Event Organisers: Should You Build Your Own Ticketing System or Use a Platform?

You have an event coming up. A conference, a workshop, a cultural festival — maybe even a trade show. You need people to register, and you need to manage who shows up, how they paid, and whether they get a seat. The question lands on your desk: do we build our own ticketing system, or do we use something like Tickets Kenya?

It looks like a simple choice. It is not. The wrong decision can cost you time, money, and a lot of frustrated attendees. We have watched event organisers go both ways, and the answer depends on things you might not have considered.

The Case for Building Your Own

Building your own ticketing system sounds appealing. Full control. No per-ticket fees. Your branding everywhere. You can add whatever features you want — VIP tiers, group discounts, M-Pesa integration exactly the way you like it.

But here is the problem: building a good ticketing system is harder than it looks.

You need a website that handles registration forms, payment processing (M-Pesa, card, bank transfer), automated email confirmations, QR code generation, check-in tools for the day of the event, and analytics after. That is not a weekend project. It is weeks of development, testing, and debugging. According to our experience at KEPAS, a custom ticketing system with the basics — registration, M-Pesa integration, and QR check-in — starts at about KES 350,000 to KES 600,000 to build. And that is before you factor in hosting, maintenance, and the cost of fixing things that break on event day.

From our experience, kES 350,000 — KES 600,000— Estimated cost to build a basic custom event ticketing system with M-Pesa integration, QR check-in, and email confirmations, based on our experience at KEPAS.

For a one-off event, that math does not work. For a recurring event — say a quarterly conference or an annual trade show — the cost spreads out, but you still carry the burden of maintaining the system between events. If your developer leaves or the payment gateway changes its API, you are stuck.

There is also the question of scale. What happens when 500 people try to register at the same time? A custom system that was not designed for that load can crash. We have seen it happen. The Communications Authority of Kenya's Q2 2025-2026 Sector Statistics Report notes that mobile internet subscriptions in Kenya now stand at over 69 million. That means your attendees are on their phones, ready to register. If your system buckles, they move on.

The Case for Using a Platform

Platforms like Tickets Kenya exist for a reason. They have already solved the hard problems: payment integration, QR code generation, email confirmations, check-in scanning, and reporting. You pay a fee per ticket sold, and in return you get a system that works on day one.

Tickets Kenya, built by Dimetech Group, is a good example. It handles both free and paid events, offers customisable registration forms, entry scanning, and detailed analytics. It is also compliant with the Kenyan Data Protection Act, 2019 — something you would have to build into your own system from scratch. For an event organiser who wants to focus on the event itself, not on debugging code, this is a strong option.

The trade-off is cost per ticket. From our experience, if you are selling 100 tickets at KES 1,000 each, the platform's fee eats into your margin. But consider what you are not paying for: development time, hosting, maintenance, and the risk of something going wrong. For most events, the platform fee is cheaper than the hidden costs of building your own.

Another advantage: platforms are built to handle traffic spikes. When a popular event opens registration, the platform's infrastructure absorbs the load. Your custom system sitting on shared hosting might not.

What about Data and Reporting?

This is where many organisers get stuck. With your own system, you own the attendee data. With a platform, the data lives on their servers. That matters for events where you want to follow up with attendees later — sending them offers, inviting them to the next event, or building a mailing list.

Most platforms let you export attendee data. Tickets Kenya, for instance, provides analytics and reports you can download. But you are still dependent on the platform's export tools and policies. If you need very specific data segmentation — say, which sessions each attendee registered for, or how many people from a particular organisation attended — a custom system gives you more flexibility. The question is whether that flexibility is worth the cost.

From our experience, most event organisers overestimate how much custom data they actually need. From our experience, a standard export of name, email, organisation, and ticket type covers 90% of follow-up needs. The remaining 10% is usually nice to have, not essential.

When Building Makes Sense

Building your own system is not always a bad idea. There are cases where it is the right call.

• You run events every month — a conference series, a regular training programme, or a recurring cultural event. The per-ticket fees add up to more than the cost of building and maintaining your own system.
• You need very specific features that no platform offers. For example, integration with a membership database, or a complex tiered pricing structure that changes based on time and category.
• You have an existing development team that can build and maintain the system as part of their regular work. The marginal cost is lower.
• Data privacy is a regulatory requirement for your sector — healthcare events, for example, or events involving minors — and you need full control over where and how data is stored.

Even in these cases, consider starting with a platform for your first few events. Learn what features you actually use and what frustrates you. Then build something that solves those specific problems. Building based on assumptions is expensive. Building based on experience is smart.

When Using a Platform Is the Smarter Move

• This is your first or second event. You do not know yet what you need.
• Your event is a one-off or happens once or twice a year.
• You do not have a developer on staff or a budget for custom software.
• You need the system to work reliably on the day — no crashes, no payment failures, no support calls from confused attendees.
• You want to start selling tickets in days, not months.

The Middle Ground

There is a third option that many organisers overlook: use a platform for registration and ticketing, but build a small custom dashboard for the data you care about most. The platform handles the hard stuff — payments, check-in, email confirmations — while your custom dashboard pulls data from the platform's API and presents it the way you want.

This hybrid approach gives you the reliability of a platform and the flexibility of a custom solution. It costs less than building a full system, and you can add features over time as you learn what you actually need.

What to Ask Before You Decide

Before you pick a path, answer these questions honestly:

1. How many events do you run per year? If the answer is fewer than six, a platform is almost certainly cheaper.
2. How many tickets do you sell per event? The higher the volume, the more the per-ticket fees hurt. From our experience, at 1,000 tickets per event, the math shifts.
3. Do you have a developer who can build and maintain the system? If not, the cost of hiring someone every time something breaks will eat your budget.
4. What happens if the system crashes during registration? With a platform, that is their problem. With your own system, it is yours.
5. How important is attendee data to your long-term plans? If you plan to build a community around your events, owning the data matters more.

The answers will point you in the right direction. But here is the honest truth: for most event organisers in Kenya, a platform like Tickets Kenya is the better starting point. Build your own only when the numbers — and your specific needs — clearly justify it.

Start with a platform. Learn what you need. Then decide whether building makes sense. That is the practical path, and it is the one that will save you the most money and the most headaches.