Create and sell event tickets

You can publish events on Ardent Africa and, for paid events, sell tickets. Free events are free to publish; paid events have a single flat platform fee.

Running your event from your phone

The Ardent app now does the whole job, not just the parts that fit on a small screen.

At the door. Download your guest list once while you have signal and the scanner works with no connection at all: every scan is answered instantly from the list saved on the phone, and check-ins are sent up in the background whenever the network comes back. This matters because the signal at the entrance of a hall is usually the worst signal at the event. You can also type somebody's six-character code when a screen is cracked, check a guest in by name, sell to somebody who turned up without a ticket, and give a colleague the ability to scan without giving them anything else about your event.

Decisions people are waiting on. Approving registrations, offering a waitlist place, and deciding refunds are all in one place, with a count of how many are waiting on you.

Getting paid, set up from the phone. Connect your own Paystack or Hubtel account under Getting paid, on any event's Manage screen or from the top of My events. It is the same account, the same keys and the same rule as on the web: ticket money settles straight to you and Ardent never holds it. Your secret is sent once and encrypted, and is never shown again on any device.

Paying the platform fee and going live. A ticketed draft cannot publish until its flat GHS 699 fee is paid, and you can now pay it and publish from the app. Payment opens in your browser and the app confirms it when you come back; if the confirmation has not landed yet there is a button to check again, and checking twice never charges twice.

Everything else. Your guest list with search, filters, tags and a CSV you can send to your caterer; your programme of sessions; sponsors and stands; seating areas and tables; editing the event; announcements to everybody coming; and calling it off, which tells them.

Publish an event

1. Sign in, open Events in your dashboard sidebar, and choose New event.
2. Add a title, description, type, and category.
3. Set the date, time, and timezone, and choose whether it is in person or online.
4. Set a location (or add the online details, shown only to registered attendees).
5. Build the event page: a cover image, a photo gallery, and your speakers (photo, name, role, and a short bio). Your programme and your sponsors are set up after you create the event, in the Programme and Sponsors tabs of the event itself, where a session can carry its own time, room, capacity and check-in.
6. Add tags so people can find it in search.
7. Choose who can find your event (public, unlisted, or private, see below).
8. Publish.

Run a hybrid event

Choose Hybrid as the attendance mode and your event carries both a venue and an online link. People find it whether they are searching for something to attend in person or something to watch, because a hybrid event now appears under both.

• Set your venue capacity and, separately, your online places. Leave online places empty for unlimited, which is usually right for a stream. The two are counted apart, so a full room never closes the stream and vice versa.
• Each person says how they will attend when they register. If you sell tickets, you can mark a tier as in-person or online (a virtual pass), and that decides it for everyone holding it.
• Confirmation emails match the person. Whoever is joining online gets the link and no address; whoever is coming gets the address and not the link.
• Your check-in list only holds the people actually coming to the room. Online attendees are not on it, so a thousand stream viewers never bury the fifty people at your door.
• Filter your guest list by how people are attending, so you know what to expect on the day.
• Each session can differ from the event. In the Programme tab, mark a session as in the room only, online only, or both. A room-only workshop cannot be booked by someone attending online, even if their ticket type is listed on it, because there is no seat for them. Room seats and online places are counted separately.

Choose who can find your event

When you create an event, you decide how discoverable it is:

• Public: listed in the events directory, search, and maps. Anyone can find it. This is the default and the right choice for open, promoted events.
• Unlisted: link-only. Your event is hidden from the directory, search, and maps, but anyone you send the link to can view it and register. The link cannot be guessed from your event title.
• Private: invite-only. Your event is hidden everywhere, and even the link works only for people you invite by email (and by SMS when that is enabled). Best for intimate or members-only events.

For an unlisted or private event, you manage everything the same way; only who can reach it changes. Private events add a guest list on the manage page, where you add invitees by email and send each of them a personal invite link.

Sell paid tickets

1. Mark your event as paid.
2. Add one or more ticket tiers (for example "Early bird" and "Regular"), each with a name, price, and quantity.
3. Set sales start and end times if you want tickets to open or close automatically.
4. Connect your own payment account so ticket money goes directly to you.

What to connect depends on your provider:

• Paystack: your public key (pk_…) and secret key (sk_…).
• Hubtel: your POS Sales ID (your Hubtel merchant account number, where the money lands) plus your API Client ID and Client Secret.

