Product Updates

What Fanciful is and who it's for

Fanciful ·
What Fanciful is and who it's for

Fanciful is a platform that lets event creators anywhere in the world easily set up and run their own fully-featured dating and speed friending events. If you’re attending an event, Fanciful is the website where you’ll find your tickets, your matches and your messages. If you’re hosting one, it’s the toolkit that handles the parts of the night that aren’t standing in a room introducing people.

This page has two halves. Use whichever fits why you’re here.

If you’re here as a dater#

You’re in the right place if you’ve bought (or are about to buy) a ticket to a Fanciful event, or someone has told you about one and you’re curious.

What you do on Fanciful:

You don’t need to install an app. Fanciful works in the browser on a phone, tablet or laptop.

If it’s your first event, start with:

That’s it for the dater side. The rest of this page is about hosting events.

If you’re here as an organiser#

Fanciful offers organisers online ticket sales, guest lists, gender sales balancing, online matching, and messaging — in other words the full package. That lets you offer your customers a properly run service while you concentrate on running a great event.

Who organises on Fanciful:

Fanciful enables all of those people to organise dating events and run them well.

What you get out of the box:

For a longer feature-by-feature tour, see What Fanciful does: a platform overview for organisers.

What’s the setup process?#

Start by registering on Fanciful and connecting to Stripe. Stripe is the world’s leading payment gateway, and it will ensure the money from your ticket sales arrives with you fast. The setup takes just a few minutes. You’ll have your own Fanciful page and handle where your event tickets will be listed for sale.

Then it’s a case of finding a suitable venue, booking the date, and promoting your event to your customers. The end-to-end how-to for that lives in Hosting your speed dating event step by step.

Is there a charge?#

There is no setup fee or per-event charge on Fanciful, but there is a small fee each time you add a user to an event you host on Fanciful. The fee is a fixed amount plus a percentage of your ticket price. At the time of writing this fee would total around £3 of a £20 ticket sale. See the pricing page for current rates.

Fees are only charged when you make a ticket sale via the platform or add a user who has paid you by other means, which keeps your cash flow positive at all times. By charging a small fee we can provide you with features and reliable technology usually out of reach of micro event organisers.

If your customer purchases their ticket using a credit or debit card there is an additional card processing fee taken by Stripe. This is currently set at 1.5% + 20p (UK pricing) but you can view pricing for your region here.

The full breakdown is in Charges for using Fanciful as an organiser.

Other use cases for Fanciful#

Hosting dating events on Fanciful can be a great additional revenue stream for venues such as pubs, bars, cafes, restaurants, and clubs. Your team members can use our tools to learn how to organise speed dating events at your premises and your business can profit from the ticket sales alongside your other seasonal promotions. See Boosting income for pubs, bars and restaurants for ideas tailored to that audience.

Speed dating events also have the potential to raise funds for charities, and you may want to use us to power a dating event at your student union. Organising speed dating is a fun way to earn money, and we’d love the opportunity to help you get started.

If you’re weighing up whether it’s the right move for you, Should you start a speed dating business? is the honest decision guide.

Get started#

Sign up as an event creator on Fanciful here and get started.

← Back to Customer Help