Hi.Events

Hi.Events is an open-source, self-hostable alternative to Eventbrite, Tickettailor, and Dice.fm, built for event organizers who want full ownership of their ticketing infrastructure. Whether you run nightclub nights, music festivals, community conferences, or charity galas, Hi.Events eliminates per-ticket commissions and hands back control over branding, checkout flows, and attendee data.

The platform is built on Laravel 12 (PHP) with a React frontend powered by Mantine UI and the LinguiJS internationalization framework. It implements a clean Domain-Driven Design architecture with repository abstraction, application-layer handlers, and domain services — making the codebase navigable for developers who want to extend or customize it. Stripe Connect integration enables instant payouts directly to the organizer’s bank account, and QR code check-in tools support door management with or without an internet connection.

Hi.Events deploys via Docker Compose with an all-in-one image, or through one-click deployment buttons for DigitalOcean, Render, Railway, and Zeabur. It ships with a full REST API, webhook support for Zapier and Make, multi-language UI (13+ locales), and real-time sales analytics. The cloud-hosted option at app.hi.events provides a zero-setup alternative for organizers who prefer managed infrastructure.

What You Get

• Flexible Ticket Types - Create paid, free, donation-based, and tiered tickets with per-ticket capacity limits, shared quotas across categories, and hidden tickets unlockable via promo codes.
• Customizable PDF Ticket Templates - Design branded ticket PDFs with your logo, event colors, custom fonts, and QR codes that work with the built-in check-in scanner.
• QR Code Check-in App - Mobile-friendly door management tool with real-time scan logs, access-controlled check-in lists per ticket type, and offline support for venues without reliable internet.
• Drag-and-Drop Event Page Builder - Customize public event landing pages with a visual editor including image uploads with automatic LQIP generation, color theming, and SEO meta tag controls.
• Embeddable Ticket Widget - Drop a JavaScript snippet into any WordPress, Wix, or plain HTML site to sell tickets directly from your own domain without redirecting to a third-party page.
• Stripe Connect Instant Payouts - Receive revenue directly into your linked Stripe account before the event ends, bypassing traditional multi-day payout delays and intermediary holds.
• Affiliate and Referral Tracking Links - Generate unique tracking URLs for promoters and affiliates, monitor conversion rates, and attribute ticket sales to individual referral sources in the analytics dashboard.
• Custom Checkout Questions - Collect structured attendee data using text inputs, dropdowns, checkboxes, date pickers, phone fields, and address fields embedded in the checkout flow.
• Bulk Attendee Messaging - Send targeted messages to attendees filtered by ticket type, order status, or custom question answers directly from the admin dashboard.
• Advanced Sales Reporting - Real-time revenue dashboard with filterable reports on sales, taxes, promo code usage, and affiliate performance exportable to CSV and XLSX.
• EU VAT and Tax Configuration - Define custom tax rates, pass platform fees to buyers, generate compliant invoices with dynamic CSS styling, and handle VAT number validation for B2B purchases.
• Product Add-Ons and Upsells - Attach merchandise, upgrades, or extras as purchasable add-ons during checkout, organized into product categories with independent inventory tracking.

Common Use Cases

• Running a nightclub event series - A promoter creates VIP and general admission tickets with capacity limits, assigns unique affiliate links to each street team member, and receives Stripe payouts the morning after the event without waiting for a platform to release funds.
• Organizing a multi-day music festival - A festival director sets up tiered early-bird, standard, and VIP tickets with shared capacity pools, deploys the QR check-in app across multiple entrance points, and exports the full attendee list for post-event marketing campaigns.
• Hosting a corporate conference - An organizer embeds the ticket widget on their company WordPress site, uses promo codes for speaker complimentary tickets, configures EU VAT handling for international registrants, and uses webhook integrations to sync confirmed attendees into their CRM automatically.
• Managing a charity gala - A nonprofit sets up donation-tier tickets, collects gift aid consent via custom checkout questions, generates branded PDF tickets and automatic invoices for corporate donors, and exports a donor report for tax documentation.
• Running a workshop series - A trainer creates recurring events from templates, uses access-controlled check-in lists to separate morning and afternoon session attendees, and tracks which marketing channels are driving registrations through UTM and affiliate link analytics.

