Answers

Secret Party is an event platform that helps people who are throwing events manage invitations, correspondence, RSVP lists, and ticketing. Unlike other ticket platforms, we specialize in semi-private events using a built in word-of-mouth invitation system to ensure that the people coming to an event are hand selected to be a good vibes-and-values fit for that gathering. Our goal is to help facilitate events that scale intimacy and community in an authentic way. When someone is invited to an event using Secret Party, the person who invited them is visible to the organizer, so there is a chain of accountability that lets incidents get addressed and helps keep communities safe. When you attend a private or semi-private event through Secret Party, you can have confidence that you were very specifically chosen to be included in that event, and so was everyone else who will be attending. What we are not: the hosts of the party or a production house. We help a wide variety of organizers, producers, and hosts manage their events. If you want them to turn up the bass or serve more red velvet cupcakes, please write the event host directly.

Creating a Secret Party account is currently invite-only — you’ll need a referral code from an existing organizer to sign up. Once you have a code, select “Sign Up” in the top corner of the SecretParty.io homepage and enter it to get started. Next, add your email, first name, last name, and a password, and check the box to agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms. When you submit, we’ll email you a link to confirm your address and finish setting up your account — click it and you’re ready to start planning events.

You, my friend, have stumbled upon the key ingredient in Secret Party’s all-event-improving recipe! Viral ticketing leverages social connections to drive sales. Events can be private, semi-private, or public. You have a variety of nuanced controls to determine the shape of our unique, automated, word-of-mouth ticketing system. The limited-invitation-sharing dynamic built into Secret Party encourages guests to only invite people they believe would be a good fit for your event. This is great for sales, but it’s also fantastic for attendees, because it improves trust and safety at events. The atmosphere is one in which each guest was hand-selected by their peers—even when there are thousands of people attending. Our event management system was built to scale intimacy. Because invitations pass from guest to guest, each ticket keeps a record of who invited whom — open any ticket to see who brought that guest in. What we are not: the hosts of the party or a production house. We help a wide variety of organizers, producers, and hosts manage their events. If you want them to turn up the bass or serve more red velvet cupcakes, please write the event host directly.

Once you’re signed in, head to your events and select “Party” (or “Create a Party” if you don’t have any events yet). You’ll pick a starting point — Private, Semi-Private, or Public — or clone one of your previous events. Choosing a preset immediately creates a draft event and drops you into its workspace, where you’ll finish setting everything up. The preset you choose sets sensible defaults (like whether your event page is publicly visible), but every setting can be fine-tuned afterward from the event’s Details & Settings. Your event stays a draft — nothing is live and no invitations go out — until you’re ready and select “Publish Party.”

When you create an event you start from one of three presets — Private, Semi-Private, or Public — and each one sets sensible defaults you can still fine-tune afterward. A Private event is one where only the people you invite can see the event page and attend. Each invitation has its own link, and the general event page isn’t publicly visible. A Semi-Private event lets your invited guests invite a certain number of their own friends, so the guest list grows through people you trust. You control how far that spreading can go. A Public event is visible to anyone, and the event page can be shared freely. You can still choose whether ticket sales are open to everyone or restricted to people who were invited. After creating your event, adjust all of this from Details & Settings: open the settings drawer and use Access to set Page Visibility (who can see the event page), Ticket Access (who can buy), and Location Visibility, and use Virality to control how invitations spread.

Once your event is set up, head to the Invitations section to build your guest list. You can add people one at a time with “Invite by Email” (enter their name and email — if they’ve been a guest of yours before, they’ll show up as you type), or bring in a whole list at once with “Import CSV.” When formatting your CSV, make the header of the first column first_name, the second last_name, and the third email. Each guest you add is queued on your list with their own invitation, and you can set how many invitations they’re able to pass along. From the Invitations section you can also export your list or review who has viewed, claimed, or purchased.

