POCtix
POCtix · About

Built in Honolulu.

POCtix is an event ticketing platform built by Port of Cams, an indie software team in Waikiki. Same time zone as you (if you're in Hawaii). Same understanding that mainland-priced ticketing fees don't make sense for an island operating economy.

Why we built this

We didn't set out to compete with Eventbrite. We started running ticketed events at our own venues — small Friday DJ nights, occasional showcase weekends, periodic community events. After a year of watching Eventbrite take 7%+ of every cover plus stack a service fee onto our buyers, we did the math and realized we were paying a four-figure annual tax to a company that wasn't doing four figures of work for us.

The platform we wanted didn't exist:

So we built it. POCtix runs the ticketing for AlohaCalendar, LastFrontierEvents, and PortOfCams Pro today — same infrastructure that we offer to any other venue.

Who's behind this

John — engineer + operator, based in Waikiki. Originally from Alaska (which is why we have an opinion about Anchorage venues too). Spent 10+ years building software for industries where the existing tools were either too expensive or too generic. Background includes maritime ops software, real-estate tooling, and a handful of internal platforms at companies that couldn't get the off-the-shelf option to fit. POCtix is the latest of these.

Port of Cams — the parent operation. Streaming + events infrastructure based in Hawaii. Originally a webcam network covering Hawaii surf breaks and harbors. The "POC" in POCtix is a nod to that — Port of Cams tickets, because we already ran the streaming infrastructure for our own events and built the ticketing layer on top.

We're not a venture-backed SaaS racing to a unicorn exit. We're an indie team that uses our own product and intends to keep operating it as long as venues find it useful. If you're trusting your ticketing to a platform, you should know whose hands you're putting it in.

What we use to build it

Backend

Python + FastAPI, PostgreSQL via asyncpg, Stripe Connect SDK

Payments

Stripe Connect destination charges — money to your Stripe, not ours

Infrastructure

Cloudflare CDN + Vultr (US-East), Docker, monitored 24/7

Email

Two-provider redundancy: primary transactional API + SMTP fallback

Scanner

Browser-based, offline-capable, works on any phone

Error tracking

Sentry — we find out about errors before customers do

Old-school architecture, chosen because it's what we know how to keep running without paging anyone at 2 AM. Read the how-it-works deep-dive for the architecture details.

What's running on POCtix today

Where we are + how to reach us

Honolulu, Hawaii. Hawaii Standard Time (UTC-10), no daylight saving.

Email is the best way to reach us.

For sales questions, support requests, partnership inquiries, or "wait, do you actually do X?" questions:

Response within 4 hours during HST business hours (Mon-Fri, 9 AM – 6 PM HST).
Outside those hours: next-business-day. Event-day emergencies escalated immediately whenever they happen.

What we're working on next

If you have a use case that doesn't fit what we have today, email and tell us. The roadmap is shaped by what real venues actually need, not what we imagine they might want someday.

Honest pricing. A flat $2.00 per ticket — that's all POCtix takes, whether the ticket is $5 or $500. You pay the same standard card processing (2.9% + $0.30) you'd pay on any platform, and the money lands straight in your own Stripe account. No percentage cut, no buyer-facing service fee — so on a typical event ticket your all-in cost lands well below Eventbrite, and the savings grow the higher your ticket price.
POCtix is a product of BlueWave Projects — a software studio that turns operational headaches into software. Subscribe to one of our apps, or hire us to build yours.