Hide tickets from the public (comp, volunteer and invite-only tickets) | Feature requests

Hide tickets from the public (comp, volunteer and invite-only tickets)

Michel (Product @Zeffy)

Organizers want to create a ticket on their form without showing it to everyone. Today the only workaround is to build the ticket at the last minute, or to delete it and recreate it later.
This is different from scheduling a ticket's sales window, which is now available. Scheduling controls when a ticket can be bought, and the ticket stays visible on the form with its status. This request is about ticket types that should not appear publicly at all.
The situations that come up most often:
Comp and free tickets. Organizations give free tickets to guests, sponsors or board members, and would rather the public not see that a $0 ticket exists.
Volunteer tickets. The same need for volunteers, usually with the wish to keep them as their own ticket type in the guest list instead of adding each person by hand.
Reserved tickets. Holding a few tickets for hosts, speakers or specific patrons who may not buy right away, including on an event that is otherwise sold out.
Group or discounted rates for a specific audience. A reduced rate for a partner organization or a particular group, which should not be offered to everyone.
Access-code tickets. Revealing a hidden ticket only to people who enter a code you gave them, rather than a discount code that applies to the whole order.
What organizers describe wanting:
A way to mark a ticket as hidden and to unhide it later, without deleting and recreating it.
Optionally, a code that reveals a hidden ticket to the people who have it.
Hidden tickets still showing normally in the guest list and in reports, so attendance stays easy to follow.
If this matters to your organization, please upvote and tell us which of these cases is yours. It helps us scope the right first version.

September 21, 2026

CanU

We are having the same issue for discounted tickets and would find hidden ticket options very useful. The only workaround that I can think of is to create a new ticket type in Zeffy for 1 ticket at a time and invoice each discounted ticket holder separately. I can't use the discount code on the general admission ticket because there is a tax receipt tied to a portion of that ticket and the tax receipt is not available for the discounted ticket.

Jacky

We're running into this issue for our Gala. We're having to create coupon codes for volunteers, partners, sponsors, etc. which also allows them to use them multiple times - thankfully they aren't. Pretty much all the scenarios described in this feature request we could use.

For the access-code tickets, just a suggestion that we could enter/import them into Zeffy, including which campaign, ticket type and number of tickets to assign, and let Zeffy generate the code to an email and send it right out to them.

Michel (Product @Zeffy)

Thank you so much for taking the time to share so many concrete examples. Seeing this many detailed comments in just a few days shows there's real interest in this feature, and it makes us want to dig in and see what we can do.

Here's how I understand the core need:

A hide/show toggle on any ticket type, so you can set it up early and reveal it later without deleting and recreating it.
Hidden tickets never appear on your public form.
You can still add them yourself as manual entries: comps, volunteers, staff, performers, vendors, holds, or paper tickets sold elsewhere.
They count toward your event capacity and show up normally in your guest list, check-in and reports.
This works independently from scheduled sales windows.

Does this match what you need?

I fully recognize this only covers part of the needs shared here. It looks like a first part we should be able to build fairly easily, so I wanted to make sure I understood it well.

Some other cases seem more complex to us:

A discounted rate offered to a specific group, such as a partner venue reselling to its members.
Discounted tickets that cast or crew book themselves, with a limit per person.
A free ticket included in a season membership, with a limit per member.
A ticket that only appears with an access code or a private link.

I'll email the people who shared these cases individually to understand them better.

Thanks again for all this feedback and detail. Input like this is what helps us prioritize the features that bring the most value.

Michel (Product @Zeffy) Yes! That describes the core needs of my organization. The other use cases you outlined are not as important to us.

Sara

Michel (Product @Zeffy) the core needs you outlined are exactly what our organization is looking for, especially for our largest event (Shady Pines Festival), where hiding staff/volunteer/performer ticket types, but still having those numbers contribute to guest list/attendance tracking, is essential! Thank you for listening!

Michel (Product @Zeffy)

Perfect thanks a lot, will work on a solution with the team.