Your viral controls live in two places: your event’s Virality settings (open the settings drawer from Details & Settings and choose Virality) for the event-wide rules, and each ticket type in the Products section for per-ticket rules. In Virality settings you can: 1. Turn virality on or off with the Enable Virality switch. 2. Set the Default Invites per Guest — how many people each guest on your list can invite before buying a ticket themselves. You can also override this for an individual guest (their “Presale Invites”) from the Invitations section. 3. Set Max Invitation Levels — how many steps of removal from you an invitation can travel. Remember Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon? One level means only people on your list can invite others; each additional level lets those invitees invite the next ring outward, up to ten. 4. Cap virality with the Viral Attendance Limit and the Invitation Limit, found under Advanced on events where it is enabled. The Viral Attendance Limit caps how many tickets can go to guests who weren’t on your original list, and the Invitation Limit is a percentage of the invitations you added yourself. Both let you prioritize your core community and preserve the culture of your event. Over in the Products section, open any ticket type and use Extra Invites to decide how many new invitations a purchase of that ticket generates — so buying a ticket can also hand the buyer a few invitations to pass along.

These — called “Presale Invites” — are invitations each guest can send to others before buying a ticket themselves. You set a default number for everyone in your event’s Virality settings, and can adjust the count for any individual guest from the Invitations section.

Promoter Links let you invite a group of people whose email addresses you don’t know — even for an invitation-only event. A Promoter Link is a limited-use URL you can share anywhere; anyone who follows it can generate an invitation for themselves. It’s perfect for inviting everyone from a particular community, like a Burning Man camp, or letting a well-connected person bring a group of their friends with a single link instead of typing in everyone’s email. You’ll find them in the Campaigns section of your event (the screens still call them promoter links). Select “Add Promoter Link” to mint one, and set a maximum number of uses and an expiration date to keep access from spreading further than you want. Each link tracks its own views, invitations, and ticket sales, and can be attributed to a sponsor on your guest list, so everything traces back in your reporting.

Open your event’s Sales section, click the ticket belonging to that guest, and you’ll find an Extra Invites field on the ticket’s detail — adjust the number and select Update. You can increase or decrease how many invitations that specific guest can send. (To change the count on the invitation side instead, edit the guest in the Invitations section and update their Presale Invites.)

Customizing your event happens in its Details & Settings. The main Details area is where you set your event’s Name, its URL (the web address for your event page, shown with a live preview — freely editable until you publish, then locked permanently; contact customer service if a published event’s URL must change), a rich Description, and a Cover image. The Description editor lets you embed images or videos that are hosted elsewhere. You’ll also set your Organizer details here — who the event is “Hosted By,” a Reply-to email, and a Notifications email. Opening the settings drawer gives you more options. Under Tickets you can turn on User Edits (letting guests fix their own name — recommended) and add a Ticket Note that’s included with every ticket email. Access controls who can see and buy your event, Virality controls how invitations spread, and Checkout, Lottery, and Team round out the settings. To customize the tickets themselves — their names, prices, sale windows, and details — head to the Products section, where each ticket type is configured individually.

Yes! Open the settings drawer from Details & Settings and, under Access, set Location Visibility. You can make the location Available To All, limit it to people who hold an invitation, or reveal it only to guests who already have a ticket. When the location is set to ticket holders only, the address appears in an email titled "🎟️ Tickets for [name of event]" which guests receive at the time of purchase or RSVP. If you keep the location fully private until guests have bought a ticket and you might have people on your mailing list from multiple cities, states, or even countries, please include the general location such as the city it’s happening in somewhere in your event description. Otherwise someone might accidentally think it’s happening down the street when it’s really across the country from them, and not know until after they’ve bought a ticket.

Head to your event’s Products section and make sure you’re on the “Ticket Types” tab, then select “New Ticket Type.” You’ll be able to set the ticket’s Name, Quantity, and Price, choose when it goes on and off sale, decide whether it’s visible, and add optional Details. Open the Advanced Settings on any ticket for finer control — like Max / Invite (how many of that ticket a single person can buy) and Extra Invites (how many invitations a purchase hands out).

