Ticketing for medical conferences: tiers, registration and fees
Medical conference registration is priced by role rather than by date: physician, advanced practice, resident, student and industry rates each pay a different amount for the same room. The registration form has to collect license and credential data for CME reporting, disclosure answers for industry-funded sessions, and a refund policy that survives a clinician's shift changing three weeks out.
By Checkout Page · Updated September 5, 2026 · 8 min read
On this page
- What is different about medical conference ticketing?
- What registration tiers should a CME conference offer?
- How do CME credits and certificates actually get issued?
- What should a medical conference registration form ask?
- How do you handle industry sponsors and exhibitors?
- What refund policy works when shifts change?
- What will registration cost in platform fees?
- Where does Checkout Page not fit a medical conference?
- What should you read next?
What is different about medical conference ticketing?
Role pricing is one structural difference. Many conferences already vary prices for students, members or VIP access, but CME events often add a more detailed clinical-role grid. A physician might pay $795 while a resident pays $295 on the same day for the same core program. Early bird can still exist as a second axis on top of role.
The second difference is that registration data has a downstream job. Somebody has to report credit hours against a license number, and the data they use comes from your registration export. Collect it wrong and the fix is 400 emails.
The third is refunds. A clinician put on a rota three weeks before the conference may no longer be able to attend. A clear refund and transfer policy sets expectations and may reduce hesitation about registering early. Track transfer and refund requests to learn whether the policy works for your audience.
What registration tiers should a CME conference offer?
| Tier | Example price | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|
| Physician, early bird | $695 | The main tier; the early rate closes about eight weeks out |
| Physician, standard | $795 | The full rate, and where most hospital-paid registrations land |
| Nurse, NP or PA | $495 | A lower role-based price in this illustrative grid |
| Allied health | $395 | Pharmacists, therapists and technologists who need the same credit hours |
| Resident or fellow | $295 | Trainees pay from a stipend; this tier fills your Saturday sessions |
| Medical student | $195 | Costs you catering and builds your next decade of attendees |
| Industry or non-clinician | $995 | Priced above clinicians deliberately, and tracked separately for disclosure |
| Pre-conference workshop | $250 add-on | Hands-on sessions with a hard room cap, sold beside the main registration |
| Virtual attendance | $295 | For clinicians who cannot leave the hospital for two days |
| Exhibitor booth staff | $0 | Contracted with the booth, issued by a per-company code |
Two practical notes. Put a real capacity on the resident, student and exhibitor tiers, because those are the ones that get shared. And if you offer a single-day rate, price it above half the two-day rate, or your Saturday attendance collapses.
How do CME credits and certificates actually get issued?
One possible split keeps registration, payment, role tiers, session selection and check-in in the ticketing tool, while credit calculation, evaluations and certificates remain in a CME platform. Confirm the accreditor's evidence requirements before treating a check-in scan as sufficient proof of attendance.
That means one thing about check-in is worth deciding in advance: whether you need per-session scanning or only door scanning. If your credits are awarded per session, you need attendees scanned into each room, which is a staffing question more than a software one. If credit is awarded for the whole event, a single scan at the door is enough.
What should a medical conference registration form ask?
- Full name with credentials exactly as they should appear on the certificate and the badge
- Degree and role, matching your tier names, so the export reconciles cleanly
- Professional license number and issuing state, shown only to attendees claiming credit
- NPI number, if your credit reporting needs it
- Specialty and subspecialty, as a select rather than free text, or your report will contain nine spellings of cardiology
- Institution or practice name, and whether the institution is paying
- Dietary requirements, a select with an "other" field, taken seriously at a three-meal event
- Accessibility requirements, open text, read by a person before the venue plan is fixed
- Pre-conference workshop and breakout session choices, shown only to relevant tiers
- Disclosure of financial relationships, shown only to faculty, planners and reviewers
- Consent for the attendee list to be shared with exhibitors, unticked by default
The disclosure block is the one to get right with your compliance lead rather than from a template. A ticketing tool can collect and export whatever questions you write. It cannot tell you whether the wording satisfies your accreditor. The registration form questions guide covers the mechanics of conditional fields and multi-step forms.
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How do you handle industry sponsors and exhibitors?
Per-company codes are the whole trick. A single shared "EXHIBITOR" code turns into eleven unplanned attendees eating your catering. A code per company, capped at the number of staff in the contract, means the report answers the question before the sponsor asks it.
For the full pattern covering speaker comps, press passes and the code structure, see speaker, sponsor and comp tickets.
What refund policy works when shifts change?
One possible policy is a tiered refund deadline and a transfer to a colleague. Confirm the permitted transfer process, attendee-data handling and any fee before publishing it; do not assume an accreditation or hospital policy accepts a last-minute substitution.