WFAE

This is a critical feature for our organization and, specifically, is a deciding factor in whether we can use Zeffy for our annual gala.
Our gala requires us to manage a significant number of reserved and complimentary tickets for sponsors, board members, special guests, speakers and other invited attendees. These tickets need to count toward our total event capacity and remain fully integrated into the guest list, check-in and reporting, but they absolutely should not be visible as $0 or otherwise unavailable ticket options on the public registration page.
For an event of this size and complexity, manually adding guests or creating and deleting ticket types is not a sustainable workaround. We need to be able to establish our full ticket inventory from the beginning, including tickets being held for specific groups, while controlling which ticket types the public can actually see and access.
Ideally, we would have both the ability to keep certain ticket types completely hidden and the option to reveal others through an access code or private link. This would allow us to manage sponsor allocations, complimentary tickets, reserved seats and other special groups without maintaining separate processes outside of Zeffy.
I want to emphasize how important this is: the lack of this functionality has caused us to consider other ticketing platforms specifically for our annual gala, despite our preference to continue using Zeffy. For smaller events, we can sometimes work around the limitation. For our gala, however, robust management of hidden, reserved and complimentary inventory is essentially a requirement.
We LOVE Zeffy, we just need it to fit the scenarios we're facing.

UCA

We are for gaining the ability to use a code to show hidden tickets. That is something we would like to have the option to use for some of our events.

Phil

Totally agree; we have Actual Ticket vendors selling paper tickets as part of our program. I currently create a ticket type for these, with a very short campaign date range. The Public can't order these, but unfortunately they still see them. It would be nice if we could hide these.

WhoDunnit

We would LOVE this feature. 
We are a nonprofit theatre company putting on dinner theatre productions at local restaurants. Our main use for this would be "at-cost" tickets. Each cast/crew member in one of our shows gets two discounted tickets that comp our portion of the fee (for the show) and just cover the restaurant's portion (for the meal). Right now, we have to create a unique discount code for each and every person for every single campaign, which is a huge hassle.
What's more, we can only limit those codes by "uses per date," not total uses, which means they could book more discounted tickets for multiple performance dates instead of just the two at-cost tickets they are allotted, and when we have multiple venue options (with one "campaign" for each), we'd need coupon codes that worked across campaigns and had an OVERALL use limit.
Since we already can't really limit the discount code use properly and have to rely on everyone to be honorable and honest, the "hidden ticket" type would at least save us a lot of trouble of having to generate the codes for everyone, and we could limit purchases to two in a single transaction, which at least does the same thing as the coupon code. It won't stop them from making multiple transactions... but then again, neither does the coupon code stop them from using it on multiple dates. 
In any case, we would absolutely need to see all these ticket types included on the report!

WhoDunnit

ALSO: We have Season Ticket Holders who pay a membership fee at the beginning of our season (year), which includes one "free" ticket to each of our shows. We'd like them to be able to book their "free" tickets for each show using the regular form. We manage their membership via a Zeffy campaign but currently have to book their tickets to shows for them via the "add manual payment - free" option, rather than letting the customers do so themselves. 
We can't utilize the "members-only" ticket types to create a free ticket for them because 1) it requires our members to log in, which they aren't comfortable doing, and 2) we have no way to limit the number of tickets per membership, which means one member could book extra free tickets. The only way we could let them do so themselves is generating a 100% off coupon code for them... but even then, we run into the above mentioned issues with limiting coupon code use.
Having a hidden ticket type would be a helpful way to get around them having to log in or having to generate a unique discount code for each person, but we still need some way to better limit sales.

Naomi

We create group tickets that we don’t want publicly shown that we send out to our venue for them to sell to their members.

Sara

In the past, we have had to make a separate campaign for "internal" ticket types (staff, performers, volunteers, vendors), so admin could make these manually. However it is a challenge for the folks checking people into the event to go back and forth between campaigns, and especially difficult when someone needs a special ticket type as well as a general admission ticket type under the same name (ie a 'hidden' performer ticket, plus their general admission comps).

The ability to hide ticket types from public view would allow us to keep the entire guest list (including staff, vendors, etc) in 1 campaign, and track attendance more easily from one place. This is one of our most needed features, thanks for working on this!

Amen

Yes, this would be incredibly useful, specifically for reserved tickets, or "holds" Right now, if we want to hold tickets for special guests, comps, or 'waitlist' room, we have to book them under our name, then cancel them to make them available, or sell them totally off of Zeffy if we want to add 'standing room' or overflow room. Being able to mark a ticket as hidden, and then being able to unhide when it becomes useful, will help us create wiggle room in our capacity that is necessary for us without putting those tickets on public sale. Thank you for working on it!

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