Partiful vs Luma.Two great tools, two different events.

For recurring paid events, which handles payments, regulars, memberships and reminders better: Luma or Partiful?

Luma covers more of a recurring paid series: people follow your calendar, and it sells paid memberships with member-only tickets. Partiful has no recurring-event feature and we found no membership feature in its help center, but its tickets, text reminders (to guests signed up for Partiful) and re-invite filter work well for a casual series where everyone already knows each other.

Where you would need another tool

• On Partiful you need another place for membership status and dues, a reminder schedule other than its two automatic texts (which reach only guests signed up for Partiful), and refunds after the event has ended.
• On Luma you need manual work or another tool for benefit allowances such as guest passes, for each member’s paid-through date during a move, and, if you also email people from another tool, for keeping unsubscribes in sync (Luma’s unsubscribe webhook needs Plus).
• Neither replaces your bookkeeping. Both give you sales data to reconcile; Luma’s sales history export lists the fee and net amount for every transaction.

If you would rather keep memberships, tickets, the guest list and check-in, email campaigns and your contacts in one account, SocialLoop is built for that. Run it through the same tests below before you move a live series.

How do I compare Partiful, Luma Free and Luma Plus fees fairly?

Compare two numbers at the same ticket price: what you keep, and what the guest pays at checkout. Then add Luma Plus’s $708 yearly subscription spread over your year’s tickets, and what you lose when you refund.

The two platforms pass fees differently. On Partiful you type what you want to receive and it shows the price guests will pay. Luma shows guests one price and has no setting to add fees on top, so to pass them on you raise the ticket price.

Illustrative example: a monthly event, keeping $100 a ticket.

Illustrative, not a quote. One event a month with 25 paid tickets is 300 tickets a year. We use a ticket that leaves you $100 because that is the one price where Partiful publishes an example. US cards, one ticket per order, taxes not counted. Rates read on each company’s own pages, October 6–7, 2026.

• Luma Plus costs less than Luma’s free plan once your paid ticket sales pass $14,160 a year, because it removes the 5% fee for a fixed $708. Stripe’s fee is the same on both, so it does not change that line. In the example above you sell about $30,000 a year, so Plus is cheaper.
• Passing fees to guests does not make them free. Your regulars pay them every month, so compare the price a guest sees at checkout as well as what you keep.
• Refunds on Luma: Luma charges no refund fee, but you cover the original card fee and the platform fee. On a $100 ticket where you absorbed the fees, a full refund costs you $8.20 on the free plan and $3.20 on Plus.
• Refunds on Partiful: you refund selected tickets from the guest list. The guest gets back the ticket price and taxes, and Partiful’s service fee is not refunded. If you cancel the event, every ticket holder is refunded in full, fee included. After the event ends, refunds have to be handled outside Partiful.

How do I test Luma’s member-only tickets, tier prices, approval and guest passes before committing?

Set up a test calendar with two tiers and one event, then try to register as a non-member, a pending applicant, a member of each tier and an invited guest. Luma enforces access on the ticket, not on the event’s visibility. Guest passes and other benefit allowances are the part you will handle by hand.

The test, step by step

1. Use a team calendar: Luma memberships do not work on personal calendars. Create two tiers, for example Standard and Gold, and turn on approval for one.
2. Create one ticket type per price, for example Public $30, Members $15 and Gold $10, and restrict each to the right tier. A Luma ticket has one fixed price; it cannot change price by the buyer’s tier.
3. As a non-member, open the event. Member tickets should show as greyed-out “Members-Only”. Then open a member-only event by its direct link: Luma says visibility settings do not block registration, so the ticket restriction is what keeps people out.
4. As a pending applicant, try to buy a member ticket. You should not be able to until you approve them. On a paid tier with approval, the card is charged only when you approve.
5. Put Require Approval on a paid ticket and register. The card should show a hold, not a charge; approving captures it and declining releases it. Holds typically last about a week.
6. Invite someone to an approval-only event and forward that invite to a second email. Invited guests are approved automatically, even from a forwarded invite.
7. Sign in as a member with a different email. Luma ties a membership to the exact email, so this person will be asked to join.
8. Cancel a test subscription as the member, then remove another member as the host. A member who cancels keeps access to the end of the paid period; a member you remove loses access immediately and is not refunded.
9. Move a member from Standard to Gold. One person can hold one tier per calendar, so this means removing and re-adding them. Check what that does to a paid subscription before you promise upgrades.
10. Change a tier’s price. Existing members keep the price they joined at.

