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Chobble Tickets vs ClassBento

ClassBento is a marketplace for creative workshops. Here is how it compares with a flat-fee ticketing platform you can brand as your own.

Open source & no commission ClassBento alternative

ClassBento lists your classes on its marketplace and handles the booking. It takes no subscription. It takes a commission on each sale instead, deducted before your balance is paid to you.

Chobble Tickets charges one prepaid hosting price, £50/year or £5/month, and takes no share of ticket income. Buyers pay your own Stripe, Square or SumUp account from the first sale, so the money is yours before any platform sees it.

Chobble Tickets is also open source. The complete product is published under the AGPL-3.0-only licence, and you can run the same code on your own infrastructure with no Chobble software fee. ClassBento publishes no source code and offers no self-hosted edition.

How ClassBento charges

ClassBento's UK pricing pages set two rates. A booking that originates from your own website, through their booking widget, costs 3.9% + £0.25. A booking that originates from the ClassBento marketplace costs 20% of the order, inclusive of VAT. Both rates cover payment processing, and the teach page says they also cover marketing and ClassBento's donations. A Customised tier is priced case by case and adds a full website build.

There are no fixed or monthly fees while your listings stay on the marketplace. The pricing page sets one exception: a host who excludes all of their listings from the marketplace pays £19 per month instead.

The terms set two rules worth knowing. Commission rates are set when a listing is created and may change with notice. And a host must not invite customers acquired through the marketplace to book through the widget or any route with a different rate, so marketplace customers stay at the marketplace rate.

Listings are reviewed within seven business days before they are published, and ClassBento can reject or unpublish a listing.

Interactive cost calculator

Drag the sliders to see how costs compare at different volumes:

Total takings £2,000.00
Chobble Tickets ClassBento
Annual fee £50.00 £0.00
Platform fees £0.00 £0.00
Payment processing £0.00 £0.00
Total cost per year £0.00 £0.00
Cost per ticket £0.00 £0.00

"Your share" assumes the organiser pays the fees out of the ticket price. Where a platform lets the organiser add its fees on top, the buyer pays them and the organiser keeps more than the figure shown. These figures exclude VAT and cover paid tickets. Several platforms charge nothing for free tickets, and the notes below record that where it is published.

ClassBento fees: 3.9% + £0.25 per booking from your own website, and 20% commission (inclusive of VAT) on bookings from the ClassBento marketplace. The calculator uses the own-website rate. Payment processing is included in both rates. A host who excludes all listings from the marketplace pays £19/month instead. Chobble Tickets: £50/year or £5/month flat + Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Source: classbento.co.uk (October 2026).

When you get your money

ClassBento takes the buyer's payment through its own payment provider, deducts its commission, and pays the balance to your bank account one business day after the class, or within 14 days for orders without a fixed date. Refunds are processed by ClassBento, and it also operates a money-back guarantee at its own discretion.

With Chobble Tickets, no refund of that kind is needed, because the money never sits with the platform. Buyers pay your own Stripe, Square or SumUp account, and refunds are issued from your admin panel against the same payment.

Where the bookings come from

ClassBento's income is a share of every sale, so its product is demand. The marketplace, the newsletters, the social featuring, the copywriting and the handled admin all exist to fill a teacher's seats, and a booking that originates there costs 20% of the order, inclusive of VAT. For a teacher with no audience of their own, that trade can be worth it.

The contract holds the arrangement in place. A customer acquired through the marketplace must keep booking through it at the marketplace rate, and the terms stop a host using data collected through the platform for direct marketing. Reviews, waitlists, loyalty stamps and win-backs gather on the platform's side of the relationship, and the booking history a regular customer builds lives in ClassBento's system.

Some of the free parts are tied in as well. Free website hosting applies while orders are captured through ClassBento widgets, and free expert copywriting is offered if you use the marketplace.

Chobble Tickets earns its £50/year from the annual fee, so its product is the tool, not the demand. The organiser brings the audience, from regulars to newsletters to posters, and keeps the payment account, the attendee records and the booking history, exportable as CSV or as a versioned catalogue another Chobble Tickets host can import. The trade is equally plain: nobody markets your classes for you.

Feature comparison

ClassBento is built for teachers and makers who run public workshops and want a marketplace to fill them. Chobble Tickets is built for organisers who sell tickets to their own audience, from fairs and festivals to classes, clubs and hire businesses. The lists below compare the documented features.

