Chobble Tickets vs EventMS Pro

Open source & flat-fee EventMS Pro alternative

Chobble Tickets is made in the UK by a community interest company, with its source code published under the AGPL-3.0-only licence and every feature included in one price.

EventMS Pro is self-hosted event ticketing software, sold as a one-time commercial licence of $4,999 (about £3,900) or $7,999 (about £6,300). It ships as a licensed build without source code. Chobble Tickets costs £50/year or £5/month, with the full source code published and no licence fee if you self-host it.

The two suit different buyers. An organiser who wants a managed service with a small recurring fee pays £50/year with Chobble Tickets. EventMS Pro is a large upfront purchase for running a ticketing marketplace where many organisers sell through one installation.

Two approaches to ticketing

EventMS Pro is self-hosted ticketing and event management software. You buy a licence, receive a production build, and install it on your own server. It is built as a complete multi-vendor marketplace, so many organisers can sell tickets on one install under your brand, with an approval workflow for new events.

Chobble Tickets is a ticketing platform for a single organiser. You sign up at tix.chobble.com and run events from the admin area, or self-host the code on your own server. Chobble runs the managed version for you, so most organisers have no server to install or maintain.

A technical provider can host many organisers too. Chobble Tickets includes a site builder that provisions a separate site for each organiser on Bunny Edge or Deno Deploy, each with its own database and its own encryption key. This is the same system Chobble CIC uses to run its managed hosting.

Which one fits depends on the shape you want. EventMS Pro puts many organisers in one shared marketplace with cross-event discovery. Chobble Tickets keeps each organiser on a separate, standalone site, whether you run one or host many.

Other self-hosted and open source comparisons cover Hi.Events, Pretix, Revel and Yo!Rent. The open source page describes Chobble Tickets without a competitor comparison.

Pricing comparison

EventMS Pro charges a one-time licence fee rather than a subscription or a per-ticket cut. You pay once, receive the software, and host it yourself.

There is no revenue share on ticket sales and no per-organiser seat cost. The licence covers a single production deployment on one domain.

The price includes six months of support and updates. After six months, new features, custom integrations and other changes are billed separately. Additional deployments require additional licences.

EventMS Pro states that sales are final once installation is delivered, so there is no refund after that point. Payment processing runs through your own Stripe or PayPal account, which charges its own fees on top.

Chobble Tickets is a flat £50/year (or £5/month) for the whole site, with no per-ticket platform fees. Charities, community groups, artists and musicians pay £25/year on the annual plan. The annual fee includes updates and support for as long as you pay it.

Stripe, Square or SumUp processing is charged separately; Stripe's standard UK card rate is 1.5% + 20p, and other card types cost more. Self-hosting Chobble Tickets has no Chobble software licence fee, and infrastructure remains a separate cost.

Feature comparison

Both platforms sell tickets and can be self-hosted, but EventMS Pro is built for running a marketplace of many organisers and Chobble Tickets for one organiser running their own events.

Both platforms share some features

• Online ticket sales with QR code check-in at the door
• Free tickets and pay-what-you-want pricing
• Discount or coupon codes
• Email campaigns to segments of your attendees
• Stripe payment processing
• A self-hosting option, so attendee data can stay on your own server
• Calendar (iCal) feeds for events
• A public website with a blog and content pages, under your own brand

EventMS Pro has features Chobble Tickets does not

• Shared public marketplace - many organisers' events sit in one public catalogue on a single install, with an approval workflow for new events and cross-event discovery (Chobble gives each organiser a separate standalone site instead, described below)
• Visual seating charts - reserved seats with an interactive seat map (Chobble Tickets uses shared capacity, not allocated seats)
• PayPal payments - Chobble Tickets supports Stripe, Square and SumUp, not PayPal
• AI event content generation - draft event descriptions with an AI assistant
• Built-in help desk - a support ticket system for answering attendee questions
• Attendee reviews - collect and moderate reviews on events
• Venue directory - a browsable directory of venues with galleries
• Ad spot marketplace - sell advertising slots on your site
• Native push notifications - send push alerts as well as email

Features Chobble Tickets includes that EventMS Pro's materials do not

EventMS Pro ships as a closed build, so this lists what Chobble Tickets publishes and EventMS Pro's materials do not describe. Absence from marketing is not proof a feature is missing. The clear structural differences are the first three below: open source, a managed-hosting option, and Square and SumUp payments.

