We used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites for a couple weeks, spanning from July 1 to July 22, 2018. As both sites and services are continuing to grow and change (Heaven knows MoviePass will probably change their rules and operations again before you finish reading this sentence), we weren’t surprised to see how similar the sites for each service performed.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for what caused those failures.

Both MoviePass and Sinemia performed well here, but one did seem to struggle a little more than the other.

MoviePass.com experienced a 98.2% average uptime due to several days where the site seemed to perform slower than usual, causing the pages to not load fully – even triggering a strange account lookup error on the front page for several hours on July 14^th. This resulted in 18 failure events cataloged by AlertBot, with an average failure time of 32 minutes. This doesn’t mean downtime, per say, but the details did show that the site was struggling with its speed and load times. (MoviePass.com 7/10)

Comparatively, Sinemia.com saw 99.98% uptime with 1 failure event, although it wasn’t anything that spelled major downtime. At worst, it appeared to be a slow page / busy error that didn’t last long enough to qualify as site downtime. Overall, Sinemia proved to be pretty reliable. (Sinemia.com 9/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. These tests are performed from the perspective of a first-time visitor with no prior cache of the website’s content. AlertBot runs the tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser™ monitoring.

MoviePass.com saw acceptable page load speeds overall, with their best average day being Wednesday, July 4^th with 3.9 seconds. The best time of day was 1am on Friday, July 20^th (which isn’t a popular time to even be using a site like theirs) at an average of just 1.6 seconds. On the other side of the proverbial coin, the slowest day was Saturday, July 14 with an average time of 8.9 seconds, and the worst time of day was also on the same day at noon (yikes!) with an embarrassing 14.1 seconds.  (MoviePass.com 7.5/10)

Sinemia actually didn’t perform too much better, with their best average speed for a single day being Saturday, July 21 with 5.4 seconds and their best time of day being Wednesday, July 4^th at 5pm with 2.7 seconds. Their slowest day was Monday, July 23^rd with 7.3 seconds, with the slowest time being on July 2^nd at 10pm with 10.2 seconds. (Sinemia.com 8/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others.

MoviePass.com performed the fastest in California with 1.8 seconds, with Florida coming in second at 2.4 seconds. The site performed slowest in Missouri with a sluggish 10.2 seconds, with Utah coming in second at 8.5 seconds. (MoviePass.com 8/10)

For Sinemia.com, California was also the fastest at 2.9 seconds, and Virginia was second fastest at 3.5 seconds. Missouri was also the slowest, at 11.3 seconds, with Utah being second slowest at 9.1 seconds. (Sinemia.com 7.5/10)

Neither site was all that impressive in the nature of speed – which is interesting considering there isn’t a whole lot of content on their websites to slow them down.

Usability

For usability, we select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdowns, we tested things like going through the motions of ordering movie tickets from a local theater or simply adding a similar item to both sites’ shopping carts. For this Showdown, we’ll see what the experience is like to use their respective websites to start the service signup process (but not complete any forms).

For each of these processes, we started by opening a new tab in Google Chrome and typing in the site’s URL.

From the point of typing www.moviepass.com into our Chrome browser, it took a mere 18 seconds and 2 clicks to see their plans and get to the signup form. It was a piece of cake.

For Sinemia.com, it was actually just as smooth. In 17 seconds and 2 clicks, we were able to select a plan and get to the signup page.

It’s a tough call for usability. They’re simple processes, but they get the job done and we have no complaints.

All things considered, here are the Usability scores:

(MoviePass.com 10/10)
(Sinemia.com 10/10)

Verdict

The usability usually isn’t this straightforward and clear for both sites, so it leaves us to look almost exclusively at the other categories to draw a conclusion.

Without assuming MoviePass may have more hiccups in speed due to a greater deal of traffic, Sinemia.com seems to be a clearer choice for reliability as a whole, but the sites are quite close. That bad day on July 14 also really hurt MoviePass’s performance during this evaluation period, but it can’t be ignored. So, with that said, we believe the verdict is…

Winner:

For our second Showdown, we decided to grab an oversized bucket of popcorn, an unreasonably large cup of soda, and a pair of cheap, plastic 3D glasses and plopped down into the comfiest of chairs to evaluate two of the premiere movie ticket buying sites: Fandango and MovieTickets.com.

