Delivery modes
How buyers receive tickets — PDF attachment, tracked ticket pages, or rotating QR codes (online and offline) — plus wallet passes and the order page.
Ticket delivery decides what a buyer actually receives after paying. It's set per event under Event settings → General, and the right choice depends on how much you care about resale protection versus maximum simplicity.
The four modes
| Mode | What the buyer gets | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| PDF attached | A classic PDF ticket attached to the confirmation email. | Maximum familiarity; print-at-home crowds. |
| Ticket page link | A link to a hosted ticket page with the QR front and center, plus a PDF download. Opens and downloads are tracked. | Knowing who actually has their ticket; see below. |
| Rotating QR | A ticket page whose QR code changes every few seconds, fetched live from Bookitive. | Anti-scalping: screenshots and printouts are useless. |
| Rotating QR — offline | The same rotating code, generated on the buyer's device itself, so it works with zero signal. | Anti-scalping at venues with bad reception. |
Tracked ticket pages
With the link modes, every ticket has its own hosted page. Bookitive stamps when it was first opened and when the PDF was downloaded, and for the tracked ticket-page mode the event's delivery stats show how many tickets have been seen. A week before the event, "30 % of tickets never opened" is an actionable number: resend, or brief the door crew for lookups.
The buyer's confirmation also links the order page — one link with every ticket of the order in a swipeable carousel, each shareable individually to the friends actually attending.
Rotating codes and device binding
Rotating modes exist to make a ticket impossible to resell as a screenshot. The code on screen is only valid for a few seconds (generated in short rolling windows), and the ticket binds to the first device that opens it:
- A second device opening the same ticket gets a takeover prompt instead of a code — governed by the event's transfer policy.
- In online mode the device fetches fresh codes from Bookitive; in offline mode the device holds a sealed per-ticket secret and computes the codes itself, airplane-mode included.
- If a legitimate buyer is stuck (lost phone), you can unbind the ticket from its device in the order detail, freeing it for the new device.
The two rotating modes differ at the door. Rotating QR — offline is verifiable with no connection: the door scanner regenerates and verifies the rolling code against the pre-synced offline check-in manifest, so you can scan these tickets airplane-mode-to-airplane-mode. Rotating QR (online) needs connectivity at the door — the code is validated live against Bookitive. If you expect to scan where reception is bad, choose the offline rotating mode.
Wallet passes
On the hosted ticket page, buyers can add their ticket to Apple Wallet and Google Wallet — the buttons appear automatically when the platform supports it for your event. Wallet passes carry the same QR as the page.
Wallet passes are not available for the two rotating modes. A rotating ticket has no static QR to embed in a pass — the code changes every few seconds — so there's nothing a wallet pass could carry. Use PDF or ticket-page delivery if wallet passes matter for your event.