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Chobble Tickets vs SignUpGenius

SignUpGenius is the go-to tool for volunteer sign-up sheets and group coordination, used by over 70 million people a year. But it wasn't built for event ticketing — so here's how it compares to a platform that was.

Different tools for different jobs

SignUpGenius is primarily a sign-up sheet and volunteer coordination platform. It's brilliant at what it does: organising who's bringing what to a potluck, scheduling volunteer shifts, coordinating carpool rotas, and managing church or school group activities. It has since expanded into payment collection and, more recently, launched SignUpGenius Tickets as a separate ticketing product.

Chobble Tickets is a purpose-built event ticketing platform. It doesn't do sign-up sheets or volunteer coordination, but it handles paid and free event ticketing with QR code check-in, capacity management, encryption, and no ads.

If you need sign-up sheets, SignUpGenius is probably the right tool. If you need event ticketing, read on.

Pricing comparison

SignUpGenius has a free tier (ad-supported) and paid plans: Silver ($8.99/month annual), Gold ($22.49/month annual), and Platinum ($44.99/month annual). Payment collection on standard sign-ups costs 5% + $0.50 per transaction. The newer SignUpGenius Tickets product charges $0.25 per ticket plus Stripe processing fees.

Chobble Tickets is a flat £50/year regardless of how many tickets you sell, with no per-ticket platform fees. You pay Stripe's processing fees (1.5% + 20p in the UK) separately.

For the comparison below, we use SignUpGenius Tickets pricing ($0.25 per ticket, approx. 20p, plus Stripe processing).

Interactive cost calculator

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

Total takings £2,000.00
Chobble Tickets SignUpGenius (+ ads)
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

SignUpGenius Tickets fees: $0.25 (approx. 20p) per ticket, plus Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Payment collection on standard sign-ups is charged separately at 5% + $0.50 per transaction. Chobble Tickets: £50/year flat + Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Source: signupgenius.com/pricing (March 2026).

Feature comparison

SignUpGenius is a group coordination platform that added ticketing. Chobble Tickets is a ticketing platform from the ground up. They overlap in some areas but serve fundamentally different needs, so here's an honest breakdown:

Both platforms share some features:

  • Online event registration
  • Payment collection via Stripe
  • Email confirmations and reminders
  • Embeddable on your own website
  • Works on any device with a browser
  • Custom questions on registration forms
  • Multiple event/slot types
  • CSV data export

SignUpGenius has features Chobble Tickets doesn't:

  • Sign-up sheets and volunteer coordination — the core product that made SignUpGenius famous: create sign-up sheets with time slots, task assignments, and item requests for potlucks, volunteer shifts, carpools, and group activities
  • Slot swapping — participants can swap or trade sign-up slots with each other without organiser intervention
  • RSVP format — dedicated RSVP-style sign-ups for single-date events where you need a yes/no response from invitees
  • Group management platform — part of Lumaverse Technologies, a suite that includes volunteer management, membership tools, fundraising (Fundly), appointment scheduling (TimeTap), and nonprofit management (NonProfitEasy)
  • Recurring sign-ups — create repeating sign-up sheets for weekly or monthly activities like sports rotas or church volunteering
  • Mobile app — native iOS and Android app for managing sign-ups and checking in participants
  • Text message reminders — SMS notifications to participants on higher-tier plans
  • Free-text custom questions — add open-ended questions beyond multiple choice (Chobble supports multiple-choice custom questions)
  • Built-in themes and templates — choose from pre-designed themes to style your sign-up pages (paid tiers)
  • Multi-administrator access — invite up to 10 administrators on Gold, unlimited on Platinum and Enterprise, each with their own login
  • Enterprise portal pages — branded landing pages consolidating all your organisation's sign-ups in one place
  • Discount codes — create percentage or fixed-amount discounts for payment collections
  • Free tier — basic sign-up sheet creation at no cost (ad-supported)

Chobble Tickets has features SignUpGenius doesn't:

  • QR code tickets — every attendee gets a unique, scannable QR code for check-in at the door (SignUpGenius Tickets has basic ticketing, but the core sign-up product does not issue scannable tickets)
  • End-to-end encryption — attendee data is encrypted at rest with hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM, not just stored in a database
  • Open source — every line of code is public under AGPLv3, no proprietary lock-in
  • Self-hosting option — run the platform on your own servers for free, with no licence fee
  • Flat annual pricing — £50/year with no per-ticket fees, no matter how many you sell
  • No ads, ever — your event pages are clean and professional, with no third-party advertisements (SignUpGenius free tier displays ads on participant-facing pages)
  • Apple & Google Wallet tickets — attendees can add tickets to their phone wallet
  • Capacity management — automatic capacity limits with 5-minute payment holds to prevent overbooking
  • Refund processing — process individual or bulk refunds directly from the admin panel
  • ICS calendar feeds — subscribers get automatic calendar updates
  • RSS feeds — syndicate your events to feed readers
  • Tiered ticket types via groups — create VIP, early bird, and other tiers using event groups with a shared capacity cap (max attendees per group)
  • Pay-what-you-want pricing — let attendees choose their own price
  • Daily/recurring events — per-date capacity with calendar picker and holiday blackouts
  • Admin API — full CRUD for events via API keys, so you can automate event management from scripts or external tools
  • Public API — authenticated REST API for reading event and attendee data
  • Webhooks — outbound POST on every registration for custom integrations
  • Custom email providers — use Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, or Mailgun so emails come from your domain, not the platform's
  • Customisable email templates — full control over confirmation emails with Liquid syntax for a fully white-label experience
  • Custom domain — get a nice yourname.tix.chobble.net subdomain instantly, or point your own domain — either way, not signupgenius.com
  • Embeddable ticket widgets — embed inline ticket sales on your own website
  • No marketing to your attendees — your audience stays yours, with no cross-promotion of competing events or third-party ads
  • Community Interest Company — run by a CIC, not a private-equity-backed platform

