Best Event Ticketing Software for B2B Conferences and Trade Shows 2026

A sales director wants three tickets for your trade conference: one for herself and two for her key account managers. She will not pay with a personal card. Her purchasing team needs an invoice with the company name, the VAT number and a purchase order reference before anyone releases the money. If your ticket shop cannot produce that document, the order sits in an inbox for two weeks, and the early bird price expires while it waits.

Many ticketing comparisons focus on concerts, festivals and venues, where the buyer often attends and pays personally. At a B2B event, the booking contact, payer and attendee are often different people, and the ticket has a second job: it decides what the attendee may do once inside, from the sessions they can join to the meetings they can request. Compare the fees alongside invoicing, company bookings and how ticket data is used after purchase. Below we compare six platforms on exactly that, using vendor information last checked on 4 November 2026.

Two neighbouring comparisons cover different purchases. If you need venue sourcing, abstracts and exhibitor administration in one contract, our comparison of the best event management software for 2026 sorts full suites by operating model. If your main worry is the sign-up form and the attendee record, the event registration software comparison goes deeper on form logic and CRM (customer relationship management) integration. This page is about the sale itself.

What B2B Ticketing Has to Do That Consumer Ticketing Does Not

The sales director from the first paragraph makes a good test case. Her order touches four steps that a concert ticket never needs:

• Company details: She books for her employer, not for herself. The checkout needs a company name, a billing address and, for cross-border buyers in the EU, a VAT (value added tax) identification number that can be checked.
• A document finance accepts: Many companies pay against an invoice or a purchase order, not by card. If the shop only takes cards, your own team ends up writing invoices by hand.
• One buyer, several attendees: Three tickets in one order still need three named people, each with a profile, a badge and their own access rights.
• Access tied to the ticket type: A buyer ticket, an exhibitor ticket and an online ticket should unlock different things. At meeting-driven events that includes who may request meetings with whom.

Every step the software does not handle becomes a manual task for your team, and manual tasks grow with every order. By the third week of sales, someone is reconciling bank transfers against a spreadsheet at nine in the evening.

Steps two and four are where the tools below differ most. Keep them in mind as you read.

Six Event Ticketing Platforms for B2B Events Compared

The list starts with our own platform, then moves from ticketing specialists with strong invoicing to a licence-based event platform and finally a consumer marketplace. All prices and features are vendor information from the providers’ public pricing, product and help pages, last checked on 4 November 2026. Where a vendor publishes nothing on a point, we say so.

1. Converve

Best for: trade shows, hosted buyer programmes and B2B conferences where the ticket should lead straight into matchmaking.

Converve approaches ticketing from the far end of the process. Ticket types are set up per participant group, for example buyers, exhibitors, speakers or online participants, with quotas, promo codes, prices and invitation workflows. Hosted buyer applications can pass an approval step before the ticket and the meeting quota are confirmed. Every ticket includes the invitation to register on the event platform, so a purchase turns into a matchmaking profile without a second sign-up. Payment runs via Stripe, Unzer, PayPal or credit card with EU reverse charge support, and QR badge check-in closes the loop on site. Participant data is hosted in Germany.

The dedicated ticket shop is already available. It adds early bird labels with strike-through prices, prices shown including VAT, filters by category and event day plus search, a basket that reserves tickets, and versions in German and English. Ticket types and payment are already part of registration on the Converve platform. The honest limits: Converve is built for meeting-driven B2B events and does not publish a ticket fee yet, and for a simple paid workshop it is more platform than you need. Ask in the demo how company bookings and payment against invoice work for your format.

2. Tito

Best for: conferences that sell mainly to companies and want invoicing built into the checkout.

Tito is one of the few ticketing tools whose help pages describe a B2B checkout in detail. With the company option switched on, buyers can tick a box to book for a company, and only the company name is required by default. EU VAT numbers are checked against the EU register after the order is placed, and someone booking privately is never asked for a VAT number or purchase order number (Tito help centre, 2026). With bank transfer switched on, an order waiting for payment receives an invoice, and every paid order gets a receipt that contains everything an invoice has.

The fee model is equally plain: 3 per cent per ticket, capped at 25 euros, free for free events, with no setup fee and no subscription. Stripe or PayPal fees come on top, for example 1.4 per cent plus 25 cents for European cards (Tito pricing page, 2026). Tito is a ticketing and check-in tool, not a matchmaking platform, so meeting logic needs a second system.

