osconcert.co.uk

What It Is

osConcert is an open-source PHP ticketing and reserved seating system for events and theaters, aimed primarily at venues and organizers that need assigned seating—such as theaters, community theater groups, concerts, cinemas, and touring productions. It is not a typical cloud-only SaaS product, but a PHP/MySQL system that can be downloaded and installed on your own hosting. This makes it a good fit for organizations that want to retain control of customer data and avoid high third-party ticketing fees.

Core Features

The product is built around seat maps, ticket sales, box office workflows, and e-tickets. It supports both reserved seating and General Admission. Its Seat Plan Maker lets users create seating layouts by dragging seats onto a background image, then export a CSV for import into the system; more complex venues can also be integrated by the official team. On the ticketing side, it supports PDF eTickets, QR codes, mobile scanning, order editing, refunds/restocking, POS, and front-desk box office workflows for placing orders or locking seats. Marketing and operations features include discount coupons, gift vouchers, customer groups, newsletters, reporting, customer CSV export, multilingual and multi-currency support, and tax and service fee settings.

Pricing and Deployment

The site emphasizes “no monthly fees” and the ability to “keep all your profits.” Its pricing calculator lists Download at $125, PRO at $350, Web Hosting at $75, and an Annual Fee of $120. It also states that PRO Package Support starts from $350 USD, while complex seating plans and custom payment gateways require a quote. For deployment, it requires LAMP or Windows Server, PHP 8.3/8.4, MySQL, and around 500MB of storage. If you use a restricted website builder such as Wix or Squarespace, it cannot be installed directly and will require separate hosting or a subdomain.

Integrations, Collaboration, and Security

Payment integrations are relatively broad, including Stripe SCA, PayPal API, PayU, RedSys, ePay, Yoco, Mollie, MIGS, PayFast, and others. It can also be used for reservation-only workflows. Collaboration features include role-based administration, box office agent ordering, group bookings, and seat locking, though no detailed permission matrix is publicly visible. On security and compliance, the site says it is GDPR-compliant and highlights that self-hosting helps protect customer data. However, it does not disclose enterprise-level details such as SLA, audit logs, backups, or encryption.

Pros, Cons, and Who It’s For

Its strengths are deep coverage of reserved-seating ticketing scenarios, customizability, no mandatory per-ticket commission, and control over the codebase. For small and midsize theaters, the long-term cost can be very attractive. The downsides are that it requires technical deployment and maintenance, pricing information is somewhat scattered, complex projects depend on official support, and public API information is limited. It is well suited to theaters and event organizers that want self-management and are comfortable using PHP hosting. It is less suitable for large organizations that want a fully hands-off server experience and standardized enterprise SLAs.

Access from China

The site does not provide information about mainland China network access, RMB payments, or local ICP-compliant deployment, so accessibility cannot be determined. If using it in China, you should carefully verify the server deployment location, the availability of Stripe/PayPal and other payment methods, the quality of the Chinese language pack, and whether it would be better to use a domestic ticketing platform or a localized self-hosted system.