This week, we announced our first Waag Open event of 2025, Waag Open: Fix & Stitch, using Pretix to issue tickets and register participants. Previously, we used Eventbrite for this, which is based in the United States and has a closed, commercial ecosystem tied to it. For the past few months Waag Futurelab has worked on implementing Pretix, and this week we are finally able to make the switch to an in-house registration and ticketing system for all our events.
What is Pretix?
Pretix is an open source software ticket management system developed by German company rami.io. The online software can be used to handle event registration and ticket sales. The main functionalities of Pretix that we find useful for our day to day activities are:
- Creation of a ticket sales page that can also be embedded in our event pages
- An automated waiting list where people automatically qualify for a ticket when someone unsubscribes
- Support for all existing payment systems (including iDeal, Paypal and credit cards)
- Generating attendance lists and badge labels
- Processing of personal data, privacy and security is safeguarded according to ISO 27001 standards
They offer different product options: Waag uses the self-hosted Community edition under a Free forever open software licence, but there is also a fee-based cloud solution provided by Pretix itself. It is also possible to use that solution for free when you don't charge for your tickets, for up to 2,500 tickets per year.
Working on a Public Stack
The switch to Pretix is part of Waag's mission to promote the development of open, fair and inclusive technology. In order to practice what we preach, we use technology designed for and by users in line with public values, wherever possible. This way, we work on building our public stack: the set of technology, infrastructure and design processes that focuses not on people as consumers, but as autonomous citizens.
