Pricing is one of the few levers that affects both your revenue and how quickly seats fill. A flat price for every ticket, sold from day one until the door, leaves money on the table and gives buyers no reason to commit early. A simple three-phase structure — early bird, regular, last minute — solves both problems without much complexity.
Why phases matter
Early buyers take a risk. They commit months out, often before the lineup or programme is fully confirmed. Rewarding that with a lower price is fair, and it gives you early cash flow and a visible sales number that builds social proof.
Regular pricing is your baseline. It should reflect what the event is genuinely worth, not an inflated anchor designed to make discounts look dramatic.
Last-minute pricing can work in either direction. The most common approach is to make tickets more expensive as the event gets closer. This rewards early commitment and gives buyers a reason not to wait.
For events where unsold capacity has near-zero value, the opposite strategy can also make sense. A modest reduction in the final days can convert fence-sitters and fill otherwise empty capacity.
Setting the numbers
A few principles that hold up in practice:
- Early bird discount: 15–25% off regular — Enough to feel meaningful, not so deep that it cannibalises your margin.
- Last-minute increase: 10–20% above regular — A higher final price makes the benefit of booking earlier clear.
- Last-minute discount: use selectively — If filling remaining capacity matters more than protecting the regular price, a late discount can work — but avoid making waiting until the end your audience's best strategy.
- Time gates, not quantity gates — Tying phases to dates is easier to communicate than "first 50 tickets." Buyers understand a deadline; they can't easily verify a counter.
- Keep the structure simple — Adding too many tiers (super early bird, early bird, early bird plus, …) creates decision fatigue and makes the pricing harder to communicate.
How to build this in Entase
There are two practical ways to build phased pricing in Entase: separate ticket types or price policies. Which one works better depends largely on how your tickets are configured.
Separate ticket types
For events with custom ticket types, the simplest approach is usually to create separate Early bird and Regular ticket types.
Start sales with Early bird available. You can keep Regular visible at the same time, so buyers immediately see both the discount they receive today and the price they will pay later.
When the early bird period ends, hide or disable Early bird and continue with Regular.
The same principle applies to last-minute pricing. If the final price will be higher, making Last minute visible in advance can strengthen the incentive to buy earlier. Buyers can see exactly what waiting will cost them.
If your last-minute strategy is a discount instead, consider adding or revealing it only when the final sales period begins. Advertising a cheaper future price from the start gives buyers a reason to wait.
Custom ticket types are flexible: you can add new ones, change them, and control which ones are available as the event progresses.
Price policies
Price policies are particularly useful for events with seating charts, where sectors and ticket types are defined by the chart and cannot simply be replaced with new ones for each pricing phase.
Set the regular ticket prices for the event, then create a price policy with rules for the periods when different pricing should apply.
For example, an early bird rule can apply a discount until four weeks before the event. Entase will calculate the discount automatically when the customer makes their selection.
There is an important difference in how this is presented to buyers: the seating chart initially displays the regular price. The applicable price policy is evaluated after the selection, and any discount is then reflected in the final price rather than appearing as a separate Early bird ticket type.
Prices assigned to a seating chart can also be changed while the event is on sale. The chart's sectors and ticket types remain fixed, but their prices do not have to.
If you need to adjust prices, ticket types, or the price policy after the event is already on sale, see Editing prices, ticket types, and price policy for a scheduled event.
For price policies themselves — including rules, conditions, and discount values — see Creating a price policy and Policy rules explained.
A note on communication
The pricing structure only works if buyers understand it.
Mention the early bird deadline in your launch announcement, on the event page, and in social posts. If the next price is going up, showing that price in advance can make the benefit of buying now tangible.
When a phase ends, a simple update — Early bird pricing has closed. Regular tickets are now available. — reinforces that the pricing really does move and gives anyone still considering the event another reason to act.