If you’re a movie buff who loves a night out reclining in front of ceiling-high silver screens to watch the latest Hollywood has to offer, chances are you’ve purchased tickets online before. And what would be more frustrating than website failure while you’re trying to combat the masses to secure your entry into an anticipated film’s opening night?
We used AlertBot’s external website monitoring system and its TrueBrowser™ technology to monitor both sites from December 26, 2016 to January 16, 2017. Not surprisingly, the performance proved to be pretty good overall, although one of the sites experienced some pretty significant issues on one of the days. Both sites saw some minor “Slow Page” warnings, but MovieTickets.com took a hit right after Christmas with a dreaded “Server Too Busy” error, meaning their website couldn’t withstand the weight of the traffic it was getting.

Reliability

For the reliability evaluation of a website, we look for failure events (like when a page doesn’t fully load or it is completely down), and we look for the causes of those failures.
Fandango’s website experienced not one single failure event. The worst things seemed to get for Fandango in this time period was a handful of minor “Slow Page” warnings on Dec. 29th and after the new year on the 2nd and 5th. (Fandango 10/10)

Meanwhile, MovieTickets.com experienced what AlertBot considered to be 13 failure events. While most of them were only 3 to 5-minute-long for slow page loads, on Dec. 27th (a Tuesday), the site saw some significant outages where the site was down and reporting a “Server Too Busy” error for nearly 6 hours! When visiting the site during this stretch of time, chances are users were met with the dreaded “Server Too Busy” error message in their web browser instead of the actual site. This would have been super frustrating for visitors (especially if you’re trying to order tickets in a jiffy). (MovieTickets.com 7/10)

Speed

When evaluating a website’s speed, we look at the time it takes the site’s homepage to render and load to the point of being fully interactive by the user. We run these tests inside real Firefox web browsers using AlertBot’s TrueBrowser ™ monitoring.
Both websites have pretty busy front pages, but both tend to change often and feature videos or Flash-driven ads and some graphic-heavy content – all of which can really compromise a website’s load time.

Fandango’s speed is solid, averaging less than 2 seconds. Its fastest day was Friday, Jan. 13, 2017 at 1.7 seconds and its slowest was Thursday, Dec. 29, 2016 at just over 2 seconds. (Fandango 9/10)

MovieTickets.com didn’t fare quite as well, unfortunately. On its best day, Tuesday Jan. 3, the front page took almost 4 seconds to load. On its worst day, Dec. 27 (also a Tuesday), it took almost 7 seconds to load – which is definitely below the current online industry’s website load time standards. (MovieTickets.com 7/10)

Geographic

It’s always interesting to see how sites perform differently across the world. If we look exclusively at the United States, it’s intriguing to see which states regularly see faster or slower times than others. Fandango saw the fastest load times in California (I suppose that makes sense, given the movie industry being centered there), with the slowest happening in Texas. Still, the slowest times were typically still under 2 seconds of load time, with Washington, Virginia and Texas all seeing load times around 2 seconds or pushing 3 seconds. (Fandango 10/10)

For MovieTickets.com, it’s a different story. We already know they struggled with speed, but the question here is – where? California is also the best location for MovieTickets.com, with load times around 2.7 seconds. The worst, again, is Texas, with almost 6.5 seconds. Florida and North Carolina also performed well, while Washington joined Texas as one of the slower locations. (MovieTickets.com 8/10)

Usability

For usability, we select a common task a user might typically try to accomplish when visiting the sites and replicate it. For our previous Showdown, we chose the task of ordering the latest cellphone from the respective sites of Apple and Samsung. For these sites, we’ll see how the experience of ordering movie tickets compares to one another.

Starting with selecting a movie to buy tickets for, we approached each site with the goal of ordering two tickets for the recently released The LEGO Batman Movie.

