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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.

Open source & cheaper Tessera Tickets alternative

Chobble Tickets is a white label ticketing platform made in the UK by a community interest company. Its source code is published under the AGPL-3.0-only licence, so anyone can read it, fork it, or run their own copy. Tessera Tickets does not publish its source code.

Tessera Tickets starts at $125/month, about £1,200 a year, and the standard setup adds WordPress hosting from Tecture at $150 to $400 a month. Chobble Tickets costs £50/year or £5/month with a public website and CMS included.

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 or £5/month, with no per-ticket fees and no ticket-volume tiers, plus Stripe processing at 1.5% + 20p. Registered charities, schools, and community groups pay £25/year on the annual plan.

Interactive cost calculator

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

Total takings £2,000.00
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" 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.

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 or £5/month 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
  • Event capacity limits
  • 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 - a dedicated merchandise ecommerce store with configurable product attributes and inventory tracking. Chobble Tickets sells extras as add-ons attached to a booking, with stock limits, rather than as a separate store
  • 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, Square, and SumUp only)
  • Saved customer accounts - returning customers can save credit cards to their account for faster future purchases (PCI-compliant card storage)
  • 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-order notes - attach internal notes to an individual order. Chobble Tickets keeps a private note against the contact record rather than the order
  • Box-office staff roles - separate user roles for will-call, financial reporting, point-of-sale, and inventory management. Chobble Tickets has four roles built around running events rather than a box office
  • 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 screens - edit HTML and CSS on the cart and admin screens. Chobble Tickets has custom CSS for the public site and Liquid templates for emails, but not for its 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

  • Promo codes, discounts, and add-ons create promo codes, discount codes, surcharges, and opt-in add-ons with stock limits and a live running total
  • Encryption at rest - attendee data uses hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM and requires an authorised keyed user, including an optional recovery owner if enabled
  • Open source - the complete product source is published under AGPL-3.0-only with no proprietary feature tier
  • Self-hosting option - run the platform on selected infrastructure without a Chobble software licence fee
  • Flat pricing - £50/year or £5/month with no per-ticket platform fees 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 and free-text 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
  • Public-facing website and CMS a homepage, content pages, news posts, and a contact form with spam protection, edited from the admin panel in Markdown with custom CSS. Tessera's public site runs on WordPress; Chobble's is built in
  • 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. Stored names, emails and free-text answers require credentials for an authorised keyed user, including an optional recovery owner if enabled. The complete product source is published under AGPL-3.0-only and can run on independently selected infrastructure.

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 want a merchandise store with product attributes and stock tracking, rather than extras attached to a ticket
  • You want on-site point-of-sale hardware for box-office sales
  • You want to accept cards through Authorize.net rather than Stripe, Square, or SumUp
  • 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 platform 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.