Yes — through a promo code. Go to your event’s Promotions section and create a promo with the “Fixed Price” type, then turn on “Add a max price?” and set the ceiling. Guests who apply that code can choose any amount between the promo price and the max you set before checking out. (Base ticket types use a single set price, so sliding-scale pricing is handled with these promo codes.)

Yes! There are two ways. To hide a special ticket behind a code, open a ticket type in the Products section and uncheck “Product is visible.” — you’ll then be able to create a promo code that reveals it, and guests enter that code to unlock the ticket. For discounts on tickets that are already visible, go to the Promotions section and create a promo code. A promo can be a “Fixed Price” (it sets a new price) or a “Percent Discount” (a percentage off); you can apply one across several products at once with the Additional Products option, and cap how many times it’s used with Max Usage.

Yes! Secret Party charges no fees for free events — it’s a great way to manage online invitations for your gatherings. Just set your ticket prices to zero when you create them in the Products section.

Yes! Open the settings drawer from Details & Settings and, under Ticket Settings, turn on Transfers Allowed for your event. You can also require that anyone receiving a transfer already holds an invitation to your event, which keeps more private gatherings tight-knit.

You can set a Transfer Cutoff under Ticket Settings in the settings drawer. Once the cutoff date and time is reached, guests can’t start a new transfer or complete one that’s already in progress. If you leave it blank, transfers close automatically when the event starts.

Yes! Open the settings drawer from Details & Settings and, under Ticket Settings, add a Ticket Note. It’s included with every ticket email, so it’s the right place for the details each guest needs once they have their ticket.

Yes! You can send targeted emails to your guests and ticket holders from your event’s Messages section. Compose your message, choose exactly who should receive it — you can filter by invitation status (for example, people who opened their invitation but haven’t bought yet) and by ticket status — and then deliver it with “Send now.” Because you pick the audience each time, you can reach just the people you want without overloading everyone else. For need-to-know information that every buyer must see, use the Ticket Note in your Ticket Settings instead. It’s delivered with the ticket email at the moment of purchase, so make sure it’s set before your event goes on sale.

Once your event is live, its Analytics section gives you a real-time picture of how things are going. At the top is the Invitation Conversion Funnel, which tracks your guests from Invitations Total → Emails Opened → Invitations Viewed → Made a Purchase. Below it, a set of Event Information tiles surfaces the numbers that matter — revenue, tickets purchased, how many tickets went to guests who weren’t on your original list (Invitation Virality), plus transfers, refunds, disputes, and per-customer averages. For guest- and sales-level detail, the Invitations and Sales sections give you sortable lists where you can show or hide columns to focus on what you care about — who invited whom, each guest’s status in the funnel, what they bought, and more.

Add your door staff as team members and give each one an access code they can use to check people in at the door. Open your event’s Details & Settings, go to the Team section, and add each staff member. Every teammate gets their own Access Code, which they enter in the check-in app to scan tickets — it gives them guest-list lookup and check-in only, with no access to the rest of your event. You can also check guests in yourself right from the Sales section, using the Check In / Out control on any ticket.

After your event ends, your ticket-sales revenue is paid out to the Treasurer you’ve designated for the event. Funds become available for payout after about five days, and payouts typically arrive within a couple of days after that — so most organizers see the money land within roughly a week of the event wrapping up. You can follow all of it from the Payouts section: your event’s Payouts view shows total sales, fees, and both past and upcoming payouts, while your account-level Payouts area handles your bank setup and your full payout history across events.

Payment processing fees are non-refundable, but whether you allow refunds for your event is up to you. To issue one, open your event’s Sales section, click the ticket you want to refund, and select Issue Refund on the ticket’s detail. You can issue a full or partial refund; the processing fees are not returned.

Once you’ve sold paid tickets, the ability to change your event’s date and time is locked so that we can reliably process payouts and protect the people who’ve already bought in. (Events with only free tickets stay editable.) If you need to adjust the date or time after paid sales have started, please contact us and we can help.