Amiando Gets A Refresh, Offers Free Tickets For Free Events

Event ticketing site Amiando is relaunching today with a new look, new features, and new pricing. The German startup is eliminating its $1-per-ticket fee for free events, bsically matching competitor Eventbrite’s freemium model. About 35 percent of Amiando events currently are free, so this is a major shift of the company. CEO Felix Haas believes the promotional value of going free for customers who don’t charge for their events will outweigh the lost revenue.

Amiando has been growing at a nice clip, doubling revenues from last year. Haas won’t disclose total ticket sales going through Amiando, but it will probably be somewhere between $40 million and $60 million this year. Eventbrite, in contrast, sold $100 million worth of tickets last year. Amiando is much stronger in Europe, where it is based, with less than 15 percent of its business in the U.S. It hopes to take more share in the U.S. with its more competitive pricing and set of features.

For example, Amiando now includes an email campaign tool which Haas descibes as a “Mailchimp for event organizers.” It allows event organizers to create email marketing campaigns, send them to their list of previous attendees, and analyze the effectiveness of each campaign.

Amiando also shows where event attendees are coming from on a map with red bubbles indicating their home cities. Most of its existing features, such as ViralTickets and other social media marketing tools, are still there too.