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| Feature | Opendate | accesso ShoWare |
|---|---|---|
| Booking calendar, avails | ✓ Multi-venue calendar. Avails you can paste to an agent | ✕ Not included |
| Date holds | ✓ Ranked holds that auto-promote, multi-date | ✕ Seat and ticket holds with allocations. Not date holds |
| Artist offers | ✓ Templates with splits, bonuses, comps, kills | ✕ Not included |
| Advance and run of show | ✓ Advance templates, guest lists, day-of detail | ✕ Not included |
| Artist settlement | ✓ One click, off the offer plus live counts | ✕ Their settlement report closes a finance period, not an artist deal |
| Show P&L | ✓ Forecast, actuals, tickets-to-breakeven before doors | ✕ Not included |
| Ticketing and entry | ✓ GA, add-ons, promo codes, mobile entry | ✓ Reserved, GA, timed entry, scanning, box office POS |
| Season and membership | ✓ Memberships, tiers, early access, payment plans | ✓ Subscriptions, tiered loyalty, auto-renewals. A real strength |
| Seat maps and pricing | ✓ GA and reserved. Charts built in 3–5 days | ✓ Seat maps, VIP sections, threshold-based price changes. Deeper |
| Fan CRM and owned channels | ✓ Genre, spend, automated segments. Email, SMS, push built in | ✕ Email through an integration. No SMS or journey builder published |
Avails, ranked holds and the artist offer live on the record that sells the ticket, so the deal you sign carries its ticket types, comps, kills and announce dates into the on-sale. ShoWare has holds, but they hold seats and allocations rather than dates, and the published product begins once the event already exists.
Advance templates go out from the show page, and guest lists, tech details and day-of notes come back to it, so production, the box office and the artist work from one version. ShoWare publishes no advance or run of show, so that coordination happens outside the system selling the ticket.
Splits, bonuses and comps calculate against real sales, from the same record that holds the offer you agreed to, so the artist signs before load-out. At 20 Front Street, work that used to take over an hour now takes minutes.
Forecast, actuals and tickets-to-breakeven sit on the show page next to the offer. You price the guarantee against the room instead of finding out when the settlement sheet comes back.
Replaced homemade, in-house systems. Work that once took over an hour now takes minutes.
“Having P&L front and center on every show page means I can make financial decisions instantly. It keeps us focused on profitability instead of guesswork.”
No. The published ShoWare capabilities cover seating, memberships, box office, scanning and reporting. A booking calendar, avails, artist offers, the advance and artist settlement appear on none of them. On Opendate all of it sits on the record that sells the ticket, ten weeks before the on-sale.
No. Theirs are seat and ticket holds, reported by category and expiry alongside seat allocations. A booking hold is a claim on a date before the show exists, ranked against competing holds and promoting when a higher one drops. Opendate has both; ShoWare publishes only the first.
It's a finance report, and the distinction is worth getting right. Theirs reconciles financial activity to close an accounting period. An artist settlement runs the guarantee, the splits, the bonuses and the comps against the door count and produces a number the artist signs that night. Opendate does the second, off the offer you already agreed.
This is where ShoWare is genuinely strong, and worth weighing properly. They publish season tickets, subscriptions, tiered loyalty and auto-renewals, and that depth is real. Opendate has memberships with tiers, early access and payment plans, not their subscription depth. If the season is the business, compare carefully. If it's a few packages wrapped around a year of one-off shows you book yourself, you'd be keeping subscription depth and giving up the deal desk to get it.
Also theirs. ShoWare publishes seat maps with VIP sections and price changes that fire automatically as inventory crosses a threshold. Opendate sells GA and reserved, and we build your charts in 3 to 5 days, with the constraint that they can't be adjusted after an on-sale. For a seated house that reconfigures often, that matters.
We're not going to characterise their position, because accesso publishes no ownership statement on the ShoWare pages. Ask them directly and get it in writing. What is published is reporting, including a patron value report for identifying your best customers. On Opendate the record is yours, carrying genre affinity, purchase history and lifetime spend, and you market to it from the same login.
Email runs through an integration with a partner tool, with campaign history and open rates visible inside ShoWare. That's a reasonable setup. What isn't published is SMS, a journey builder or audience segmentation tooling, so the announce sequence doesn't schedule itself off a confirmed show. Opendate includes email, SMS and push, with segments that build themselves.
accesso quotes per client and doesn't publish rates, so ask for the full schedule including payment processing before you compare anything. Opendate publishes its tiers: Opener free, Marquee from $4K a year, and Headliner free with ticketing. All-In Pricing shows the fan the total before checkout.
Nothing on sale has to move. In-flight events sell through untouched, calendar and fan list import in about a week, ticketing cuts over show by show, and seating charts take 3 to 5 days.
Then much of Opendate is overhead you won't use, and ShoWare's seat and season depth may be the better buy. If your building runs a subscription season, or the promoter brings the show and your job is selling and scanning, that's their ground. The case for Opendate starts when holds, offers, advances and settlements become your problem.