All updates

Checkout performance when hundreds of people try to buy at once

When hundreds of people try to buy at once, checkout now takes a few purchases at a time and asks the rest to wait, instead of slowing down until purchases fail.

  • tickets
  • payments
  • reliability
  • events
  • invites
  • hubs

When hundreds of people try to buy at once

  • If a big sale opens and hundreds of people press buy together, checkout now takes a few purchases at a time and asks everyone else to wait, instead of slowing down for everyone until purchases fail.
  • Buyers who are asked to wait see Lots of people are buying right now. This may take a minute or two, so keep this page open. Checkout keeps trying by itself for up to two minutes, and nothing is booked or charged until it succeeds.
  • If the tickets sell out while someone waits, the page stops and shows them as sold out, with the waiting list where the event has one.
  • Event pages, hub pages and ticket lists stay quick during a rush, so people browsing are not held up by people buying.

Payments during a rush

  • A buyer who has paid has their payment confirmed ahead of new purchases for the same event, so their tickets arrive promptly even at the busiest moment.
  • Checkout finishes a little sooner once it is a buyer’s turn.

Fixes

  • A buyer whose checkout waited behind others is no longer asked to confirm a price that has not changed.
  • A discount code that makes a ticket free now uses up an invite-only event’s access link and respects each ticket’s sales limit, like any other checkout.
  • Changing a discount’s code while people are buying with it no longer fails.
  • Signed-in buyers no longer look signed out when Hubbaly is very busy.
  • Joining a hub from a ticket at the same moment as accepting a complimentary ticket no longer fails, and organisers get one new-order alert per order even when a payment is confirmed twice.

Behind the scenes

Checkout now counts the purchases running for each event and answers the rest straight away, and event pages share what every visitor sees for a couple of seconds, so a rush no longer ties up the database. Before this release we rehearsed rushes of 1,000 buyers against a test copy of Hubbaly many times, and three independent reviews checked the changes.

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