3. pretix

Best for: associations and conference organisers with high ticket prices who want a transparent, capped fee.

pretix is open source software with a hosted version that charges 2.5 per cent of the net ticket price, never more than 15 euros per ticket, with no monthly fee and no minimum term. The first 500 free tickets per calendar year cost nothing, and each paid ticket raises that allowance by one; beyond it, a free ticket costs 50 cents (pretix pricing page, 2026). Lead scanning costs 25 euros per exhibitor who scans at least one lead, and check-in with live badge printing runs through pretixSCAN.

For a B2B checkout, pretix can ask for an invoice address and a VAT ID and validates the VAT ID against the EU service when the buyer continues (pretix documentation, 2026). Its documentation also states plainly that reverse charge rules do not apply to most events, and it marks its EU reverse charge feature as deprecated in favour of custom tax rules. Check how the tax settings apply to your ticket types before opening sales.

4. Ticket Tailor

Best for: smaller B2B formats, workshops and side events where a flat fee beats a percentage.

Ticket Tailor charges a flat fee instead of a percentage: 0.60 pounds per ticket plus VAT on pay as you go, or from 0.22 pounds with prepaid credits, and free tickets carry no fee up to an annual limit (Ticket Tailor pricing page, 2026). The check-in app is included at no charge. Payments run via Stripe, PayPal or Square, and offline payments let buyers reserve tickets and follow your instructions, for example a bank transfer. The vendor suggests exactly that route for group bookings that need an invoice (Ticket Tailor blog, October 2026). A dedicated invoicing feature for buyers is not described, so decide in advance who issues those invoices.

5. Accelevents

Best for: mid-market teams, mostly in North America, that want ticketing, check-in and badges in one self-service platform.

Accelevents sells licences rather than ticket fees: Professional from 7,500 US dollars for one event, Business from 13,500 US dollars for unlimited events, and Enterprise and White Label on quote (Accelevents pricing page, 2026). Online and offline payments plus staff-managed or kiosk check-in with badge printing are part of Professional. The feature comparison also lists invoice management, offline payments and group booking, but it does not show clearly which plan includes them. Ask for that mapping in writing.

6. Eventbrite

Best for: free or low-priced satellite formats, meetups and roadshows where reach matters more than invoicing.

Eventbrite is the consumer marketplace on this list, and its fee follows the ticket. In the United States it charges 3.7 per cent plus 1.79 US dollars per paid ticket and 2.9 per cent payment processing per order; in the United Kingdom 6.95 per cent plus 0.59 pounds per ticket; free events are free (Eventbrite pricing and help pages, 2026). Buyers pay the fees by default, or you absorb them. A check-in app with QR scanning is available. The pricing page does not mention invoices or payment against invoice for business buyers, so company bookings need a workaround.

Comparison Table: Fees, Invoicing and Check-in

Side by side, the six platforms differ less in the fee column than in the column for company bookings and invoices.

What a Fee per Ticket Really Costs at B2B Prices

The table makes the fees look similar. They drift apart quickly once ticket prices reach B2B levels. Take one conference ticket at 600 euros net:

• pretix: 2.5 per cent comes to 15 euros, which is already the cap, so the fee stays at 15 euros however high the price climbs.
• Tito: 3 per cent comes to 18 euros, still below the 25 euro cap, plus card fees.
• Ticket Tailor: a flat 0.60 pounds, whatever the ticket costs.
• Eventbrite in the US, at 600 US dollars: 23.99 dollars service fee plus 2.9 per cent processing on the order, roughly 41 to 42 dollars per ticket.

On 400 tickets that is 6,000 euros with pretix, 7,200 euros with Tito and roughly 16,600 to 16,800 US dollars with Eventbrite, before a single badge is printed. At B2B prices, the cap is the price. A licence model such as Accelevents turns the logic around: the cost is known upfront and does not grow with the ticket price, but you pay it even if sales disappoint.

Which price levels you set in the first place is a separate decision, and our guide to ticket pricing strategies for B2B events covers early bird windows, member rates and group discounts.

VAT on B2B Tickets: Orientation, Not Tax Advice

The VAT number field from step two only helps if the tax logic behind it is right. Under Article 53 of the EU VAT Directive (2006/112/EC), admission to events such as fairs, exhibitions and similar events supplied to a business is taxed where the event actually takes place. For an in-person conference in Germany, a French company’s ticket is therefore generally subject to German VAT, even though both parties hold VAT numbers.