By selecting a brand new film, it was easy to find the film on the homepage of Fandango.com and start clicking through to order tickets. From the point of typing www.Fandango.com into our Firefox browser, clicking on the LEGO Batman Movie poster, putting in our zip code, selecting the next available time and number of tickets, it took roughly 40 seconds to get to the Fandango checkout. That’s not bad. If this were for real, we would have probably spent extra time checking our show time options a bit more, choosing 2D over 3D, etc. But for this task, we figured it’s best to keep it simple. The whole process took about 4 clicks of the mouse with a little typing to put my zip code in.

For MovieTickets.com, we found the experience to be mostly the same. Except, when we put our zip code in, it seemed like MovieTickets.com gave more options right off the bat. Fandango suggests the closest theater for your zip code and the first batch of showings it finds (in this case, it’s a 3D showing), while MovieTickets gives you the full list of showings and format options. Our experience felt more thorough with MovieTickets, getting more choices right away. But we also feel like more options delayed our browsing experience because we had to read and think more. Still, the browsing time for MovieTickets.com – to complete the same process – was the same 4 clicks and around the same 40 seconds.
We tried both again from Google Chrome, and not even factoring in our newfound familiarity with the process for both sites, we found both processes to take 30 seconds each this time. They’re easy sites to navigate and their load times were swift.

So, with all things considered, with the goal being to get tickets for one of the most recent films released ordered, here are the Usability scores:
(Fandango 9/10)      (MovieTickets.com 10/10)

Final Verdict

We’d say Fandango won by quite a bit, given their better web performance over MovieTickets.com, but I think I enjoyed the usability of MovieTickets.com over that of Fandango’s. The fact that Fandango doesn’t present show time options upfront is a little unfortunate.

Still, one cannot ignore good web performance, and I have to hand it to Fandango for achieving impressive site speed and reliability. So, with that said, the result of the second AlertBot Showdown is…

WINNER:

If you’ve ever tried to buy tickets online for an event – whether for a popular Broadway play, a Las Vegas event, a concert in a local city or even a popular science fiction blockbuster movie months in advance – chances are you’ve struggled with being able to obtain tickets at regular price. Part of the problem is that many online scalpers have perfected the art of snatching tickets up as soon as they’re available to the public with the use of bots. Fans can breathe a sigh of relief, however, because just this week, President Obama signed The Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act to help combat this.

It’s unfortunate that this online ticket scalping problem has become so rampant that it’s taken governmental action to try to put an end to it. That blows our minds. But, in our opinion, the BOTS Act should be good for the consumer (and it’s about time!). It’ll allow for more tickets to be available at face value for consumers online than ever before. Event ticket vendor Ticketmaster commented yesterday, “On behalf of artists, venues, teams, and especially fans, we applaud the BOTS Act being signed into federal law.”

The BOTS Act won’t be good for everyone, though.   For consumers with fatter wallets who’ve grown accustomed to purchasing tickets last minute, and at inflated prices, the availability of those second-chance tickets may now be slim to none.

The BOTS Act doesn’t really impact AlertBot, but if someone had been considering the creation of an automated script on our system for use in buying highly sought after tickets as soon as they come on sale, that won’t be possible anymore.   That’s not a use case we’ve ever thought of before, but we suppose it was a possible scenario.  As of this week, however, the AlertBot team will not be allowing any scripts of this nature to be used on the AlertBot system (and as far as we know, there have never been).  However, if you work for a ticket sales website and have been thinking of monitoring your own ticket purchasing pages and shopping cart, you can still do that with AlertBot.  That’s exactly what AlertBot is meant for, and the BOTS Act provides an exception in the law to allow online ticketing operators to use bots to monitor and test their own systems for flaws.  That’s a good thing!  As we know, some of these ticket vending sites could use some improvement.

In mid-July of this year, the BOTS Act was first presented to the Senate and, on December 7th, the House passed/agreed to it without objection. It was then presented to the President on Monday this week, which he then signed. This Act, which applies to online sales for any public event exceeding 200 people, was the first of its kind pertaining to online bots and can be viewed in its entirety here.