Filmgrail vs Eventive for film festivals

Eventive describes itself as a platform for independent cinema that combines ticketing, pass management, audience data, year-round member relations, digital promotions, streaming, online film guides and balloting, for film festivals, arthouse cinemas and distributors. Its virtual product streams films with multi-DRM and forensic watermarking, and it offers desktop, mobile and iPad box office. Its client stories include AFI, Fantastic Fest, Heartland Film, Mountainfilm and the International Documentary Association.

Eventive's own pricing makes the comparison easy. At 5% + $0.99 per paid item, a festival that sells 20,000 paid tickets at an average of $12 generates about $31,800 in ticketing fees in a single edition. Passing those fees to buyers keeps them off your budget but adds them to your audience's basket, at the moment you most want them to add one more screening. Filmgrail is a flat annual subscription, so the cost does not rise with your success.

And the edition becomes yours: a festival website where the programme, sections, guests and industry strand have their own structure, and a native app that carries passes and schedules through the festival week. Festivals attached to a cinema can run both on the same platform all year. If streaming is a core part of your edition, Filmgrail does not stream; everything around it, we do better.

Because the public edition is where a festival earns its audience, and it deserves a website and app that are unmistakably yours: sections and strands as first-class content, passes sold before the programme exists and redeemed later, industry accreditation beside public sale, and a site built to stay up the hour the programme drops. Filmgrail runs festivals such as BIFF and the Norwegian International Film Festival in Haugesund.

Pricing is published: a mid-size international festival pays about $5,000 a year, flat, with no per-ticket fees, and smaller festivals pay less (see pricing). If we already integrate your ticketing and payment provider you can be live in a few weeks; a provider we have not connected before takes about a month.

See it before you talk to anyone: build your festival's prototype in 30 seconds — your own festival site and festival back office, from your current address. Then book a demo against your real programme.