The current version of the directive adds an exception: Article 53 does not apply where attendance is virtual. An online ticket sold to a business then follows the general rule for business customers, which is where reverse charge comes in. A hybrid event can therefore need two tax treatments in one shop. Check with your tax adviser how this applies to your formats, and confirm that your ticketing tool can set tax per ticket type rather than per event.

That is also the question the purchasing team from the first paragraph will ask first. An invoice with the wrong VAT treatment goes straight back.

Questions to Ask in a Ticketing Demo

A demo shows the happy path: one buyer, one card, one ticket. Ask the vendor to walk through the B2B path instead:

• Company booking: Can a buyer book for a company, and which fields are required? Ask for the receipt or invoice from a test order.
• Payment against invoice: Can a company pay by bank transfer after receiving an invoice, and what happens to the reserved ticket while the payment is pending?
• Name changes: If a delegate falls ill, can the company pass the ticket to a colleague, and does the profile move with it?
• Cancellations: Who issues the credit note or cancellation invoice when an order is reversed?
• Tax per ticket type: Can in-person and online tickets carry different tax treatment in the same event?
• Access rights: Does the ticket type control sessions, badge colour and meeting access, or is that a separate list someone maintains by hand?
• Export: Can finance get orders, payments and invoices in one file without rekeying?

The access question deserves the most time at meeting-driven events, because it decides whether the ticket and the matchmaking rules share one record. Our guide to the registration questions that make matchmaking work shows which fields that record needs. The last mile, from QR code to printed badge, has its own capacity maths, which we cover in the guide to event check-in and badge printing.

Converve sets up tickets per participant group, and every ticket includes the invitation to register on the event platform. There, the categories chosen at registration feed the rule-based meeting matrix that decides who may request meetings with whom, and hosted buyers can be approved before their ticket is confirmed. The dedicated ticket shop is already available; ticket types, promo codes, approval workflows and payment are part of the registration module.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best event ticketing software for B2B events in 2026?

It depends on what has to happen after payment. Tito has the most detailed company booking and invoicing flow among the ticketing specialists checked here, pretix suits high-priced tickets with its 15 euro fee cap, Ticket Tailor suits small formats with a flat fee, Accelevents suits mid-market teams that prefer a licence, and Eventbrite suits free or low-priced satellite formats. Converve suits events where the ticket should lead directly into a matchmaking profile (vendor information, checked 4 November 2026).

How much does event ticketing software cost?

Published models fall into three groups: a percentage per ticket (Tito 3 per cent capped at 25 euros, pretix 2.5 per cent capped at 15 euros, Eventbrite in the US 3.7 per cent plus 1.79 US dollars plus 2.9 per cent processing), a flat fee per ticket (Ticket Tailor from 0.22 pounds) or a licence (Accelevents from 7,500 US dollars per event). Payment provider fees usually come on top (vendor pricing pages, November 2026).

Can attendees pay for conference tickets by invoice?

Some tools support it directly. Tito issues an invoice for orders waiting for a bank transfer, and Ticket Tailor lets buyers reserve tickets and pay offline, which it suggests for group bookings that need an invoice. Before you switch it on, decide how long a ticket stays reserved without payment and who chases unpaid orders, because invoice payment moves the risk from the card network to your team.

Do I need separate ticketing and registration software?

Not if one system can carry the attendee record from purchase to check-in. A separate ticket shop makes sense for simple paid events. At meeting-driven B2B events, a second system means the ticket type and the matchmaking categories live in different places, and someone has to keep them in sync by hand.

Does reverse charge apply to B2B conference tickets?

Often not for in-person events. Under Article 53 of the EU VAT Directive, admission to events supplied to a business is taxed where the event takes place, so local VAT generally applies. Virtual attendance is excluded from that rule in the current version of the directive, so online tickets sold to businesses can fall under reverse charge. This is orientation only; confirm your case with a tax adviser.

What should an event ticketing platform checklist for organisers include?

Seven points cover most B2B cases: company booking fields, payment against invoice, name changes, cancellation invoices, tax per ticket type, access rights per ticket type and a finance-ready export. Add the fee calculated on your real ticket price and volume, not on the example on the pricing page.

Conclusion: compare the full booking process

A B2B ticket shop needs to work for attendees, purchasing teams, finance and check-in staff. Compare total fees, including any caps, alongside company details, invoicing, tax settings and the link between tickets and profiles. A tool that handles these steps for your event can reduce manual work and follow-up emails.

If your event sells meetings as well as seats, Converve connects tickets, registration and the meeting matrix in one platform. Request a demo of the ticket shop and we will walk through your ticket types with you.