It amazes me how Eventbrite’s event management user system is so convoluted.
Say a producer is having an event with Venue A. The venue maintains the Eventbrite account for the event. The producer needs to have access to administer an event. Great!
Venue A put in their email address producer@example.com as a sub account. Eventbrite errors: That email already exists in Eventbrite’s system. Producer bought tickets to some other event already, but now that e-mail address can’t administer an event that wasn’t explicitly created by that account.
Producer creates a new e-mail address, then asks the venue to use a different email address, user-eventbrite@example.com. Great! All good.
A few months later, the same producer is doing a different event at a different venue who has a different Eventbrite account. Venue B tries to add user@example.com, but it fails. User gives their Eventbrite email user-eventbrite@example.com… and it fails. The producer can close the account, but would lose access to that venue and their event happening next month. The producer needs to make an additional email address to get access to the Eventbrite. user-eventbrite-2@example.com…
That’s making a big leap that the producer can manage this on a technical side. Or the foresight to realize they can make irreversible decisions.
It’s 2017, and Eventbrite explicitly states you need to create a new email address for every venue account. That help page is a real gem of a document too. Besides instructing people to close accounts willy-nilly, they also advise users to exploit Gmail aliases as a fix:
PRO TIP: What happens when Google removes this “feature”?How can software built in such a way where a user permission system is impossible? I really want to know what the irreversible decisions were made that support telling people to delete accounts and exploit email systems is the better option.
Now I have to mention that there are other ticketing vendors that have similar situations (looking at you, Brown Paper Tickets). So it’s not just Eventbrite, but it also doesn’t make it correct.
Besides a new ticketing system entering the space with proper user management built in, we’re going to be stuck with this forever. Should Eventbrite or BrownPaperTickets have in interest in making a system that works for event and venue professionals, I’m available for consultation.