Virtual Event Pricing: Smart Models for 2025

Why Virtual Event Pricing Matters in 2025

The way we consider events has changed forever. Just a couple years ago “going to a conference” meant booking a flight, a hotel, and three days in a convention center. Now, more and more of those conferences are happening online. This doesn’t just change how we attend—it requires organizational and planning considerations about virtual event pricing.

Pricing a virtual event is much more than plucking a number from the ether. You have technology costs to consider, marketing, and talent—which is always the biggest factor to keep attendees engaged. More than anything else, nothing makes an event, or breaks it, like the speakers. Understanding speaker fees for virtual events is an important aspect of prices for online events. Obviously, there are no travel costs for virtual speakers. However, speakers do charge for their time and expertise. In fact, some big-name talent now charges fees that are nearly equivalent to their in-person fee.

So, there are many factors that will cause the fees of virtual speakers to vary greatly, such as their experience level, their industry clout, and the size of your audience. For this reason, organizers must consider their pricing in a strategic manner. If you set your fees too high, you’ll lose participants. If you set your fees too low, then you may not be able to cover your costs, let alone make a profit. Ideally, you should develop a ticketing price or tiering structure that provides value to both the organizers and the participants.

In this guide, we’ll examine the foundational updating processes to create effective virtual event pricing in 2025. We’ll share practical ways to think about everything from cost structures to ticket tiering options that you can begin using right away.

Understanding the Cost Structure of Virtual Events

If you’ve ever planned an event, you’re already aware of how costs can creep up on you. A good pricing strategy starts with a solid understanding of costs. For virtual events, the type of costs you’ll have will look different than hosting a typical conference. However, that does not take away from the importance of knowing your costs.

Fixed and Variable Costs

To clarify the cost structure, consider the difference between fixed and variable costs. Fixed costs would be items that you’ll lose regardless of attendance. For example, your conference platform cost, software licenses, or branding designs. Those costs are the same whether you have 50 or 5,000 attendees.

Variable costs will change based on attendance and content. Examples of variable costs are speaker honorariums, live tech support staff, and pay-per-user streaming tools. Of the variable costs, speaker fees can take up a large section of your budget if you bring in a marquee speaker. This is where we come back to the earlier conversation about speaker fees for virtual events. There was a good chance that speaker fee would become your largest variable cost.

Typical Expense Categories

For a simple way to guide you to where your costs go:

• Technology stack—what will you need to stream, record, chat, moderate, and create analytics dashboards?
• Content creation—pre-recorded sessions, promotional videos, and branding for the event.
• Operational costs—moderators, support staff, and marketing.
• Speakers—keynote speaker, panelists, and workshop presenters—all with various costs.

Why Cost Breakdown Matters

When you work in a way to map out all of your expenses, you’re not just tallying bills. You are treating this in a way that will inform pricing decisions that are smarter. When you don’t have clarity around money, it’s easy to underprice ticket sales and then scramble at the end to meet costs. In other words, you will never feel like it is enough. By creating a financial breakdown for your virtual event pricing planning, you can connect a pricing strategy to actual numbers instead of hunches.

Pricing Models for Virtual Events

After you have your costs in mind, the next important step is selecting a pricing model. This is where your goals as an organizer and the expectations of your public meet. There is no foolproof plan for success, but there are some models that keep reappearing because they work.

Popular Virtual Event Pricing Models

Model	Description	Best for
Flat fee for access	One ticket gets attendees into all sessions—easy to understand.	General conferences or single-track events.
Pay-per-session	Attendees only pay for the sessions they want to attend.	Niche or multi-track events where interests are significantly different.
Subscription-based pricing	Recurring payments provide access to ongoing events such as webinars, workshops, or micro-events.	A community or organization that has typical recurring events.

These models can vary depending on your audience size and content value. A startup founder may only buy the one masterclass. But a corporate manager may want an all-access pass for their whole team.

Hybrid Models

There are built-in hybrid models that monetize from multiple streams of revenue. For example:

• Charging for standard tickets and offering a premium add-on like networking lounges or recorded on-demand sessions.
•  Combining sponsorship revenue and ticket prices paid by participants to offset the conference platform pricing.
• Offering the event for free but monetizing bonus content and recorded replays.
• Align your model with event outcomes.

