A top-tier ticketing and CRM solution for arts, cultural, and musical venues

Tessitura is the lifeblood of our organisation used by our box office, marketing, and fundraising departments to store all manner of customer information. It is a powerful piece of software with many customisation options that, when configured and utilised correctly, proves a useful tool.

Pros

Tessitura is a mammoth piece of software that has lots of features available for ticketing, fundraising, and marketing. It holds a wealth of constituent data and we can write our own SSRS reports in-house to query this data. Support is amazing, very quick to answer any queries, and very knowledgeable about all aspects of the software. It has been relatively easy to upgrade our software/database version following the very useful documentation found on the Tessitura Network website. The TN website also features webinars, a community forum, and is packed full of information on upcoming networking events. Tessitura also offer a Tessitura Network Express Web (TNEW) website solution for online bookings which integrates well with the Tessitura software.

Cons

Although the software itself is very customisable with custom plugins and such, it can cause headaches when upgrading to newer versions and has the potential to cause issues – these customisations must be backed up, checked for compatibility, etc. Technical support has originally been handled by agents in the US which had the potential to cause issues with time zones with our organisation being based in the UK, however they have recently restructured their support for Europe and have implemented a new helpdesk system which have helped improve this situation greatly. There are a lot of functions and features that I still feel I’ve barely touched on as an administrator, as well as there being a steep learning curve for end-users due to the sheer number of features available. UI elements do look a bit dated compared to other solutions on the market.

A beast of a product

Tessitura is at the heart of everything we do as an organisation. It holds our customer data, we use it to manage our ticketing and website offerings, to manage Direct Debits and donations, marketing, and much more. We could not function without it.

Pros

It is so customisable, and does so much. There are facets for all areas of our organisation.

Cons

It is so customisable. This is an amazing feature, but comes with a lot of pitfalls and makes life challenging at upgrade time.

Tessitura and Fund Raising

Shop around. There has to be a more efficient and effective product.

Pros

The integration of ticketing with prospects/donors is alluring, esp. for performance art organizations.

Cons

This is a ticketing software with a CRM work-around built in. It's confusing, user abusive and extraordinarily expensive. In our town, NPO's had to group together, in one building, where they created a new company that specializes in Tessitura software management. It's a clever use of the software and a business structure. This company then went out and sold it's software services to other performance art organizations as far away as Los Angeles. However, all organizations can see who has who in their database. You can't go into the account, but it becomes readily apparent our prospects and donors are being hit on all the time by all the same organizations. It's tricky. But the fact remains. Tessitura is enormously complex, just to get acknowledgements out is a lot of busy work. When I came on board, the previous development person really used Tessitura as a storage unit and did all the fund raising in Excel and Word. And from a NPO business perspective, once you commit to this software, extraction is basically a blackmail. It costs a fortune to leave it and organizations still have this challenge of ticketing tied to fund raising.

A CRM that fits our needs

It's been positive for managing relationships and for data mining.

Pros

It was created with music institutions and not-for-profits in mind and has all the ability to hand every need our unique business type(s) have.

Cons

It's a pretty advanced program and there is a massive learning curve. Getting staff on board to learn it can be a challenge. In addition, it's one of those softwares that is "only as good as the data you put into it."

Industry-standard database for arts & culture

Detailed data for informing managerial decisions, increased interdepartmental communication, many facets of constituent knowledge and ways to slice and dice our donorbase

Pros

Integrates all departments on the same database. Highly customizable. Integrates with many other common industry systems (mail2, Boca, etc.). Great reporting capabilities. Fantastic support documentation and staff. The user community is unparalleled in skill level, camaraderie, and enthusiasm. Ability to share an instance in a consortium environment, with advanced settings to control who can see what information.

Cons

Steep learning curve - it can be difficult to get beginner users to do much more than search for and look at records. Not the most user-friendly interface. Customizability also means the out of box product can be pretty bare bones compared to everything the software is capable of.

