Mingoal vs Luma
Luma is the best-looking way to put a single event on the internet — the pages are fast, the invite flow is clean, and it takes about ninety seconds to publish. Mingoal is aimed at the layer above the event: the ongoing membership, the roster, the dues, and the portal that makes an event series feel like a club.
What Luma is
Luma (lu.ma) is an event platform with unusually good taste. Event pages look excellent with no configuration, the RSVP and guest-list flow is smooth, calendar subscriptions work well, and hosts can run a public calendar that collects their events in one place. It is free for free events and takes a cut of paid ticket sales, which makes it very easy to start.
Feature-by-feature
“Partial” means the capability exists but is narrower than the other column — the note says how.
| Capability | Mingoal | Luma | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speed of publishing one event | Partial | Yes | Luma is genuinely faster for a single standalone event. Mingoal asks you to create a club first, which is overhead if you only ever need one event page. |
| Event page design out of the box | Yes | Yes | Both look good with zero effort. Luma's aesthetic is more uniform across hosts; Mingoal's pages carry your club's accent color and branding. |
| Recurring paid memberships / dues | Yes | No | Mingoal's core model is an ongoing membership with automatic renewals. Luma's model is per-event. |
| Member roster with roles and statuses | Yes | Partial | Luma gives you guest lists per event and a subscriber list per calendar. Mingoal maintains a persistent member record with role, status, and join date. |
| Members-only portal and gated content | Yes | No | Mingoal has a members-only portal with a feed, blog, gallery, deals, and chat behind the membership gate. |
| Selling merch | Yes | No | Club store with Stripe checkout is included on Mingoal's paid plans. |
| Custom domain | Yes | Partial | Mingoal supports a custom subdomain on Grow and a full apex domain on Scale. Check Luma's current plans for what domain mapping they offer. |
| Free tier for free events | Yes | Yes | Both have a real free tier. Mingoal's free plan is capped on members and monthly events; Luma's is generous for free events but charges on paid ticket sales. |
| QR check-in at the door | Yes | Yes | Both support scanning guests in on arrival. |
When Luma is the better choice
Luma is the better tool in several real situations. Pick Luma if:
- You run standalone events rather than a club — conferences, launch parties, one-off workshops — and there is no ongoing membership to manage.
- You want the shortest possible path from idea to a live event page. Luma is hard to beat here, and the polish is real.
- Your events are free. If you never process payments, Luma's cost structure is very hard to argue with.
- You care most about the guest experience of a single invite, and not at all about owning a member database, dues, or a portal.
Pricing math, worked through
A 90-member supper club charging $45 a seat, selling about 60 seats a month. Mingoal’s side of this is exact; the Luma side is described as a model rather than a number, because published rates change and a stale figure would be worse than none.
On Mingoal Pro
- Plan
- $19/ month
- Processed that month
- $2,700
- Transaction fee (4%)
- $108
- Total cost to the club
- $127
- Revenue the club keeps
- $2,592
The Pro plan covers up to 200 members and unlimited events a month. Moving up a plan lowers the transaction fee; the Scale plan is 0%.
On Luma
Luma is free for free events and takes a percentage of paid ticket revenue, with paid host plans for additional features. There is no per-month platform charge to run free events, which is why it wins on cost for free-event organizers and loses ground as paid ticket volume grows.
How to switch from Luma
- 1Export guest lists from your recent Luma events, or your Luma calendar subscribers, as CSV.
- 2Create your Mingoal club and import the CSV under Members → Import, de-duplicating by email as you go.
- 3Rebuild your upcoming events in Mingoal. If you run a repeating event, set it up as a recurring series once rather than as separate events.
- 4Point your existing Luma calendar description and any bio links at your new Mingoal club page so traffic follows.
- 5Turn on paid memberships if dues are part of your model, then stop creating new events on Luma. Leave past events up — those URLs still carry traffic.
Common questions
Is Mingoal a drop-in replacement for Luma?
Not exactly, and it is worth being clear about that. If all you need is a beautiful page for one event, Luma does that job with less setup. Mingoal replaces Luma well when the events are a symptom of an ongoing club — the same people, month after month, with a membership relationship worth tracking.
Can I import my Luma guest list into Mingoal?
Yes. Export the guest list or calendar subscribers as CSV from Luma, then use Members → Import in Mingoal. Imported people arrive as pending members and become active when they accept the invite.
How do Mingoal's fees on ticket sales work?
Mingoal charges a monthly plan price plus a transaction fee on payments you take through the platform. That fee is 7% on Free, 4% on Pro, 2% on Grow, and 0% on Scale — so higher-volume clubs trade a larger subscription for a smaller cut of revenue.
Do I keep my own event pages and branding?
Yes. Public club and event pages carry your club's name, cover art, and accent color. On the Grow plan you can serve the portal from a custom subdomain, and on Scale from your own full domain.
Try Mingoal with your next event
The Free plan covers 50 members and 4 events a month, with no card required. Run one event alongside Luma and compare on your own club rather than on a comparison page.