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Chobble Tickets vs SmartGig

SmartGig is a UK event management platform where ticketing is one paid module alongside trader applications, site plans, transport and stage schedules. This page compares it to Chobble Tickets on pricing, features and data handling.

Open source & cheaper SmartGig alternative

Chobble Tickets is ticketing software made in the UK by a community interest company, a structure that locks the company's assets to community benefit. It is white label, so booking pages and emails carry your name rather than Chobble's.

Its source code is published under the AGPL-3.0-only licence, so anyone can read it, keep their own copy of it, or run that copy themselves. SmartGig does not publish its source code and does not offer self-hosting.

SmartGig charges £80 a month, or £800 a year on annual billing, for its Ticketing module. Chobble Tickets charges £50/year or £5/month for managed hosting, which covers hosting, updates, backup tools and support. Neither published price changes with ticket volume, so SmartGig costs more at every volume, and buys a wider set of event operations tools.

Pricing comparison

SmartGig builds a price from parts. The base workspace costs nothing, and each module or feature added to it has its own price.

Ticketing is £80/month or £800/year. Trader Manager, Transport Manager and Stage Manager are £20/month each, and Site Plan, team access and recurring events are £10/month each. White Label is £50/month, and choosing Transport, Stage Manager and Ticketing together takes 10% off.

No published component price varies with ticket value or ticket volume, but the total does vary with how much of the platform you switch on. An organiser who wants ticketing on their own domain pays £130/month, or £1,300/year on annual billing.

Ticket money is taken through the organiser's own Stripe account using Stripe Connect, and Stripe handles the payouts. Stripe's processing fee is charged separately, at 1.5% + 20p for standard UK cards.

SmartGig's published prices list no charge on each ticket sold, and its finance reporting itemises only estimated Stripe fees. Its ticket types include an optional booking fee, which is a charge the organiser sets and keeps.

Chobble Tickets charges a flat £50/year or £5/month for managed hosting, with no per-ticket platform fees. Charities, community groups, artists and musicians pay £25/year for the same managed hosting on the annual plan. A custom domain, white labelling, extra user accounts and repeating dates are part of that price rather than separate components.

SmartGig offers a 14-day trial with no card required.

Interactive cost calculator

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

Total takings £2,000.00
Chobble Tickets SmartGig
Annual fee £50.00 £800.00
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.

SmartGig prices its Ticketing module at £80/month or £800/year on annual billing. Its published prices list no fee per ticket sold, so this estimate assumes none; no reviewed source states outright that no per-sale fee applies. This estimate uses the annual rate for ticketing alone. Other parts of the platform are priced separately, including White Label custom domains at £50/month, Trader Manager, Transport Manager and Stage Manager at £20/month each, and Site Plan, team access and recurring events at £10/month each, so a real package can cost more. Ticket revenue goes directly to your own Stripe account via Stripe Connect, with Stripe processing charged separately (1.5% + 20p in the UK). Chobble Tickets: £50/year or £5/month flat (£25/year for charities, community groups, artists and musicians on the annual plan) + Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Source: smartgig.co.uk package builder (August 2026).

Feature comparison

SmartGig is an event operations platform first. Its ticketing covers allocated seating, high-demand launches and finance reporting in more depth than Chobble Tickets, and it sits beside trader applications, site plans, transport routes and stage schedules that Chobble Tickets does not offer at all.

Chobble Tickets covers a narrower job with more of it included, and publishes its source so an organiser can leave with the software as well as the data.

Both platforms share some features

  • Online ticket sales with payment through Stripe
  • Ticket income paid into the organiser's own payment account, with payouts handled by the payment provider
  • QR code scanning for check-in at the door
  • Free and complimentary tickets
  • E-tickets sent by email after booking
  • Discount and promo codes at checkout
  • Add-on tickets sold alongside a main entry ticket
  • Timed entry, sessions and per-date capacity (daily events in Chobble Tickets)
  • Multiple ticket types with their own capacity, price and sale window
  • A maximum number of tickets one buyer can take
  • Hidden events that do not appear on public pages
  • Custom questions at checkout
  • Manual and box office orders entered by the organiser (manually added attendees in Chobble Tickets), and a payment link sent to the buyer to settle what is owed
  • Recording payments taken outside checkout, such as cash, bank transfer, card machine takings and invoices (the ledger in Chobble Tickets)
  • Full refunds of a booking
  • Spreadsheet downloads of attendee records and listing sales, as CSV files
  • Team accounts with roles, so door staff can check people in without reaching the settings (SmartGig prices team access as a separate £10/month component)
  • Activity logs recording who changed what
  • Reusing an event's setup for the next date (SmartGig documents cloning an event, and prices recurring event series as a separate £10/month component)