The model you consider when pricing your event should align with the primary outcomes for your event. Are you looking for brand awareness, community growth, or revenue? If you are looking for growth, then offering free or low-cost options makes sense. At the same time, if you are prioritizing profit, then tiered or premium options generally will generate more revenue.

The ultimate flexible pricing model allows you to field test pricing models, pivot based on participant feedback and appropriate cost, and balance your efforts for sustainability as a company with the affordability for attendees.

Tiered Ticketing Strategies in 2025

People love having choices. While offering one flat ticket might seem easy, it will rarely help maximize your revenue. With tiered ticketing, you give attendees choices and, in turn, respect their choice on how much value they want. So, you, the organizer, are afforded the opportunity to serve more than one audience segment at the same time.

Why Tiered Pricing Works

Tiered pricing is just as much a discipline of psychology as it is of economics. When you offer different access levels, you:

• Satisfy both budget-constrained attendees and premium purchasers.
• Build exclusivity around higher tiers.
•  Provide some legitimacy to mid-tier purchases, which allows a sort of illusive ‘best offer.’

The tiered approach also reduces the chance to alienate attendees. Even if someone cannot afford the full ticket opportunity, you are giving them an opportunity to attend at a lower cost.

Common Ticket Tiers

When we think about effective tiered approaches, here are a few of the best organizing tiered approaches:

• Free or basic tier: limited session access, typically sponsor-supported.
• Standard tier: full access to all live sessions and chat.
• Premium/VIP tier: exclusive networking rooms, Q&A with speakers, post-event recordings, or certification of attendance.

Tiered Math in Virtual Event Pricing

The trick, however, is to not just stack random perks on higher tiers by charge and to build a clear satisfaction-based value ladder. So, when prospective attendees are pushed to select a tier, they feel the next step up in value warrants the extra cost. For example, if a standard ticket is $99, your VIP pricing could simply be VIP = $199. And they will feel this is applicable based on exclusive access and networking.

In summary, a tiered approach helps you maximize revenue, heighten audience satisfaction, and give attendees a sense of control over their investment.

Speaker Fees: A Key Element of Virtual Event Pricing

Let’s be realistic—the presenters at your event are what people are signing up for. People don’t sign up for the event because of the platform or their agendas. They are registering to gain the insights of the presenters they trust, admire, and want to learn from. This is why speaker fees for virtual events need to be considered part of your pricing model for virtual events.

Understanding Virtual Speaker Fees

Important content is available in a lot of different price ranges. A niche expert could charge $500 for a 1-hour speaking engagement, while a celebrity thought leader will charge a base of around $20,000 or more. And here’s the kicker: many professionals will charge practically the same fee for virtual engagement as in-person engagement. They charge what they charge because their value is not about how they “show up” at your event; it’s about the expertise and credibility they bring to your audience.

Factors impacting virtual speaker fees include:

• Who they are and how influential they are in the industry?
• How big is your event, and how far can you extend the audience you are reaching?
• What format is it (keynote, breakout, panel, workshop, or Q&A)?
• What time commitment are they making?

Finally, speakers’ fees are not fixed. Organizers often forget this:

• You can negotiate for bundled engagements (keynote plus workshop).
• The speaker can provide marketing exposure using the recorded session, through social media or by posting your integrated appearance after the event.
• Is your platform set up to share revenue?

They hold a different value than a number on a spreadsheet. When done well and the right combination is managed, the speaker’s reputation can enhance your event’s credibility and allow for a higher ticket price.

Discounts, Dynamics, and Real-Time Adjustments

Price is never static, continuously changing over time. The best organizers understand how valuable discounts and dynamic pricing can be in gaining more sign-ups and revenue. When used effectively, discounts and dynamic pricing will sell-in seats to your event quicker and help develop loyalty to your future events.

Discount Types That Make a Difference

• Early-bird pricing. These tickets provide value for early purchasers. Guaranteed early-bird pricing creates longer lead times for expedited sales as well as predicting your attendance.
• Group or corporate bundle. Offer group discounts to teams. Many corporations prefer this, and they will also help you aggregate total sales.
•  Loyalty. Your previous attendees should have a slight bonus. Loyalty pricing not only shows value to the attendee but will also keep them more loyal to your future events.

Dynamic Shift in the Moment

A few organizers can change pricing based on demand as event days approach:

• Price adjustments when approaching the event date.
• Flash promotions when you hit a plateau in registrations.
• You can wait until the last minute by offering pricing discounts on specific tiers if your goal is simply more engagement in your premium sessions.

