Waitlist

The waitlist catches the demand you would otherwise lose the moment an event sells out. When a ticket type has nothing left to buy, the public event page starts collecting signups instead of showing a dead end; whenever capacity frees up — an expired reservation, a cancelled order, or seats you add — the next people in line automatically receive a time-limited offer to buy.

You never hand out tickets by hand and you never race your own buyers: offers go out strictly first come, first served, each one reserves real capacity, and an unclaimed offer passes to the next person on its own.

How it works

A waitlist is a per-event, per-ticket-type queue. Three rules shape everything below:

• People only join what they can't buy. The signup box appears only once a ticket type has zero units left; as long as the wanted quantity is openly buyable, joining is refused and the buyer is sent to the normal checkout.
• Freed capacity becomes a time-limited offer, not an open sale. When seats free up they are offered to the queue first — the type stays sold out for the public until the queue has had its chance.
• The queue is strict FIFO with partial offers. Offers go out in signup order, but a person waiting for four can be offered the two that freed up, so one big request never blocks everyone behind it.

For seated ticket types an offer now holds specific seats — not just a quantity — so the promise the buyer gets is a real place in the room, and the seats they are promised can't be sniped out from under them. GA and standing types keep a plain quantity hold (there is no seat to pin).

How buyers join

When a type is sold out, its tab on the event page shows a signup box instead of the buy button. The buyer gives their email and how many tickets they want, optionally a name and phone, and which ticket type(s) they will wait for — one or more specific types, or any type ("get me in, I don't care where").

The quantity picker is capped at the event's Max tickets per signup setting (default 4, organizer-configurable from 1 to 50) — the same party-size ceiling for everyone, whether they join themselves or you add them by hand.

For seated types the buyer gets two extra choices, which are independent of each other:

• Only the full count — normally offers can be partial (someone waiting for four may be offered two if only two freed up); ticking this opts out, so they are only ever offered the full quantity they asked for.
• I want seats together — their seats must be adjacent. With it on they also set at most how many tables they will accept their party split across — a free number, minimum 1 (1 means everyone at one table), not a fixed 1/2/3 choice. The matcher then seats them in the fewest adjacent tables possible, handing out the largest adjacent block that fits.

Because "together" and "full count" are separate switches, a together buyer who is not full-only can be offered the largest adjacent block available right now — three seats at one table out of a party of eight, say — while a together buyer who is full-only waits until the whole party fits together.

After joining, the buyer gets a confirmation email with a personal manage link where they can leave the queue or decline an offer. Buyers never see their position in line.

How offers work

Freed capacity is handed to the queue automatically. The moment one of these happens, the waitlist reacts:

• a pending reservation expires and releases its seats,
• an order is cancelled,
• you raise a ticket type's capacity,
• someone ahead in the queue declines or lets an offer lapse.

Each matched person gets an email with a claim link and a deadline set by your offer-validity window. The claim link opens the normal checkout — the public event page with the offer unlocked for them — where they pay like any other buyer, same prices, same payment methods. For a seated offer the checkout preselects exactly the held seats, so the claim can't conflict with anyone, and the email names those seats (for example "table 12, seats 3–4").

Details that keep the system fair:

• Offers reserve the capacity. While an offer is out, its tickets are subtracted from public availability — the type stays sold out for everyone else. For seated types the specific held seats show as reserved on the public map; on your own chart a held seat's hover card reads Held for waitlist and shows who it is held for.
• Partial offers move the line. If two seats free up and the first person wants four, they are offered the two — unless they chose only the full count, in which case the offer skips to the next person who fits.
• Lapsed offers pass on, with a strike. When a deadline runs out unclaimed, the entry goes back to Waiting with a strike and the capacity flows to the next in line. A second lapse expires the entry for good — a spot that keeps going cold shouldn't block people who will actually buy.
• Quiet period before doors. No new offers go out within about two hours of the event start; there's no point emailing a claim link someone will read after the show.

Managing the queue

Open Waitlist in the event sidebar (under Sales). The page shows the queue as it stands right now — the analytics date range has no effect here. At the top are counters for Waiting, Offers out, Purchased, and Tickets wanted; below, every still-active entry shows what they want, when they joined, their status, and their place in the In line column (for example "3 / 9", where 9 is everyone still active). Rows carry small annotations for the choices that affect matching — together, max N table(s) and full amount only — so you can see at a glance why someone is or isn't getting an offer. Buyers themselves never see this position.

Two actions are available:

• Add person — queue someone who contacted you directly, with the same fields buyers fill in (email, quantity up to the event cap, name, ticket types or any, full-amount-only, and the seated seats-together options). They get the same confirmation email and the same automatic offers as everyone else. A duplicate signup for someone already in the queue is refused.
• Remove — takes a person out of line. If they had an active offer, it's cancelled and the capacity (and any held seats) pass to the next person immediately.

The event Overview also surfaces a "Waiting on the waitlist" alert with a count, so pent-up demand is visible without opening the page — often your cue to add capacity.

Turning it on

The waitlist is a per-event setting.

Behaviour and edge cases

• Seats-together only applies to seated types. On GA and standing types the checkbox is hidden — there's no seat to place — and offers stay quantity-only.
• The manage page is safe to scan. Links in waitlist emails never change anything just by being opened; declining or leaving requires an explicit click on the page, so corporate mail scanners that prefetch URLs can't remove anyone from your queue.
• Turning the waitlist off stops new signups and new offers; it does not delete the queue. Turn it back on and the queue continues where it left off.
• Capacity added while people wait is offered to the queue first, not to the public — the type stays sold out until the queue has had its chance.
• Want to know when a queue forms? Enable the New waitlist signup notification (off by default) to get one email the first time anyone joins a waitlist for the event.

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