% after switching. And Sam R., a director, has "used Ticketinghub since 2014 for events ranging from walking tours to large international conferences" - proof it handles the event side too.

FAQs about switching from Brushfire

Will switching from Brushfire disrupt an event I have already scheduled?

No - switching costs you an afternoon, not a season. TicketingHub's team helps migrate your existing products and bookings for free, and your first product can be live in minutes, so you can move over between seasons rather than mid-event.

Is TicketingHub cheaper than Brushfire?

For recurring, higher-volume ticket sales, usually yes - Brushfire's per-attendee fee compounds with every ticket sold, while TicketingHub's 3% scales only with revenue. Do the math for your own volume: multiply your average ticket price by 1% and add 1.50 dollars for Brushfire's fee per ticket, then compare that to 3% of the sale price. At a 20-dollar average ticket, that's 1.70 dollars a head against 60 cents.

Can I try TicketingHub before I switch fully from Brushfire?

Yes, and it costs you nothing to find out. There is no setup fee and no contract required upfront - get one product live, test it against a real season, and migrate the rest once the numbers convince you.

Every per-head fee is margin you've already earned

On a 10,000-dollar month of 20-dollar tickets, Brushfire's per-attendee model costs roughly 550 dollars more than TicketingHub's flat 3% - every month, compounding with every busy weekend. Setup is free, migration is done for you, and you only pay when you get paid. Start free alongside Brushfire, with nothing to cancel, and let your own numbers make the decision.