Benefit rules that need manual work

• Guest passes such as “one free guest a month”. Luma’s membership help lists four benefits: calendar visibility, single-event visibility, member-only tickets and tier newsletters. We found no guest allowance that counts down. You can add a guest directly with a ticket type you choose, which skips payment, and keep the count in a spreadsheet.
• Perks earned by attendance, such as a free event after five visits. Luma shows totals per person, but we found no rule that grants something automatically.
• Rollovers, family or shared memberships, and changing tier mid-period. Each one needs a manual step or another system.

If I move my community off Luma, what can I export, and how do I test the move?

You can export your active contacts with their membership tier and status, each event’s guest list, and your sales history. You cannot export unsubscribed or removed contacts, so build your do-not-email list before you import anyone elsewhere, and move a small test group before everyone.

How to test the move

1. Export everything first and keep the original files untouched: the People CSV, every event’s guest CSV, and the sales history. Deleting a Luma calendar deletes its past events and guest lists, and support cannot recover them.
2. Build your do-not-email list before importing anyone. Start from your own records of opt-outs, note the people you can identify on Luma’s Unsubscribed screen, and if you are on Plus, turn on the unsubscribe webhook on day one of the move.
3. Work out each paid member’s paid-through date from their last membership payment in the sales history. The People CSV gives tier and status, not that date.
4. Pick six test people: an active paid member, one who cancelled but is still paid up, a pending applicant, a regular with a long history, someone with two email addresses, and someone who opted out. Move only them.
5. Check the result: the opted-out person receives nothing, the paid-up member keeps access without being charged twice, and the regular’s attendance count matches Luma.
6. Run both for one billing cycle. Remove each paid member on Luma just before their renewal date, because removing a subscriber cancels it at once with no refund for the rest of the period.
7. Archive the old calendar instead of deleting it if you might need the history.

Leaving Partiful instead? Each event’s guest list exports as a CSV from the guest list, filtered by RSVP type.

If you are moving to SocialLoop: importing a contact list does not give you permission to email or text those people. Permission is recorded separately, with how it was obtained, and it cannot override an unsubscribe.

How do I compare the guest experience without requiring an app?

• Recover a confirmation without relying on the host’s account.
• Change the test guest’s RSVP and verify the host sees the change.
• Record any essential step that stops working when an optional app prompt is dismissed.

Who can see the guest list, location and registration answers?

• Check names, guest count, address and questionnaire answers independently.
• Repeat the check using a forwarded link and an old confirmation message.
• Tell guests what information will be shared before collecting it.

When does an approved guest actually get charged?

• Show the guest’s payment status and admission status side by side.
• Verify whether direct invitations bypass the approval step you intended.
• Test failure handling through the vendor’s supported test method; do not create real charges casually.

Product documentation checked October 6, 2026: Luma payment and approval

Can a cohost help without receiving control of the whole community?

• Separate event editing, messaging, exports, refunds and payment administration.
• Confirm the primary organizer can recover control through the supported process.
• Check revoked access in an existing session, not just at the next login.

How should plus-ones count toward a small event’s capacity?

• Check that a group cannot exceed remaining capacity through an edit.
• Try a companion arriving before the person who made the RSVP.
• Verify the capacity total after the lead guest cancels.