Designed for larger orgs with data management support

It has been hard to learn, and I frankly still don't feel confident pulling lists that my data is correct. I appreciate it's enormous capacity on the back end, but there's not a lot of front-end user options.

Pros

The record integration is absolutely seamless. I can look up a constituent and see exactly when they came, what donations or purchases they have made, etc. The tech support is robust.

Cons

I have taken a training class in this product, have some experience in coding, and still feel like I only barely understand the basics. It is hard to learn, not intuitive at all, and has more functions than we can currently use at our size (small-mid-size museum) Plus: Expensive!

I used Tessi in my time at a nationally-renowned Symphony orchestra.

Ease of ticketing, seating, and viewing the house. I enjoyed the option to charge directly each purchase, as opposed to batching gifts individually like I did in RE.

Pros

I find that Tessi is very intuitive and use-oriented. When I started with it, I was obviously overwhelmed, but that was tempered by it's relative ease of use, and the vast online resources available for questions that did arise.

Cons

Having used both Tessi and RE, I will say that one is much better for Box Office organizations (Tessi) than it is at housing constituent info, giving history, and basic fundraising needs. RE has robust capability for storing/targeting/querying on/exporting etc. much more so than RE.

Essential ticketing software for Arts venues

Runs the entire CRM and ticketing solution for the organisation.

Pros

Company fully understands the requirements of the industry that it is targeting. There is an excellent community with end users willing to engage and help each other.

Cons

Requires quite a lot of resource to manage and maintain in terms of staff and hardware. Would hope to see this improve in coming releases and perhaps a shift to a cloud implementation.

Great Arts CRM

Pros

Windows based Easy to use Great support All in one package Customisable Based on SQL Server Reports can be designed in house

Cons

Old reports are based on Sybase's Infomaker which is a hard product to purchase. Newer reports are based on SSRS so you will need training for this.

An incredibly robust ticketing and seating software

Pros

Tessitura allows you to input and seat based on your own theater's house model. I like that there's a visual layout you can view to see which seats are taken and what kind of ticket they're purchased under.

Cons

Tessitura is a large and complicated software. I'm not even aware of all of the things it can do. It's a true learning process and companies may choose how deep down the rabbit hole they'd like to go: using it lightly or going so far as to send members of their theater to the huge Tessitura conference once a year.

Great

Pros

Tessitura is definitely the most popular in the nonprofit arts industry. It's ticketing and fundraising features are integrated and allows for a full constituent report.

Cons

Lately, the software seems outdated. Unlike Raiser's Edge, Tessitura demands a full training to know the ins and outs of the software. It's not the most user-friendly software out there.

Could be better

Pros

This software has a lot of muscle power, no doubt about it. There is a lot of functionality, and every problem you come across when it comes to how to send tickets out, sending receipts to patrons, etc has a solution

Cons

1) This software is WAY too complicated for the average theater. The learning curve is very steep, which complicates the hiring process for temporary employees (cause they never get to the point of mastery and efficiency with the software), and there is no way to edit out which functions to "see" on your screen. For example, if xyz theater never uses a third of the functions of the software, there should be a way to visually hide them so that employees dont get confused about what they are seeing on the screen. 2) When it comes to entering information for credit card payments, the software designers never apparently thought about how the average patron reads out their information over the phone. You have to select the type of card used before entering the card number, meanwhile the patron is halfway through spewing out their number over the phone while the ticketing office employee is scrambling to write it down on a pad of paper cause Tessie wont let them enter the number yet. If there was more flexibility in the order that information could be entered (card type then number vs number then card type), the daily functionality of the software would be much improved.

Tessitura review

Overall I like the program. It has everything I need to get my work done and easily see what we need to sell the following day.

Pros

I recently started using tessitura and I like the simplicity of it. I am able to easily view the events and see how many seats are available for what date.

Cons

Only con I have is for the saving button, it says "done" instead of "save". It sometimes confuses me when I'm closing an order.