• Open source under AGPLv3 - every line of code that runs the platform is public and freely licensed; EventMS Pro ships a closed build with no source code
• Managed hosting - Chobble runs the platform for you, so there is no server to install or maintain; EventMS Pro is self-hosted only
• Square and SumUp payments - Chobble Tickets supports Stripe, Square and SumUp
• Encryption at rest - attendees' names and contact details are encrypted with the organiser's key, so a copy of the database does not reveal them (the encryption uses RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM)
• Custom email providers - send confirmations through Resend, Postmark, SendGrid or Mailgun, from your own domain
• Editable email templates - full control over the subject and body of confirmation emails
• Apple and Google Wallet - attendees can add tickets to the Wallet app on their phone
• Activity logs - an audit trail of admin actions and booking activity
• RSS and calendar feeds - syndicate events over RSS as well as iCal
• Flat recurring price with updates included - a fixed £50/year or £5/month that includes updates and support for as long as you pay, rather than six months of updates after a one-time fee
• A Community Interest Company structure - Chobble is a CIC, which cannot pay profit to shareholders

Two ways to serve many organisers

Both platforms let one operator run ticketing for many organisers, but the models differ.

EventMS Pro puts every organiser inside one shared install. Attendees browse a single public marketplace that lists many organisers' events, and an approval workflow lets the operator vet new events.

Chobble Tickets includes a site builder that provisions a separate site for each organiser on Bunny Edge or Deno Deploy, each with its own database and its own encryption key. It is part of the open-source product, so self-hosting it carries no Chobble fee, and it is the same system Chobble CIC uses to run its managed hosting.

The trade-off is discovery against isolation. EventMS Pro gives one public catalogue where events can cross-promote each other. Chobble Tickets keeps each organiser's attendees, data and encryption separate, with no shared public catalogue.

Source code and licensing

Both products can keep attendee data on your own server, but the licences are different.

EventMS Pro is proprietary software sold with a one-time perpetual licence. You receive a licensed production build rather than the source code, so it is not open source.

The licence covers a single production deployment on one domain. You can customise and rebrand the site for your own business, but you cannot resell, redistribute or sublicense the product to third parties, and additional deployments need more licences.

The complete Chobble Tickets product source is published under AGPL-3.0-only in a public GitHub repository. You can read it, fork it and run the software without paying Chobble a licence fee. Attendees' personal data is encrypted at rest, so stored names and contact details require credentials for an authorised keyed session.

Self-hosting and running costs

EventMS Pro runs on your own server. Its published requirements are the PHP programming language (8.2 or newer), a MySQL 8 database, and Redis and Node 20, on a VPS (a rented server the operator sets up and keeps running) or dedicated server it estimates at $20 to $40 a month (about £16 to £31).

It also uses free-tier accounts for outside services: card payments through Stripe or PayPal, real-time updates through Pusher, and image hosting through Cloudinary. You keep the server running, patched and backed up, and after the first six months updates and new work are billed separately.

Chobble's managed hosting has no server to run at all; Chobble hosts the site and deploys updates for the annual fee, with backup and restore tools in the admin panel. If you prefer to self-host, the recommended Bunny Edge deployment compiles Chobble Tickets to a single JavaScript file with an edge database, so there is no always-on server to maintain, and a Docker deployment on your own host is also supported.

The difference is how much infrastructure you run yourself, and whether updates are included in a recurring fee or billed after an initial period.

When EventMS Pro is the better choice

• You want one shared marketplace where many organisers' events sit in a single public catalogue with cross-event discovery
• You need reserved seating with a visual seat map
• You want a one-time perpetual licence with a single payment and no recurring platform fee
• You want PayPal alongside Stripe
• You want built-in reviews, a help desk or an ad marketplace on your site
• You are comfortable running and maintaining your own server, and paying for updates after the first six months

When Chobble Tickets is the better choice

• You want managed hosting with no server to run and maintain
• You want to host many organisers as separate sites, each with its own database and encryption key, using the included site builder rather than one shared install
• You prefer a small recurring fee that includes updates and support, rather than a large one-time payment
• You want the full source code under an open licence (AGPL-3.0)
• You want attendees' personal data encrypted at rest
• You want Stripe, Square or SumUp, and custom email providers from your own domain
• You are a charity, community group, artist or musician (£25/year on the annual plan)
• You value a Community Interest Company, which cannot pay profit to shareholders

Who makes EventMS Pro?

The materials reviewed do not name a registered company, a country, or the people behind EventMS Pro. Contact is through sales@eventmspro.com and a LinkedIn company page. It is sold as a self-hosted product with a one-time perpetual licence.

Chobble Tickets is run by one person as a UK Community Interest Company (CIC), a legal structure that locks the company's assets for community benefit. All of Chobble's code is public under AGPL-3.0, and the platform can be self-hosted by anyone without depending on Chobble as a company. The hosting page describes its deployment options.

Pricing sources

The information on this page was checked on 10 August 2026. Pricing and licensing may change. Check the links below for the latest figures.

• EventMS Pro - one-time licence of $4,999 (early-bird) or $7,999, self-hosted, source code not provided
• Chobble Tickets features
• Chobble Tickets source code on GitHub