Configure refunds and transfers to match the published policy, then test them with the payment setup before registration opens. The refund policy template is wording to adapt with the appropriate review, not medical or legal advice.
What will registration cost in platform fees?
The arithmetic. The mix is 200 physicians at $795, 120 nurses and APPs at $495 and 80 residents at $195, which is $234,000 in gross registration revenue.
| Platform | Basis on this exact ticket mix | Illustrated platform cost |
|---|---|---|
| Eventbrite | 3.7% of $234,000 + $1.79 × 400 paid registrations | $9,374 |
| Tito | 3% of $234,000; all tiers remain below the illustrative cap | $7,020 |
| RegFox Standard | $0.99 + 1% per paid registration, capped at $4.99 | $1,832 |
| Checkout Page | $30,000, $52,000, $70,000, $50,000 and $32,000 across five selling months | $1,635 |
Eventbrite takes 3.7 percent of $234,000, which is $8,658, plus $1.79 on each of 400 registrations, which is $716, giving $9,374. Tito takes 3 percent per paid ticket capped at 25 euros, about $27, and 3 percent of $795 is $23.85, just under the cap, so the total is $7,020. RegFox caps at $4.99 a registrant on its Standard plan, so the physician and nurse tiers both hit the cap and the total is about $1,832.
Checkout Page has no per-ticket fee. What you pay is a monthly plan priced by sales volume: $0 up to $3,000 a month, $99 up to $10,000, then steps up to $699 at $150,000. Under this illustrative five-month curve of $30,000, $52,000, $70,000, $50,000 and $32,000, the costs are $239, $399, $399, $299 and $299, or $1,635.
RegFox at about $1,832 is the only one of the three that lands in the same range, because its $4.99 cap does the same job a flat plan does at high ticket prices.
Rates checked 5 September 2026: Eventbrite organizer pricing, Tito pricing, RegFox July 2026 pricing update and Checkout Page pricing. Payment processing is excluded from this comparison.
At an illustrative 2.9 percent plus $0.30 rate, $234,000 across 400 separate payments produces about $6,906 in processing. Group orders reduce the fixed-fee count, while other gateways, contracts and payment methods can differ.
Where does Checkout Page not fit a medical conference?
Checkout Page has no native badge printing. If printed credentials are required, export the approved fields to a badge vendor or label workflow and test it before the event. Minimize the credential data shared with that provider and define how on-site changes will be handled.
Per-session credit tracking is another limit. Checkout Page's scanner records ticket check-ins, and invited staff access requires Launch or above. It is not a CME credit ledger. If accreditation depends on session-level attendance, confirm whether separate scans satisfy the accreditor or use a dedicated CME attendance system.
What should you read next?
- Conference registration form questions, for credential, dietary and disclosure fields
- Conference check-in, for scanning 400 people through two doors before the first session
- Speaker, sponsor and comp tickets, for exhibitor codes and faculty passes
- Conference refund policy template, a policy you can adapt for clinical schedules
Frequently asked questions
- Does Checkout Page issue CME certificates?
- No. Checkout Page collects and exports every field your CME office needs, including license number, credentials, NPI and attendance, but it does not generate or track certificates. Export attendees to CSV or push them to your CME platform through Zapier or a webhook, and issue certificates from there after the event.
- How do you price registration by clinical role?
- Create one ticket type per role with its own price and capacity, then verify credentials from the license fields afterwards rather than gating at checkout. Set physician, advanced-practice, allied-health and trainee prices from the event budget, funding rules and attendance goal rather than a generic percentage spread.
- Can you collect disclosure statements during registration?
- Yes, as custom fields with conditional logic, so only faculty, planners and anyone in a position to control content see the disclosure questions. Answers export to CSV with the rest of the registration data. Whether your collected answers satisfy your accreditor is a question for whoever owns compliance, not for a ticketing tool.
- What refund policy works for clinicians?
- Publish a clear refund and transfer policy before registration opens, but have counsel, the accreditor and your payment setup review it. A tiered deadline and colleague transfer can be workable; the right terms depend on consumer law, hospital policy, accreditation obligations and the services already delivered.
- How do exhibitor and industry passes work?
- Create a zero-priced exhibitor ticket type with a small capacity and issue one coupon code per company, limited to the number of booth staff in their contract. That gives you a clean reconciliation, keeps industry attendees identifiable in your reporting, and stops a code from spreading through a sales team.
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Checkout Page builds checkout and event ticketing software. This site covers conference registration through product documentation, fee calculations and practical planning examples.
Published by Checkout Page, one of the platforms covered. Comparisons use public pricing and documentation. Our editorial approach.
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