28 April 2026 · 3 min · Wesley Veldeman
Private presales and members-only tickets with hidden tickets and access codes
Run a presale for members, partners or press without showing those tickets to the public. Hidden ticket types plus access codes make it possible — on Studio and Pro.
Some tickets are not for everyone
A members-only presale. A partner allocation. A press rate. A special price for your newsletter list. In each case you want certain tickets available to certain people — and invisible to everyone else who lands on your public page. Showing a "members only" ticket to the general public just invites questions and the occasional person who tries to buy it anyway.
ClearTix solves this with two pieces working together: hidden ticket types and access codes. Both are available on the Studio and Pro plans.
Hidden ticket types
Every ticket type has a visibility setting. Set a type to hidden and it disappears from your public event page entirely — a visitor browsing normally has no idea it exists. That alone is useful for things like crew or comp tickets you only ever issue yourself.
But hidden tickets become a real presale tool when you pair them with a way to reveal them on demand.
Access codes
An access code is what unlocks a hidden ticket type for the right people. When you create a code you set:
- a value (the actual code);
- a label (so you remember who it is for);
- the hidden ticket type or types it unlocks.
You then share a link with the value appended: ?unlock=CODE. When someone opens that link, the hidden tickets it unlocks appear on the page for them. No login, no separate portal — the right link simply reveals the right tickets.
| Step | What you do |
|---|---|
| Hide | Set the ticket type's visibility to hidden |
| Create | Make an access code with a value, label and the types it unlocks |
| Share | Send the ?unlock=CODE link to your audience |
| Reveal | Visitors who open it see the hidden tickets appear |
You can see who used which code
Every order records which code was used to unlock it. That turns access codes into a tracking tool as well as a gate. Give each partner or campaign its own code, and afterwards you can see exactly how many sales came through each one. Which partner actually moved tickets? Which presale list converted? The code on each order tells you.
Editing codes — one thing to watch
Codes are editable, so you can adjust the label or the ticket types a code unlocks. There is one important caveat: changing the value breaks old links. Because the link contains the value, any ?unlock=CODE link you already shared stops working the moment you change the code itself. So edit the label and the unlocked types freely, but think twice before changing a value you have already sent out.
One more rule: values are unique per event. Within a single event, no two codes share a value, which keeps the attribution clean — each unlock maps to exactly one code.
Who this is for
Hidden tickets and access codes suit any audience-specific sale:
- members getting first access before the public on-sale;
- partners with their own allocation and their own code to track;
- press with a dedicated rate or comp;
- a special rate for a mailing list or community.
If you run access-controlled entrances as well, the same private-sale thinking carries through to the door — see how VIP gates and access control keep the right tickets at the right entrance.
The bottom line
Hidden ticket types keep the wrong people from seeing your special tickets; access codes let exactly the right people in with a single link; and the per-order code record tells you afterwards which audience or partner delivered. It is a clean, low-friction way to run a private presale without standing up a separate members' site.
Want to see what else sits on Studio and Pro? Browse the features and the pricing.