The solution to the world's best problem - a sold-out event!
With a waitlist enabled, latecomers can register their interest for tickets that have sold out, ready for you to offer tickets as they become available whether through cancellations or upscaling your venue.
Guests will provide name, email address and preference of tickets and will receive a a confirmation email with a unique link to purchase tickets.
✅ Enable a waitlist
Manage your event via the events tab
Head to manage attendees > waitlist via the left-hand menu bar
Toggle on enable waitlist
Enable the waitlist for:
When a ticket type sells out
When the total event capacity is reached
Note: Both of these options can be enabled at the same time
Select which ticket types a waitlist will appear for, leave blank for all tickets
Choose the max waitlist size and the time limit for a waitlist offer
Choose if you want to offer tickets automatically or manually (check out the difference below)
Click save
If the waitlist is not enabled for a particular ticket type or event, a ticket type will appear as sold out once its capacity has been reached.
👀 Manage your waitlist
Click manage attendees > waitlist
Waitlisted guests will appear under the manage waitlist tab
Check the status of your waitlisted guests:
Waiting - A guest has not been offered tickets
Notified - The offer for tickets has been sent
Passed - The guest has declined to purchase tickets
Interested - The guest has clicked through on their offer link but has not finalised their purchase
Purchased - The guest has successfully purchased tickets through their offer
📤 Offer tickets to guests on your waitlist
Step 1 - Check ticket availability before offering tickets
Head to manage attendees > waitlist
Click check ticket status
You can also access the ticket status modal via the overview page.
This tool will tell you which tickets are:
ON SALE
SOLD OUT (and why is it sold out)
WAITLIST ON (i.e. accepting a waitlist)
READY TO OFFER (or AUTO OFFERING )
Step 2 - Make sure you have enough tickets to offer
When a ticket type has available tickets - capacity - the READY TO OFFER or AUTO OFFERING status will appear.
If you’re not seeing this status, check if:
Enough tickets have been cancelled to allow availability; or
You have increased ticket capacities via the tickets > ticket types page.
If you have set up any additional restrictions on capacity, such as total event capacity or grouped capacity, make sure they are also adapted.
Step 3 - Offer tickets
Tickets can be offered automatically and/or manually. Adjust your settings via the manage attendees > waitlist > settings page.
🔄 Automatically offer tickets
You can set the waitlist to automatically offer tickets to guests via email without needing to monitor and action these yourself
Tickets are offered automatically to the first guest on the waitlist
Every 30 minutes, the next guest in line will be notified if tickets are still available
Once every waitlisted guest has been notified, available tickets will be reopened to the public. Tickets are not held with each offer - notified guests will need to purchase on a first-come-first-serve basis
Set tickets offer email trigger - this is the minimum number of tickets that must be available before offers will be sent
You can also make manual offers of tickets at the same time
Ticket types will display the AUTO OFFERING status in the check ticket status tool
Offering a waitlist for a packaged ticket?
Keep in mind that buyers can only purchase a packaged when all tickets in that package are available
For example, buyers interested in a “Table of 10” package would still be notified of available tickets but be unable to purchase if your tickets offer email trigger is set to "3"
You may wish not to apply a waitlist to packaged tickets, or increase the trigger amount to ensure guests are only notified when enough tickets are available to buy a package
👆 Manually offer tickets
If you want to control who receives an offer or send out offers in bulk you can manually send out offers at anytime
Click the checkbox next to a waitlisted guest or select multiple at a time
Select offer tickets
👨👩👧👦 Reopen all tickets to the public
This option will ignore those on the waitlist and reopen available ticket sales to the general public.
The join waitlist button will be removed until the ticket sells out again.
Navigate to the manage waitlist page
Click put back on sale
This action will not offer tickets to your waitlisted guests.
We recommend you send all waitlisted guests and offer to alert them to available tickets.
They can still use their offer link to access the event page but will compete with the general public.
📧 Buyers waitlist email notifications
When someone joins a waitlist
When someone on the waitlist is offered a ticket
❓ Commonly asked questions
I have increased my ticket capacity but attendees are still prompted to join the waitlist
Your waitlist has been triggered and guests have joined the waitlist. The waitlist will always prioritise those on the waitlist and will remain on even after you change the event capacity or cancel tickets.
You can manually offer tickets to those on the waitlist or click put back on sale to reopen tickets to everyone.
I have offered tickets to my attendees, but they say the event/ticket is sold out
Check that tickets are available for your event. You may need to increase your ticket and/or total event capacity via the tickets> ticket types page. Ensure you have also correctly cancelled any tickets to restock them. Check out our guide to help you here.
Make sure your tickets do not have a sold out override (via settings⚙️ > advanced settings) status or that there is no stop sales indicator for the event.
Why was my waitlist triggered when I can see that there are still tickets available?
It’s likely that your waitlist was triggered when your tickets sold out due to pending orders.
This means buyers started the checkout process and their selected tickets were held for the default 20 min checkout period. A buyer coming after them would see that the tickets were sold out and are prompted to join the waitlist.
After 20 mins the first(s) attendee did not complete their checkout and their tickets are then released.
The ticket type will continue to show as “sold out” as there are currently waitlisted guest(s) waiting for this ticket type.
You can manually offer tickets, turn on automatic ticket offers, and/or put tickets back on sale