SmartGig has features Chobble Tickets doesn't

  • Allocated seating - a seat-map builder with straight, staggered, curved and fanned rows, aisles, entrances, price bands, wheelchair and companion places and restricted-view seats, and buyers who pick an exact seat, or let the platform pick a group of seats together with its Best Available option. Chobble Tickets sells general admission only
  • Waiting room for high-demand launches - SmartGig paces buyers into checkout automatically when demand spikes, showing queue position and a checkout timer
  • Native check-in apps - SmartGig Scanner on the App Store and Google Play, with scanner codes that let gate staff work without an organiser login (Chobble Tickets scans through the browser on a phone, without a native app)
  • Trader and stallholder management - applications, pitch fees, compliance documents and trader check-in, as a £20/month module
  • Site plans - place pitches, zones and infrastructure on an event map and publish it to staff and attendees, as a £10/month module
  • Transport planning - vehicles, stops, routes and driver job sheets, as a £20/month module
  • Stage schedules - performer applications, running orders, riders and production packs, as a £20/month module
  • Part-refunds - refund one ticket line, or part of an order's value, from inside the platform. Chobble Tickets issues full refunds only, and a part-refund has to be done in the payment provider's dashboard
  • Password-protected tickets - a ticket type a buyer can only reach with the matching password. Chobble Tickets has hidden events rather than a purchase password
  • Order-level CSV exports - separate spreadsheet downloads for orders, refunds, check-ins, accounting and promo codes, and a schedule that generates them daily, weekly or monthly. Chobble Tickets exports attendee records, listing sales and staff calendars
  • Disputes and chargebacks - a chargeback is a card payment the provider takes back after the buyer disputes it. SmartGig keeps notes on the order, and tracks retries and recovery when a refund fails
  • PDF tickets and receipts - buyers download a ticket PDF, a ticket bundle and a receipt PDF. Chobble Tickets emails a ticket link and offers wallet passes
  • Ticket transfers - move a ticket to a different holder
  • Reusable passes - ticket types that accept more than one check-in
  • Checkout rules - block a basket holding two sessions that clash, and set a minimum spend. Chobble Tickets enforces the related rule that an extra cannot be bought without the main booking, through parent and child listings
  • Invite-only sales by email or domain - restrict purchase to invited addresses or an email domain
  • Gate operations reporting - scans per minute, scanner throughput, stopped scans, duplicate attempts and override reasons
  • Retention review - configure retention periods and approve or extend deletion of flagged records

Chobble Tickets features SmartGig's documentation doesn't describe

  • Open source - the complete product source is published under AGPL-3.0-only. SmartGig is proprietary software
  • Self-hosting option - run the platform on selected infrastructure without a Chobble software licence fee. SmartGig is sold as a hosted subscription only
  • One managed hosting price - £50/year or £5/month covers hosting, updates, backup tools and support, with every feature included. SmartGig prices modules and features separately
  • Square and SumUp support - Chobble Tickets takes card payments through Stripe, Square or SumUp. SmartGig takes ticket card payments through Stripe only, though it can record bank transfer and PayPal payments for other event fees
  • Custom domain included - pointing your own domain is part of the base price. SmartGig sells custom portal and email domains as White Label at £50/month
  • White labelling - remove platform branding as part of the base price, where SmartGig sells it as a £50/month component
  • Public-facing website and CMS - a homepage, content pages, news posts, and a contact form, all edited from the admin panel. Page text is written in Markdown, a plain way of marking headings, links and bold text, and your own CSS changes how the site looks. SmartGig supplies branded ticket pages for each event
  • Apple Wallet and Google Wallet passes - attendees can add tickets to their phone wallet. SmartGig documents ticket PDFs and does not mention wallet passes
  • Subscribable ICS calendar feeds - a single feed listing all events, so subscribers get automatic updates when new ones are added. SmartGig gives buyers an add-to-calendar file for their order, and its subscribable calendar feed carries transport routes in the Transport module rather than events on sale
  • RSS feeds - publish your events and updates automatically to apps and websites that follow the feed, using the common RSS format. No such feed is described in SmartGig's documentation
  • Text messages to attendees - send texts from your own Android phone and number, with no Chobble charge per message, though each text still uses that phone's own mobile plan. SmartGig sends email and SMS from its Communications tab, and prices an SMS allowance from £2/month, but the recipients its documentation names are event participants, crew and performers rather than ticket buyers
  • Custom email providers - use Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, or Mailgun. SmartGig's White Label component sets a sending domain on its own provider
  • Editable confirmation emails - write your own wording and drop in the booking's own details, such as the attendee's name, the date and the amount paid, using placeholders written in the Liquid template language. SmartGig's documentation describes sending event communications but not editing the confirmation emails themselves
  • Connections to your other systems - other software can read and change event data through the admin API and public API, and webhooks tell it when a booking happens. SmartGig names API access as a staff permission and receives payment webhooks from Stripe, but documents no API or outgoing webhooks for an organiser's own systems
  • Embeddable order widget - turn links on your own website into add-to-cart buttons with a floating basket, then hand the buyer over to your booking page to pay. SmartGig does not document an embed for an organiser's own site
  • Packages - sell several listings together at a bundle price, booked all or nothing. SmartGig documents add-on tickets and required-ticket rules rather than a bundle price
  • Deposits and balance payments - take a deposit at booking and collect the balance later. SmartGig documents pending and part-paid orders, but no deposit rule set per ticket
  • Custom questions with price-linked answers - link answers to price changes for tiered pricing. SmartGig has checkout questions, and does not document answers that change the price
  • Event setup export and import - download a file holding an event's settings and load it into another Chobble Tickets host. The file is versioned JSON