Under The Hood

Architecture Hi.Events implements a textbook Domain-Driven Design layered architecture with clear boundaries between HTTP, application, domain, and infrastructure concerns. Actions (invokable controllers) handle request validation and authorization before delegating to application-layer handlers, which orchestrate domain services within database transactions using PostgreSQL advisory locks to prevent race conditions on ticket inventory. Repository interfaces abstract all data access, with Eloquent implementations returning typed domain objects rather than raw models — enforcing a strict domain boundary across the codebase. Domain events and queued jobs handle asynchronous side effects like email dispatch, webhook delivery, and invoice generation, keeping domain services free of infrastructure coupling. The overall design is well-suited for extension: adding a new payment provider or ticketing feature follows a consistent, documented pattern.

Tech Stack The backend runs on PHP 8.2+ with Laravel 12, using PostgreSQL as the primary database via Eloquent ORM with a repository abstraction layer, and Redis for queues and caching. PDF invoice generation uses barryvdh/laravel-dompdf with Liquid templating for organizer-customizable layouts, and Stripe Connect handles payment processing with support for application fees and platform fee pass-through. The React 18 frontend is built with Vite, uses Mantine v7 for the component library, and LinguiJS for compile-time i18n across 13+ locales. Deployment targets include Docker Compose (all-in-one and split-service configurations), DigitalOcean App Platform, Render, Railway, and Zeabur, with optional Laravel Vapor for AWS serverless deployments.

Code Quality The repository ships with 85 PHPUnit test files covering feature scenarios (authentication flows, order creation, refund processing) and unit tests for domain services and repositories, run across PHP 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4 in CI via GitHub Actions on every push to main and develop branches. PHP 8+ strict typing with declare(strict_types=1) is enforced consistently, and constructor-injected readonly properties are the standard pattern throughout. Repository interfaces ensure all data access is testable via dependency substitution. Documentation is extensive — six detailed backend docs covering architecture, repository patterns, DDD layers, events and jobs, API patterns, and database schema — plus CONTRIBUTING.md and INSTALL_WITHOUT_DOCKER.md guides.

What Makes It Unique Hi.Events stands out among open-source ticketing tools by combining a complete Stripe Connect payment flow (instant payouts, application fees, platform fee pass-through) with a genuinely customizable public-facing checkout experience — organizers can design the event page, email templates, and PDF tickets without touching code. The built-in UTM and affiliate tracking with per-link conversion analytics targets the nightlife and festival promoter market specifically, a segment largely ignored by generic event platforms. The architecture docs and consistent DDD patterns make it significantly more accessible for developers to self-host and extend than comparable PHP-based alternatives, reducing the operational risk of adopting open-source ticketing infrastructure.

Self-Hosting

Hi.Events is licensed under AGPL-3.0 with an additional requirement: all deployments must retain the ‘Powered by Hi.Events’ attribution link in footers and email templates pointing to hi.events. The AGPL copyleft clause means that if you modify the source and run it as a network service, you must make your changes available under the same license — this is a meaningful constraint for agencies or SaaS builders who want to white-label the platform without attribution. A commercial license is available for purchase at hi.events/licensing that removes the attribution requirement and relaxes the AGPL source-sharing obligation.

Operationally, self-hosting Hi.Events requires running PostgreSQL, Redis, and the application server (either as an all-in-one Docker container or separate backend and frontend services). You are responsible for provisioning storage (local or S3-compatible) for event images and ticket assets, configuring Stripe Connect credentials, and managing your own email delivery via SMTP or a transactional mail provider. The system ships with Docker Compose configs and one-click deployment templates for DigitalOcean, Render, Railway, and Zeabur, which lower the barrier considerably, but ongoing maintenance — database backups, PHP and dependency updates, monitoring, SSL certificates — falls entirely on the operator.

Compared to Hi.Events Cloud (the managed SaaS offering), self-hosters forgo automatic platform updates, managed infrastructure scaling, and direct support from the Hi.Events team. The cloud plan absorbs operational burden and provides a support channel, while the self-hosted route trades those conveniences for zero per-ticket SaaS fees and complete data sovereignty — a worthwhile tradeoff for organizers running high-volume events or those with strict data residency requirements.