Chobble Tickets vs Google Forms
Google Forms is free and everyone knows how to use it, but it wasn't built for event ticketing.
What Google Forms Gives You
Google Forms is free, easy to set up, and familiar, so you can collect registrations, export to a spreadsheet, and share a link. For a simple free event with no capacity limit, it gets the job done.
What Google Forms Doesn't Do
Google Forms wasn't designed for ticketing, so it's missing things you'll eventually need:
- No payment processing - You can't sell tickets through a Google Form
- No capacity management - Forms don't close when you're sold out (without manual intervention or add-ons)
- No confirmation tickets - Respondents get a copy of their answers, not a proper ticket with a QR code
- No check-in system - You'll need to print a list and manually check names
- No encryption - Attendee data sits in a Google Sheet with whatever sharing settings you remembered to set
- Google owns the data - Your attendees' information is on Google's servers, subject to Google's terms
When to Upgrade
If you're running a free, informal event and don't need tickets or check-in, Google Forms is perfectly fine, but once you need payments, capacity limits, QR code tickets, or data privacy, a dedicated ticketing platform like Chobble Tickets is worth the £50/year.
Chobble Tickets also supports free events without payment setup, so you can start with the same simplicity as Google Forms and add payments later when you need them.