I've been using Tessitura for a few months and I enjoy the ability to learn new functions every day.

Pros

There are so many functions to learn about this software that I always am excited to learn. Tessitura gives you so much information so many forms that it's insane on what this software can hold.

Cons

It is a bit complicated and you do need a specialist if you want to really learn how to fully utilize the software.

Great intent difficult to learn

Overall I have not been happy with Tessitura. I feel it is far harder to use than helpful. The features it offers are great but it does not make it worth the investment.

Pros

Tessitura has a lot of good ticketing features. It has a great ability to customize and tracks data way better than SABO. The best part of this software is when it comes to selling subscriptions. It is really easy and user intuitive when it comes to this feature.

Cons

This software is really difficult to learn and train others on. The UI is confusing and it is difficult to find what you are looking for. The worst part of this software is how easy it is to give an order to a different patron. there are no warning signs and this has been a common problem around the office.

Art Organization Zeus

Every arts organization uses Tessitura for a reason. All encompassing, it's reach is impressive, limited only by its users organization.

Pros

For donor organization, easy and effective with a wide range of tracking.

Cons

Ugh, ok, repeat entries were the scourge of my job. So its effectiveness definitely depends on the team who uses it. I wish there were an option for Tessitura to regularly compare possible multiple entries to combine.

Tessitura is an easy to use fundraising and ticketing software system that I would reccomend

Pros

Ease of use in the ticketing function. One is able to see and use a seat map in real time to place and track orders. These orders are then linked to the constituents account where you can track the moves management of a particular donor and see their giving history.

Cons

Does not have the full capacity of moves management as seen in Raiser's Edge NXT but has a better ticketing and box office functionality. A better database for those who own their own performance venue and have a larger marketing than development team. Not ideal for someone who is focused on development first.

Hard to Learn, Lots of Features

I had trouble learning how to use and be effective and efficient using this software, however once I learned how it works, the experience gets a lot better. The customer support is available to answer questions and solve issues.

Pros

It is an effective organizational and ticketing program which allows for many customization options to adjust the system as needed. Additionally, the customer support has been able to get most of our issues solved.

Cons

Many of its options are counter-intuitive, and the user interface is unattractive and hard to use. Additionally, it is relatively easy to make a mistake and accidentally give a ticket to a different person than intended.

Tessitura

Pros

Tessitura is organized and can handle the complicated functions of our daily ticketing set up.

Cons

It is very archaic-looking, confusing, and hard to find things.

Great but clunky and expensive

I didn't work with this software for that long, and never used it as a manager, but from what I gleaned it's pretty powerful. It has a steep learning curve and is quite expensive, so most mid-sized arts organizations I've worked for have used other platforms. But Tessitura is the dream, if you can afford it.

Nonprofit Arts Endorsement

Pros

Ability to incorporate both development and box office capabilities.

Cons

Difficult to access 24/7; limited abilities; not enough training for entire staff; few personnel actually use it.

A Beast that can work for you

Tessitura is the biggest and worst CRM you can use. It has a giant network of constantly evolving apps, fixes and test cases. The annual conference is huge and a boon for those in the Arts. You will definitely need a dedicated IT person for Tessitura though, as it is complex and robust.

I enjoyed this software immensely, but because, but it can be slow to pick up.

Pros

It is SO big. The number of features is really excellent, and I am constantly amazed at the breadth of functionality.

Cons

Unfortunately, the sheer number of functions can prove daunting, often. At times, it is not always intuitive, but I eventually get around to understanding.

Great for Customer Experience training

I worked for a nonprofit and this was a great way to track customer response rates for email campaigns!

Tessitura Basics

Pros

Tessitura is a fantastic software that helps me to track and process huge amounts of data.

Cons

Because the work I do on Tessitura is relatively simple (tracking constituent information and processing tickets) at times the software feels more complex than it needs to be.