Finding the Right Balance

Discounts are certainly valuable; however, too many can easily alienate customers and not work well. Too many price drops will cause your customers to hold off and wait for the “next best deal.” The challenge is in finding the balance through discounted prices, creating urgency, and making the attendee feel like they obtained a ton of value.

Lastly, dynamic pricing is an area of pricing that is really about psychology and not price alone. The end goal is creating a path for your audiences to get to the right decision while also ensuring your event remains highly profitable.

From Strategy to Implementation: Flexible Tools

Now that we’ve discussed price structure, models, tiers, and speaker fees for virtual events, the big question is how to start to execute on it? A well-thought-out pricing model is one thing on paper, but without the right tools, the pricing model will only exist in theory.

From tiered tickets to managing virtual speaker fees to testing some discounts, any pricing logic can be made to work if the technology you are using to run your event can adapt quickly and effectively. If the event technology provider you are using can only do a single checkout flow, you are limiting the ability to maximize revenue opportunities.

This is exactly why flexible technology is not only important but also fruitful. Modern platforms cannot just process payments. They can factor in dynamic pricing and complex revenue-sharing models and ultimately allow you to test creative ticketing models without the technical hassles involved.

In the next section, I’ll introduce Scrile Connect, which was built with exactly this kind of flexibility in mind, to deliver deeper value for content creators, entrepreneurs, and event managers in converting strategy to action.

Scrile Connect: Powering Profitable Virtual Event Pricing

If you’re serious about wanting to make your event a profitable venture, the platform you choose to run your events will be a huge factor. That’s where Scrile Connect comes in. Scrile Connect is not just another event tool. It’s an agile monetization platform that helps creators, coaches, and organizers create and run events their way.

What Makes Scrile Connect Different?

With other generic platforms, you never know how you’re going to be able to sell access and share revenues fairly. With Scrile Connect, you can:

• Create multiple revenue streams (subscription, one-time payment, pay-per-view sessions).
• Build tiered ticketing that fits your event strategy.
• Provide discounts, promotions, and bundles without needing to figure out overly complex workarounds.
• Share revenue with your speakers or partners using Scrile Connect directly.

So, if you’re serious about taking back control of your event pricing and providing a seamless experience for your attendees, then consider giving Scrile Connect a second look. It may mean the difference between just an event that’s a break-even cost and an event strategy that is sustainable and profitable in 2025 and beyond.

FAQ: Virtual Event Pricing

How much does a virtual event cost?

Setting pricing for your virtual event holds a lot of importance when defining the size of the event, scope of the event, and what platforms you are adding. Smaller events on platforms like Zoom or WebEx with production, licenses, and basic customized production usually range from $2,500 to $10,000. Larger events, with multiple presenters, branded environments, and interactive content, can make the budget considerably higher. The largest variable? The largest variable is speaker honorarium and production. A keynote with a brand alone might cost thousands of dollars to fill. So, really mapping out everything in fixed and variable costs is critical before you can create a virtual event pricing strategy.

How do you plan a virtual event?

Planning a virtual event is both creative and logistical. Here’s a simple list to consider:

• Know your audience. Decide what topics, formats, and price points will appeal to your audience.
• Choose the right platform. Your conference platform cost should align with your desired outcomes for your event. A platform like Scrile Connect can give you flexibility without adding layers of complexity to your tech.
• Attendee engagement. Consider building in polls, chat rooms, or networking spaces to create active attendees vs. passive attendees.
• Promote your event. Build the buzz for your event by sending emails, posting on social media, and working with external partners.
• Be patient. The speakers and hosts of the program should have a practice run to limit the blunders.
• Follow up. Recordings, thank-you messages, and special offers to keep the relationship warm.
• Collect & analyze data. Consider reviewing the registration numbers, attendance, and revenues to make improvements for the next event.

How long should a virtual event be?

Attention spans in a digital setting are typically shorter than in in-person formats, so often less is more. For standard sessions, 20-30 minutes is the ideal time length, as it keeps participants engaged in the session and prevents screen fatigue. However, if you are presenting a keynote or panel discussion that is a little longer (45-60 minutes), that is perfectly acceptable. Just be sure that the experience is engaging and there is some interactivity. Breaks are important too. In terms of virtual programming, smaller amounts of content and immersive experiences are better than a lot of ongoing content.