Festival management software

Program, website, ticketing, comps and the door, all in one system.

Our origin story starts with a comedy festival. Putting on a show here and there is manageable with a few manual processes. When you scale out to a festival mistakes can pile up - working from spreadsheets, copy / pasting things into WordPress, moving images around and rewriting things in MailChimp. Hectic and messy. Most festivals juggle a website builder, a ticketing platform, a spreadsheet of comps and a lot of email to hold it together.

Funny Little Shows puts all of that in one place. You enter an artist and their sessions once, and the same details drive the website, the ticketing, the comps, the venue reports and the door app. It also works with external ticketing systems because we know major venues already have their own contracts in place.

What it does for a festival

Plan the program

  • Artists with show titles, descriptions, images, quotes, videos and tags
  • Sessions across multiple venues and rooms, each with its own capacity and timezone
  • Line-up shows with several artists on one bill
  • Schedule clash detection so a room or an artist isn't double-booked
  • A festival overview grid of every artist and session, by show order, by room, or as a printable A3 sheet
  • Import and export shows by spreadsheet

Publish the website

  • A fast, mobile-friendly festival website on your own domain, built from the same program data
  • Artist pages, tag filters and a home page order you control
  • Schedule “Public preview” and “On sale” dates per artist, so the program launches when you say
  • Shows come off the website automatically once they’re over
  • Custom pages, menus, headlines and redirects without a developer

Sell tickets your way

  • Sell through Funny Little Shows, or link individual shows to a venue’s own ticketing, and mix the two across the festival
  • Ticket categories, pricing templates per room, discount codes, waitlists and custom checkout questions
  • Add-ons such as meals sold with tickets
  • Refund, reschedule or rebook a session and tell ticket holders in one step
  • Money goes straight to your own Stripe account as tickets sell

Comps, venues and artists

  • Default comp allocations per room for artists, producers and venues
  • Track who each comp is allocated to, and issue it when confirmed
  • A venue box office portal for actioning comp requests at venues with their own ticketing
  • Release unused comps back to sale automatically
  • Overnight sales emails to venues, artists and agents, showing only their own sessions

Run the door

  • iOS and Android scanning apps that work offline
  • Guest access for venue staff and volunteers, with no limit on numbers
  • Search by name for the punter who forgot their ticket
  • Check-in entire parties, you don't have to scan every ticket
  • Check-in and check-out history

Sell the next show

  • Punters opt in at checkout or through a sign-up form on your website
  • Segments such as “saw this artist”, “bought in this room” or “on a waitlist”
  • Email campaigns built from your program, with buy buttons and artist cards
  • Opens, clicks and ticket sales per campaign
  • Your audience is yours: we don't promote other events to them

What it doesn’t do (yet)

  • Allocated seating with seat maps. It’s on our roadmap; general admission works today.
  • Card payments in the door app. Door sales are recorded in the app, and you take the payment separately.

Pricing for festivals

The same published pricing applies: 2.5% of ticket sales (including card fees), $1 per ticket paid by the punter, and $35 a month for the hosted website. There are no setup fees for our standard layouts. We’ll tell you up front if your festival needs anything custom.

Frequently asked questions

Yes. Each show can be sold through Funny Little Shows or linked to a venue’s ticketing, and you can mix the two across the festival. Comps for venues with their own box office are handled through the venue portal.

Up to 10 admin users are included, with role-based permissions. Contact us if you need more. Door staff and volunteers use guest access to the scanning app, with no limit.

Yes. Shows can be imported from a spreadsheet, and customers from a CSV file. Only import customers who have agreed to hear from you.

It’s built for comedy, so the language and workflows are about artists, shows and sessions. Fringe and other multi-venue live performance festivals that work the same way are a good fit too. Talk to us.

Ticket money goes into the festival’s own Stripe account at the time of sale, and Stripe pays it out to your bank on its rolling schedule. You don’t have to wait until the festival ends.

Running a festival?

Tell us about it. We'll show you how your program would look.

Contact us See the showcase