Chobble Tickets vs Tessera Tickets
Tessera Tickets is a US ticketing platform built around WordPress for music venues, theatres, and comedy clubs. Here is how a small, open source alternative compares.
Pricing comparison
Tessera Tickets charges a monthly subscription that scales with the number of tickets you sell each year, rather than taking a cut of each ticket. The smallest plan is $125/month (about £1,200/year) for up to 10,000 tickets per year, and the published tiers go up to $667/month (about £6,400/year) for up to 100,000 tickets per year. Larger volumes are quoted on request.
Because the standard Tessera setup uses a WordPress-based public website, you also pay separately for WordPress hosting from Tecture at $150-$400/month (about £1,440-£3,840/year). The do-it-yourself option lets you skip the WordPress hosting and build your own customer-facing website against Tessera's API instead. One-off setup fees range from free for the do-it-yourself option to $3,500 for the Template Plus theme, with custom designs starting at $6,000 and full redesigns starting at $10,000. Seating chart setup is $500-$1,000 extra, point-of-sale hardware is around $300 per device, and the barcode reader app is from $100/month for up to five devices.
Payment processing through Stripe or Authorize.net is charged separately on top.
Chobble Tickets is a flat £50/year with no per-ticket fees, no monthly subscription, and no ticket-volume tiers, plus Stripe processing at 1.5% + 20p. Registered charities, schools, and community groups pay £25/year.
Interactive cost calculator
Drag the sliders to see how costs compare at different volumes:
| Chobble Tickets | Tessera Tickets | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual fee | £50.00 | £1200.00 |
| 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 | £0.00 | £0.00 |
Tessera Tickets subscription: from $125/month (approx. £1,200/year) for up to 10,000 tickets per year, rising to $667/month (approx. £6,400/year) for up to 100,000 tickets per year. Volumes above that are quoted on request. WordPress hosting for the public-facing website is a separate $150-$400/month (approx. £1,440-£3,840/year). One-off setup fees range from free (do-it-yourself) to $3,500 for the Template Plus theme, $6,000+ for a custom design, or $10,000+ for a complete redesign. Seating chart setup costs $500-$1,000 extra, point-of-sale hardware around $300 per device, and barcode reader licensing from $100/month for up to five devices. Payment processing via Stripe (1.5% + 20p in the UK) or Authorize.net is charged separately. Chobble Tickets: £50/year flat + Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Source: tessera-tickets.com/pricing (April 2026).
Feature comparison
Tessera Tickets is built for venues that run their own programme of shows, with assigned seating, a box office, and on-site merchandise sales. Chobble Tickets is built for organisers who want a flat-rate platform without the box-office hardware and venue-management features. Here is the breakdown:
Both platforms share some features:
- Online ticket sales with payment processing via Stripe
- QR code scanning for check-in at the door
- Email confirmations to attendees after booking
- Capacity management to prevent overselling
- Free event support with no payment setup required
- Refund processing from the admin panel
- CSV data export
- Multi-user access for staff
- REST API access for custom integrations
Tessera Tickets has features Chobble Tickets doesn't:
- Reserved seating - SVG seating chart for individual seat selection, with seat-change tools for swapping customers between seats after purchase
- Table sales - sell whole tables as a unit instead of individual seats, useful for cabaret and comedy club layouts
- Merchandise store - sell merchandise alongside tickets through a dedicated merchandise ecommerce store with configurable product attributes and inventory tracking
- On-site point-of-sale - dedicated POS hardware integration with Stripe card readers for box-office and walk-up sales
- Will-call list - dedicated will-call workflow for collecting tickets at the door
- Box-office refunds - record cash and cheque refunds in the admin alongside card refunds, plus issue store credit instead of a refund
- Authorize.net support - accept cards through Authorize.net as well as Stripe (Chobble Tickets supports Stripe and Square only)
- Saved customer accounts - returning customers can save credit cards to their account for faster future purchases (PCI-compliant card storage)
- Coupon and promo codes - site-wide discount codes for marketing campaigns
- Password-protected pre-sales - schedule date-range pre-sales and protect specific ticket tiers with passwords
- External ticket links - link an event listing out to a third-party ticketing platform when needed, for example when moving a popular show to a larger venue
- Per-customer notes - attach internal notes to customer and order records
