Ticketing for church conferences: tiers, registration and fees
Church conferences are mostly free or low-cost, which changes what a ticketing tool has to be good at: free tickets that cost nothing, an optional donation at checkout, family and youth rates, volunteer shifts, per-session capacity and a check-in desk that can process a family order without creating separate accounts. Checkout Page's free plan covers up to $3,000 in sales a month.
By Checkout Page · Updated September 5, 2026 · 9 min read
On this page
- What is different about church conference ticketing?
- Should a church conference charge for tickets?
- What ticket tiers work for a church conference?
- How do you register a family, and how do multiple campuses work?
- How do you handle volunteers and session capacity?
- What should a church conference registration form ask?
- How do you check in 400 people on a Saturday morning?
- What will a church conference cost in fees?
- Where does Checkout Page not fit a church conference?
- What should you read next?
What is different about church conference ticketing?
The economics flip the usual comparison. When a ticket is $25, a fee of 3.7 percent plus $1.79 is $2.71, which is nearly 11 percent of the ticket. A wholly free event can also have per-registrant charges on some platforms, so check whether a quoted free-ticket fee applies to a mixed paid event with complimentary tickets.
The second difference is who registers. One person signs up five people, two of whom are children and one of whom is a grandparent who does not use email. Registration has to survive that without five separate accounts.
Should a church conference charge for tickets?
Use the previous event's registrations, scans and donations to decide what to test. If you offer an optional donation, choose an ask that is clear about what it supports and compare checkout and follow-up placement in your own data rather than assuming either improves giving.
What ticket tiers work for a church conference?
| Tier | Example price | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|
| Adult | $25 | Covers lunch and materials for one person, which is what you tell people |
| Student or youth (13 to 18) | $10 | Youth groups arrive in vans; make it cheap and make it easy to book ten |
| Child (0 to 12) | $0 | Free, but registered, because childcare needs the names and ages |
| Family (2 adults, up to 3 children) | $55 | Priced under the sum so a family of five is not a $75 decision |
| Volunteer | $0 | Shared by link, with a required shift and team question |
| Leader or pastor | $0 | Comped by code, counted separately for your reporting |
| Livestream or at-home | $0 with donation | For members who cannot travel, and for other campuses |
| Saturday dinner | $18 add-on | A headcount the caterer bills you for, so sell it separately |
How do you register a family, and how do multiple campuses work?
The reason to keep individual family tickets in one order is administration: one confirmation email and one payer record, while names and ages remain attached to the attendees. At the door, scan each attendee's unique ticket or search by name rather than treating a family order as one admission.
Collect ages for children, not just names. Childcare rooms are organized by age band, and "three children" is not a plan. If you run childcare, ask about allergies and any additional needs in the same block, behind conditional logic so families without children never see it.
For campuses, ticket groups are the light-touch option: one event, a group per campus, a capacity on each, and a report that splits by campus without any extra work. Separate events make more sense when the dates, venues or teams genuinely differ.
How do you handle volunteers and session capacity?
Workshop capacity is the other common Saturday problem. If your breakouts have room limits, sell them as separate ticket types or as an add-on with its own inventory, so the session closes when it is full instead of on a clipboard at the door. Attendees who see "8 places left" also decide faster.
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What should a church conference registration form ask?
- Name and email of the person registering, plus a phone number for day-of texts
- Name and age of each additional attendee, including children
- Campus or home church, as a select with an "other" option
- Childcare required, and if yes the children's ages, allergies and any additional needs
- Dietary requirements, a select with an "other" text field
- Accessibility requirements, including seating and hearing loop needs
- Breakout session or track preference, one per attendee
- First time at one of our events, a single checkbox
- Volunteer interest, and if yes the team and shift preferences
- Emergency contact name and number, required when a minor is registered without a parent
- Photography consent, unticked by default, with plain wording about where photos are used
Conditional logic keeps the form to four questions for a single adult and expands it for a family of five with childcare. The registration form questions guide covers the wording, and the form template is a starting point.
How do you check in 400 people on a Saturday morning?
Two things go wrong in practice. The first is WiFi: the scanner needs an internet connection, and church buildings are often thick-walled. Test it at the actual door, at the actual time, and put a phone on cellular data as a backup. The second is people who never opened the confirmation email, which is why searching by name, email or order ID matters more than the scanner itself.
Give the desk a printed fallback list of names too. It costs one sheet of paper and it turns a technology problem into a five-minute delay. The check-in guide covers staffing, lane counts and what to do when the network drops.
