Tiered & Early-Bird Pricing
Pro - Early-bird and tiered ticket pricing require Eventonomy Pro.
Eventonomy Pro lets you reward people who buy early. Each paid ticket can have an early-bird price that is charged automatically while a window is open, then reverts to the normal price once the window closes. There is nothing to switch on or off at the cutoff - the price changes on its own the moment the end date and time passes.
What You Will Learn
- What early-bird / tiered pricing does and when it applies
- How the early-bird window works and when the price switches
- How to configure early-bird pricing on a ticket in the event editor
- How checkout picks the active price and how it stacks with coupons, fees, and tax
What Early-Bird Pricing Is
Early-bird pricing is a discount that runs on a schedule. You set a lower price and an end date/time on a paid ticket. While that window is open, buyers are charged the early-bird price; after it closes, they pay the ticket's normal (base) price.
Two rules always hold:
- Paid tickets only. Early-bird pricing is ignored on free and donation tickets - those always use their base price.
- It is only ever a discount, never a surcharge. The buyer is charged whichever is lower: the early-bird price or the base price. If you set an early-bird price that is higher than the base price, the base price is used.
Configuring Early-Bird Pricing
Early-bird fields live on each ticket, in the event editor.
- Open the event in the editor and go to the Tickets section.
- On a paid ticket row, find the Early-bird pricing fields (added by Pro).
- Fill in:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Early-bird price | The discounted amount to charge while the window is open. Used only when it is below the ticket's normal price. |
| Early-bird ends | The date and time the early-bird window closes. Enter it in your site's local time - Eventonomy stores it and compares against the cutoff for you. |
- Save the event.
Note: The fields appear on every ticket row, but they only take effect on paid tickets. Leaving them blank means the ticket always charges its normal price.
Once saved, the switch is automatic: up to the Early-bird ends moment buyers see and pay the early-bird price, and from that moment on they pay the base price. You do not need to edit the event again when the window closes.
How Checkout Picks the Active Price
When someone checks out, Pro re-prices every line item on the server before anything else is calculated:
- For each paid ticket in the order, Pro checks whether an early-bird window is still open (its ends time is at or after now).
- If the window is open, the ticket is priced at the lower of the early-bird price and the base price. Otherwise it uses the base price.
- This becomes the authoritative subtotal - it is computed from the ticket record on the server, so a tampered client-side price can never lower the amount charged.
The early-bird subtotal is then the base that everything else stacks on. The full order sequence at checkout is:
- Subtotal - priced with any active early-bird tiers applied.
- Coupon discount - deducted from the (already early-bird) subtotal.
- Booking fee - applied to the discounted subtotal.
- Tax - applied to (or extracted from) the post-fee amount.
- Total - the final amount charged.
Because early-bird runs first, a coupon and the tax/fee rules all compose on top of the correct, discounted base price. The order records which lines had an active early-bird tier (base price, charged price, and the tier label) so you can see it later.
Advanced (developers): The pricing engine also supports stacking multiple tiers on a single ticket through the REST API - a list of
{ price, ends }steps. At checkout the first tier whose window is still open (in the order you declared them) wins. The event editor exposes a single early-bird window per ticket; multi-tier ladders are configured via the ticket'searly_birdpayload on the REST endpoint.
What's Next?
See how coupons, booking fees, and tax stack on top of the early-bird price.