- Role-based permissions - separate user roles for will-call, financial reporting, point-of-sale, and inventory management
- WordPress integration - the public-facing website is a WordPress site with event cards, filtering, fuzzy text search, and a sidebar cart pane
- Custom HTML/CSS for cart and admin - edit HTML and CSS elements for emails, cart, and admin screens
- US-based vendor - Tessera is built by a Chicago web agency, so the company runs on US business hours
Chobble Tickets has features Tessera Tickets doesn't:
- End-to-end encryption - attendee data is encrypted at rest with hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM, where only the organiser holds the private key
- 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 and no monthly subscription
- Flat annual pricing - £50/year with no per-ticket fees, no monthly subscription, and no ticket-volume tiers
- Apple & Google Wallet tickets - attendees can save tickets to both Apple Wallet and Google Wallet
- Subscribable ICS calendar feed - a single feed that lists all your events, so subscribers get automatic updates when you add new ones
- RSS feeds - syndicate your events to feed readers
- Pay-what-you-want pricing - let attendees enter their own price above a minimum
- Daily and recurring events - per-date capacity with calendar picker and holiday blackouts
- Custom email providers - use Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, or Mailgun so emails come from your domain, not the platform's
- Liquid email templates - full control over confirmation emails with Liquid template syntax
- Admin API - authenticated API with API keys for full event CRUD and reading private data
- Webhooks - outbound POST on every registration for custom integrations
- Custom questions at checkout - add multiple-choice questions to your events and collect structured answers from each attendee, visible across the admin, CSV exports, and webhooks
- Embeddable widget - drop an iframe into any website without needing WordPress
- Custom domain included - point your own domain at no extra cost
- No website hosting required - Chobble Tickets hosts both the ticketing platform and the event listing pages
- Community Interest Company - run by a CIC, a UK legal structure that locks the company's assets for community benefit
Data ownership
Tessera Tickets is a proprietary, US-hosted platform. Your event and customer data lives on Tecture's servers, and you depend on the monthly subscription continuing. Tessera does not run a consumer marketplace and does not market other organisers' events to your attendees. The website does not publish details on encryption at rest, GDPR processes, or what happens to your data if you cancel.
With Chobble Tickets, attendee data is encrypted at rest, so even someone with database access cannot read names, emails, or custom question answers without your private key. The entire platform is open source under AGPLv3, so you can self-host it and never depend on a third party. If Chobble Tickets stopped operating tomorrow, you could run the same code on your own server.
When Tessera Tickets might be the better choice
- You run a music venue, theatre, or comedy club with assigned seating
- You need a visual seating chart for individual seat selection
- You sell tables of seats rather than individual tickets
- You sell merchandise alongside tickets and want it in the same cart
- You want on-site point-of-sale hardware for box-office sales
- You want to accept cards through Authorize.net rather than Stripe or Square
- You already run a WordPress site and want a ticketing platform built on top of WordPress
- You sell at high volumes and want a single subscription rather than per-ticket fees
- You prefer working with a US-based vendor in US business hours
When Chobble Tickets is the better choice
- You sell a modest number of tickets and don't want a four-figure annual subscription
- You want predictable, flat-rate pricing with no per-ticket fees and no ticket-volume tiers
- You don't want to run and host a separate WordPress site
- Privacy and encryption matter to you
- You're a community group, charity, or school (£25/year)
- You want Apple/Google Wallet, calendar feeds, or a public API included
- You want your own custom domain 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 self-host
Who runs Tessera Tickets?
Tessera Tickets is built and run by Tecture, a custom web development agency based in Chicago, Illinois. Tecture was founded in 2002 and builds web software for businesses, startups, and nonprofits, with Tessera as its in-house ticketing product for venues.
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 April 2026. Fees may change. Check the links below for the latest figures.
- Tessera Tickets pricing - subscription tiers, hosting, setup fees, and add-ons
- Tessera Tickets features - full feature list
- Tecture - the Chicago web agency that builds Tessera
- Chobble Tickets features