What will a church conference cost in fees?
The arithmetic. Eventbrite charges 3.7 percent plus $1.79 per paid ticket, which is $2.71 on a $25 adult ticket and $2.16 on a $10 youth ticket, so $679 plus $216 is about $895. On the youth ticket that fee is nearly 22 percent of the price. Ticket Tailor charges a flat $0.85 per paid ticket, so $298. RegFox Standard charges $0.99 plus 1 percent for each paid registration: $310 for adults and $109 for youth, or $419. Its July 2026 pricing update says the 50 complimentary registrations inside this paid event are free.
| Platform | Basis on this exact ticket mix | Illustrated platform cost |
|---|---|---|
| Eventbrite | 3.7% + $1.79 on 250 adult and 100 youth paid tickets | $895 |
| Ticket Tailor | $0.85 × 350 paid tickets | $298 |
| RegFox Standard | $0.99 + 1% on 350 paid tickets; 50 comps in a paid event are free | $419 |
| Checkout Page | $2,400 then $4,850 across two selling months | $99 |
Checkout Page charges no per-ticket fee and nothing for free tickets. What you pay is a monthly plan priced by sales volume: $0 up to $3,000 a month and $99 up to $10,000. In this example, a quieter month at $2,400 is free and a busy month at $4,850 costs $99. That is the whole platform cost for the stated sales curve.
Rates checked 5 September 2026: Eventbrite organizer pricing, Ticket Tailor pricing, RegFox July 2026 pricing update and Checkout Page pricing. Payment processing is excluded from this comparison.
At an illustrative 2.9 percent plus $0.30 rate, $7,250 across 350 separate payments produces about $315 in processing. Group orders reduce the fixed-fee count, and other gateways or payment methods can differ.
I did the math forward and backward, short term and long term to see what the best way would be. Checkout Page came out at the top of my list. When I began to use the platform, it was extremely easy to set up.
Where does Checkout Page not fit a church conference?
The childcare point is the one to think through. Checkout Page will register children with their names, ages and allergies, and export the list, which is most of what a small program needs. It will not print matched security tags or run a pickup verification flow. If your safeguarding policy requires that, keep your existing childcare check-in system and use the conference tickets for adults and the headcount.
What should you read next?
- Conference check-in, for staffing the door and handling bad WiFi
- How to price conference tickets, for choosing between free, low-cost and donation-based
- Conference registration form questions, for family, childcare and consent fields
- Conference registration form template, a field list you can adapt for a church event
Frequently asked questions
- Do free tickets cost anything on Checkout Page?
- No. Free ticket types cost nothing on any plan, including the Free plan, and there is no per-ticket fee on paid tickets either. RegFox's Standard plan lists $0.99 per registrant for an entirely free event, but RegFox says complimentary registrations inside a paid event remain free.
- Can people give a donation instead of paying for a ticket?
- Yes, in two ways. Make the ticket pay-what-you-want so people enter an amount, or make the ticket free and add an optional donation at checkout. This site has no evidence that one raises more. Compare registration completion, participation rate and average contribution for your own audience.
- How do you register a whole family in one order?
- For per-attendee tracking, let a family buy individual adult and child tickets in one order and collect each person's name and age. Each ticket then has its own QR code. A single family ticket is one entitlement; do not assume it automatically creates five individual tickets unless the provider documents that feature.
- Will the free plan cover our conference?
- The Free plan covers up to $3,000 in a 30-day period, with Checkout Page branding. A 400-person conference at $25 produces $10,000 in sales, so the applicable cost depends on when those sales land. If they all land in one billing period, the $99 Scale tier covers that period; a longer sales curve may cost more.
- Can we run one registration across several campuses?
- Yes. Either run one event with a campus question or a ticket group per campus, each with its own capacity, or run a separate event per campus if the dates and venues differ. Ticket groups are simpler when the conference is one gathering and campuses only matter for reporting and seating.
- How do you handle volunteer sign-ups?
- Create a zero-priced volunteer ticket type, share the link with your team rather than putting it on the public page, and add a required question for shift preference and team. Volunteers then hold a real ticket, so they scan in like everyone else and your headcount for catering is right.
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Checkout Page builds checkout and event ticketing software. This site covers conference registration through product documentation, fee calculations and practical planning examples.
Published by Checkout Page, one of the platforms covered. Comparisons use public pricing and documentation. Our editorial approach.
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