You can connect either provider from your organizer settings on the web or from Getting paid in the app. Either way, your secret credentials are encrypted and never shown again after you save them. Buyers paying with Paystack check out on the event page; buyers paying with Hubtel are taken to Hubtel's secure checkout and returned once payment is confirmed.

The platform fee

Publishing a paid event has a single flat platform fee of GHS 699 per event, charged once on Ardent's own account. Free events have no platform fee. There is no per-ticket commission and no cut of your ticket sales. The flat fee is the whole cost of running a paid event on the platform.

Registration and forms

• Choose whether people register instantly or need your approval first. With approval on, each registration lands as pending until you approve it (which confirms the place and issues the ticket) or decline it, and the attendee is notified either way.
• When an event is full, visitors can join a waitlist. You invite people from the waitlist when a place opens, and each keeps their position until then.
• Build a registration form from a library of field types to collect exactly what you need (dietary needs, a session choice, a consent or waiver). Answers are attached to each attendee and exportable.

Build your programme

• Add sessions to your event: talks, workshops, breaks. Each can have its own time, room and track, and they appear as the programme on your event page.
• Give a session a capacity to make it separately bookable, so a 30-seat workshop fills up and then shows as full. You can also limit a session to particular ticket types, for example a masterclass only Delegate Pass holders can book.
• Have an event from before the programme existed, with an agenda already written on it? Import it in one click, then add times and capacities to the sessions it creates.
• Each booked session has its own QR, so a workshop door can be worked independently of the main gate.

Seating and secure tickets

• Optionally define tables or sections. Each is booked as a whole unit with its own capacity, and a unique guard means a table can never be double-booked.
• For higher-stakes events you can turn on a rotating QR per event: each ticket's code refreshes every few seconds so a screenshot goes stale, and it validates against scan time so offline check-ins never falsely expire.

Check-in, staff, and box office

• Add gate staff by email with a check-in or box-office role so helpers can work the door without being full event managers.
• The offline-first scanner caches your guest list to the device and checks people in by scanning the QR, typing a code, or tapping a name, then syncs when back online.
• Run a box office for walk-ups: record a cash or complimentary sale on the spot, which mints a QR ticket and can check the guest in immediately. Box-office cash settles off-platform; Ardent never holds it.
• Print name badges for everyone registered: choose an A4 sheet or single labels, with the QR and a short check-in code on each. The sheet is built from the same guest list the scanner uses, so it keeps working if the venue wifi drops.
• Set a tablet to kiosk mode so guests check themselves in. They type the first few letters of their name and tap themselves in, which clears the queue at the door.

Your guest list

Guests in your event workspace is the full list of everyone registered. You can:

• search by name, email or phone, and filter by status, ticket type or whether they have checked in;
• tag guests (VIP, speaker, press, whatever you need) and then filter or message just that group. Tags are private to you: guests never see how they are labelled;
• open any guest to see their registration answers, seats, table and check-in history in one place;
• select several at once to mark them attended, resend their confirmation, or cancel;
• export the whole list to CSV for your caterer, your venue or your own records.

See how it is going

The Overview tab shows registrations over time, sales by ticket type, which promo codes are actually working, how many people came through the door each hour, and where your traffic came from if you shared a trackable link.

Sponsors and exhibitors

List your sponsors with their tier and logo, and your exhibitor booths, and both appear on your event page. If a sponsor already has an Ardent organisation profile you can link to it.

Refunds

If you enable refunds, an attendee requests one from My tickets and you approve or decline it from your refund console. An approved Paystack refund is reversed on your own key (never more than was paid); Hubtel and cash refunds are marked and completed manually. The flat GHS 699 platform fee is never part of a refund.

Grow and keep in touch

• Every organiser has a public profile page listing their published events, and attendees can follow you or a specific series to hear about new events.
• Turn a one-off into a recurring series (for example a weekly class), so each occurrence has its own date and tickets. Every occurrence shows which series it belongs to and links to it, so somebody who lands on one date can see all of them, and the series page links back to you.
• Send broadcasts to your registered attendees by email (and SMS where enabled), and share your event with auto-generated short, trackable links. Email reaches guests who registered without an Ardent account, which at most community events is a large share of the list.
• After an event, attendees can leave a review, building your reputation for the next one.

Manage your event

From Events in your dashboard sidebar, opening an event gives you a workspace with tabs for Overview, Guests, Registration, Tickets, Programme, Comms, Team and Settings. Each tab has its own link, so you can bookmark the one you use on the day or send a helper straight to it.

Last updated: 24 August 2026