Data ownership

SmartGig's terms say the organiser keeps ownership of the data entered into the platform. Its privacy policy says the organiser normally decides what is collected about attendees and what it is used for, and that SmartGig handles that data on the organiser's instructions.

On security, SmartGig says data is encrypted while it travels between a person's browser or app and SmartGig, and is protected by access controls, an optional second sign-in check such as a code from a phone, and audit logs. How attendee records are stored in its database is not described in the sources reviewed.

SmartGig says it does not sell personal data, does not use the tracking code that follows people around other websites to show them adverts, and does not use its scanner app for advertising tracking. Some of the companies it uses to run the service handle data outside the UK, under the contract terms UK data protection law requires for that.

Account owners can request an organisation data export, which SmartGig prepares as one compressed download holding the exported files, sent by email, and download links expire. Closed-account data is deleted within 90 days, or stripped of the details that identify a person so what remains cannot be traced back to them, unless it must be kept for legal, accounting, security, backup or dispute reasons.

Chobble Tickets encrypts attendee names, contact details and free-text answers in the database. Reading them needs an administrator account with its own password, and an organiser who turns on the optional recovery owner also lets whoever holds the recovery credentials decrypt those fields.

The platform is open source, so the same code can be run on your own server or another host at any time, and event setup can be downloaded as a settings file and loaded into another host.

Capacity and overselling

SmartGig's documentation says paid checkout can reserve stock while the buyer completes card payment, and that a reservation expires if payment is not made in time. Its waiting room does not reserve tickets by itself, and stock is checked again before an order is created.

Chobble Tickets works differently. Paid checkout does not reserve tickets or use capacity, and capacity is used only when payment confirmation arrives. If two confirmed payments race for the last place, the later order is refunded automatically.

When SmartGig might be the better choice

  • You need allocated seating with a seat map, price bands and buyer-chosen seats
  • You run a festival or market where trader applications, compliance documents, site plans, transport routes or stage schedules matter as much as ticket sales
  • You expect on-sale spikes large enough to need a waiting room
  • You want native iOS and Android check-in apps for gate teams
  • You want text messages to traders, crew or performers sent by the platform rather than from your own phone
  • You want detailed gate-operations reporting after the event

When Chobble Tickets is the better choice

  • You sell general admission tickets and do not need a seating plan
  • You want one flat price that covers every feature rather than a price built from modules
  • You take payments with Square or SumUp rather than Stripe
  • Privacy matters to you, and you want attendee details encrypted in the database
  • You're a charity, community group, artist or musician (£25/year on the annual plan)
  • You want Apple and Google Wallet passes, calendar feeds, or a public API included
  • You want your own custom domain and a public website included in the base price
  • You want custom email providers so confirmation emails come from your own domain
  • You value open source and the ability to read the source code, keep your own copy of it, or run that copy yourself

Who owns SmartGig?

SmartGig is operated by Positive Climb LTD, a company registered in England and Wales, registered with the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK's data protection regulator, under ZC170287. Its terms of service are governed by the laws of England and Wales.

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 AGPL-3.0-only, 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 checked on 4 August 2026. Fees may change. Check the links below for the latest figures.