The ads problem

The most common complaint about SignUpGenius is the advertising on the free tier. When you share a sign-up page with participants, they see third-party display ads alongside your content. Users consistently report these ads as distracting, unprofessional, and sometimes inappropriate — not ideal when you're sharing a page with parents, church members, or professional contacts.

Removing ads requires at least the Silver plan ($8.99/month annual, $11.99/month monthly), which works out to $107.88-$143.88 per year just to have clean pages.

Chobble Tickets has no ads on any plan. Your event pages are always clean, professional, and free of third-party tracking.

Data ownership

SignUpGenius is a proprietary, closed-source platform. Your participant data lives on their servers, and the free tier exposes participants to third-party ad trackers and cookies. There is limited API access (higher tiers only), and no way to self-host or migrate your data to another platform.

SignUpGenius is owned by Lumaverse Technologies, which is backed by Providence Strategic Growth (PSG) and L Squared Capital Partners — two private equity firms. Private equity ownership typically means the platform is optimised for revenue growth, which can lead to price increases, feature restrictions on lower tiers, and more aggressive monetisation over time.

With Chobble Tickets, attendee data is encrypted at rest and stays under your control. The entire platform is open source, so you can self-host it and never depend on a third party. A full REST API and webhooks give you programmatic access to all your data.

When SignUpGenius might be the better choice

  • You need sign-up sheets for volunteer coordination, potlucks, carpools, or task assignments — this is what SignUpGenius was built for and it's genuinely excellent at it
  • You want RSVP-style responses (yes/no/maybe) rather than ticket sales
  • You need slot swapping so participants can trade shifts without your involvement
  • You're already using other Lumaverse tools (NonProfitEasy, Fundly, TimeTap) and want everything in one ecosystem
  • You need a mobile app for on-the-go management
  • You want a free option and don't mind ads on your pages
  • You need text message reminders to participants
  • You're coordinating group activities that don't involve selling tickets (e.g. "who's bringing what to the bake sale")

When Chobble Tickets is the better choice

  • You need actual event ticketing with QR code check-in and capacity management
  • You're selling tickets and want flat, predictable pricing with no per-ticket fees
  • You want clean, ad-free event pages from day one
  • Privacy and encryption matter to you
  • You don't want a platform marketing to your attendees or tracking them with ads
  • You're a community group, charity, or school (£25/year)
  • You want Apple/Google Wallet, calendar feeds, or a public API
  • You value open source and the ability to self-host
  • You need webhooks or an API for custom integrations

Who owns SignUpGenius?

SignUpGenius was founded in October 2008 by Dan Rutledge in Charlotte, North Carolina. Rutledge built it to solve a problem he encountered organising volunteers at his church — the classic clipboard-passed-around-a-room scenario. His wife, Angel Rutledge, joined as COO and CMO in 2011. The company grew from 98,000 users in 2009 to over 66 million unique visitors by 2016, entirely as a debt-free, bootstrapped business co-owned by Rutledge and Charlotte entrepreneur Michael Vadini.

In 2017, SignUpGenius took a majority investment from Providence Strategic Growth (PSG), the growth equity affiliate of Providence Equity Partners, a private equity firm with over $50 billion in assets under management. The terms were not disclosed.

In 2020, PSG launched Lumaverse Technologies as a platform of group management brands, with SignUpGenius as the flagship product alongside NonProfitEasy, TimeTap, Fundly, Membership Toolkit, AtoZConnect, Learning Stream, and GoSignMeUp.

In 2023, L Squared Capital Partners led a recapitalisation of Lumaverse Technologies alongside PSG. L Squared is a Newport Beach investment firm focused on education technology and tech-enabled services.

Today, SignUpGenius operates under Lumaverse Technologies with approximately 43 employees and an estimated $10-25 million in revenue. It reports over 70 million engaged participants annually and remains especially popular with US churches, schools, PTAs, and community groups.

Chobble Tickets is run by one person as a Community Interest Company (CIC) — a UK legal structure that locks the company's assets for community benefit. All of Chobble's code is public under AGPLv3, and the platform can be self-hosted by anyone without depending on Chobble as a company.

Pricing sources

The pricing information on this page was verified in March 2026. Fees may change — check the links below for the latest figures.