Both platforms share some features

  • Online booking with card payments
  • Unlimited class or event listings
  • Class schedules with dates and a calendar
  • Capacity limits per class or event
  • Private bookings you control access to
  • Deposits with the balance taken later (ClassBento auto-charges the remainder; Chobble Tickets sends a payment link)
  • Discount codes and promo pricing
  • Automated confirmation emails and SMS
  • Additional team logins at no extra charge
  • Spreadsheet exports of booking data
  • Booking widgets for your own website
  • A hosted website for your business, with your own domain on ClassBento's hosted sites and a full public website with news pages and a contact form on Chobble Tickets

ClassBento has features Chobble Tickets doesn't

  • Marketplace discovery - buyers browse ClassBento's classes by city and category, and listings are featured in its newsletters and social channels. This brings bookings you did not advertise for, at the 20% marketplace rate
  • Gift cards - sold on your listing and the marketplace, valid for three years, and redeemable against any class on the platform
  • Automatic reviews - collected from guests and shown on your listing
  • Smart waitlists - automatic lists when a class fills
  • Subscriptions - recurring revenue from members
  • Loyalty program - digital stamp rewards for repeat guests
  • Automatic session reminders and receipts - sent without the teacher chasing anyone
  • Listing import - classes listed on other platforms can often be imported and kept in sync
  • Craft kits - kit listings with courier integration and pickup management, so materials can reach guests by post
  • Self-serve cancellations and rescheduling - customers manage their own booking changes
  • Automatic guest photos - captured and shared for you
  • Repeat-customer win-backs - regulars are spotted and win-backs are automated
  • Zoom integration - for virtual classes
  • Free copywriting and AI writing tools - help writing your listings, with the expert copywriting offered if you use the marketplace
  • £10 million public liability insurance - included on the UK platform

Chobble Tickets has features ClassBento doesn't

  • Open source - the complete product is published under AGPL-3.0-only. ClassBento is proprietary
  • Self-hosting - run the same product on your own infrastructure with no Chobble software fee
  • Flat pricing with no commission - £50/year or £5/month whatever you sell, with £25/year for charities, community groups, artists and musicians. ClassBento takes a share of every sale
  • Encrypted attendee data - names and contact details are encrypted with the organiser's key, so a copy of the database does not reveal them
  • No marketplace - buyers book you, not a platform. Your attendees receive no emails advertising other organisers' classes
  • QR check-in at the door - tickets carry a QR code, staff check people in from a phone browser, volunteers get their own scanner logins, and check-ins are counted per place. ClassBento documents no check-in scanning
  • Apple and Google Wallet passes
  • Admin API and webhooks - connect your own systems. No public API is documented for ClassBento
  • Your own email provider with Liquid templates - confirmations come from your own domain
  • Privacy controls - erase a person's record on request and set retention periods yourself

Data ownership and privacy

On ClassBento, the platform is the data controller for customer data. Its privacy notice says a buyer who has purchased will receive marketing unless they opt out, and that ClassBento uses past visits to decide which classes and offers to recommend. It names Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Criteo and Rakuten among the advertising and re-targeting providers it works with, and says data may be shared with group companies and with an alternative teacher if yours cannot fulfil an order.

Two terms also shape what a host can do with that audience: the direct-marketing restriction and the marketplace-rate rule, described above.

With Chobble Tickets, the organiser holds the relationship. Attendee data is encrypted with the organiser's key, exports as CSV, and can be erased on request. Chobble does not run a marketplace, does not advertise to attendees, and its income comes from the annual hosting fee organisers pay.

When ClassBento might be better

  • You teach public creative workshops and want a marketplace to fill seats you could not fill alone
  • You want gift cards, reviews, waitlists and subscriptions built in
  • You sell craft kits that need posting, with pickup tracking
  • You want public liability insurance included (UK)
  • You want listing copy, featuring and win-back emails handled for you, and you are comfortable paying commission on every sale

When Chobble Tickets might be better

  • You have your own audience, from regulars to a newsletter, and would rather pay £50/year than a share of every booking
  • You want ticket income paid straight into your own Stripe, Square or SumUp account from the first sale
  • You need to check people in at the door, with scanner logins for volunteers
  • You want attendee data encrypted, exportable and erasable, with no marketplace marketing to your attendees
  • You want your own website with news pages and a contact form, and email sent from your own domain
  • You want source code you can read, and the option to run the product yourself

About ClassBento

ClassBento was founded in Sydney, Australia in 2016 by John Tabari and Iain Wang. It launched in the UK in November 2020, run by ClassBento Limited, a company registered in England and Wales (number 12494863) and based in Newcastle upon Tyne, and in the United States in 2021. It acquired the UK workshop marketplace Obby in December 2024. The UK platform is open to providers operating in the United Kingdom, and prices listings in pounds sterling. The company donates to dementia and mental health charities, including Dementia Australia and Mental Health UK.

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