Here at Eventbrite, we’re inclusive by nature. We’re constantly designing new features that help you share more events, more easily, with more of your friends. Recommendations based on the events your Facebook friends are attending? Check. Simple social media buttons? Yup.

But we also know that for some events, more social isn’t what you’re looking for. It’s kind of awkward when someone who didn’t go to your high school shows up at the reunion…

That’s why we’re excited to announce a brand-new “invite-only” feature. We’ve offered “private” and “password protected” settings for a long time, but this takes things a big step further. When you enable the new feature, only users specifically invited to a given event will be eligible to purchase tickets.

Here’s how it works. Go to the Edit page and scroll down to Step 8. You’ll see a new checkbox that lets you set the event to invite-only. Note that if you select this option, only guests who receive an invitation will be able to register.

Once you’ve selected the invite-only privacy setting, we place a large notification message on your Manage page to highlight that invitations must be sent for attendees to register.

The invitations your guests receive will appear in this format:

And if someone visits an invite-only event page without an invitation, he or she will see a limited view of the page, with both the “Where” and “Ticket type” areas hidden:

And that’s it! We’ve been getting requests for this feature for awhile, and we’re really excited about the improved experience it will offer for many organizers. So to help get the ball rolling, we put together a quick list of 10 types of events that we think can benefit from “invite-only”:

  • Company events
  • “Members only” events
  • Class reunions
  • Industry-specific events
  • Private tastings
  • Book and album release parties
  • VIP tickets
  • Giveaways to clients
  • School dances
  • Gallery openings

Plus many, many more. Here’s a full tutorial on the feature.

Enjoy, and let us know how you plan to use invite-only! And while you’re at it, check out this little video we made…

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