Frequently asked questions

Pricing and fees

Which ticketing platforms don't charge per-ticket fees?

Ticketing providers use percentage, fixed per-ticket, subscription and voluntary-contribution models. Chobble Tickets charges a flat managed-hosting price with no per-ticket platform fee.

Managed hosting is £50/year or £5/month. Money from ticket sales goes directly to the organiser's Stripe, Square or SumUp account, which charges its normal processing fee. The platform comparison documents the assumptions used for other providers.

How much does Eventbrite charge per ticket?

Eventbrite charges organisers a percentage-based fee on each paid ticket, plus a fixed fee per ticket. In the UK this is typically 6.95% + £0.59 per ticket. For a £15 ticket, that means £1 to £2 goes to Eventbrite on each sale. You can see a detailed breakdown on the Eventbrite comparison page. Chobble Tickets charges no per-ticket platform fee. Managed hosting is £50/year or £5/month regardless of how many tickets you sell.

What is the cheapest ticketing platform for small events?

It depends on ticket volume, ticket value, order size and the features required. A provider with no annual cost may cost less for one small event, while a flat hosting fee may cost less as sales increase. Chobble managed hosting costs £50/year or £5/month. Charities, community groups, artists and musicians pay £25/year on the annual plan. The platform comparison shows estimated costs and its assumptions.

Why does Chobble charge a flat fee instead of per-ticket commission?

Chobble uses a fixed-price business model. The £50/year or £5/month managed-hosting fee covers the software, infrastructure, updates, backup tools and written support. It does not change with ticket volume or ticket value. Payment providers still charge their own transaction fees. See the worked pricing examples.

Is there a discount for charities or community groups?

Charities, community groups, artists, and musicians get a 50% discount on the annual plan, bringing the cost to £25/year. The discount applies to annual billing only. Monthly billing stays at £5/month for all organisers. There is no Chobble per-ticket platform fee on either plan. You can sign up for managed hosting, or run the AGPL-3.0-only software on infrastructure you pay for and manage.

Can I pay monthly instead of annually?

Yes. Managed hosting is £50/year if you pay annually, or £5/month if you pay monthly. Monthly billing works out at £60 over a year, which is £10 more than the annual rate. This covers the extra Stripe transaction fees on the additional charges and the admin overhead of handling failed payments and retries. Monthly billing can be cancelled at any time and there are no exit fees. The 50% charity, community, artist, and musician discount applies to the annual plan only.

What happens if I stop paying for Chobble Tickets?

Your site goes into read-only mode once the paid period ends. Read-only means no new events, no new bookings, and no new attendees added through the admin area. Existing tickets keep working: attendees can still check in with their QR codes, the public event page still loads, and confirmation emails for past bookings still send. You can still log in, view your data, and export attendee lists as CSV at any time. After 24 months in read-only mode, the site and its database are deleted. Chobble emails reminders during that period asking you to export your data. The deletion is permanent, and 30 days after deletion any remaining encrypted backup is also removed.

When do I receive the money from ticket sales?

Money from ticket sales goes directly to your Stripe, Square, or SumUp account. Chobble never holds the funds and does not take a cut. Payout timing is set by your payment processor. Stripe typically pays out within 2 to 7 days in the UK, and you can adjust the schedule from your Stripe dashboard. Square has its own schedule, set in your Square account.

Data privacy and security

Is my attendee data safe?

Chobble Tickets encrypts all personally identifiable information at rest using hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM encryption. Names, emails, phone numbers, and addresses are encrypted before they are written to the database. Even if someone gained access to the database, they could not read the data without the encryption keys. Payment identifiers and API credentials are also encrypted with AES-256-GCM, and passwords are hashed with PBKDF2 using 600,000 iterations. The platform also includes CSRF protection, rate limiting on login attempts, and session tokens with 24-hour expiry.

Can Chobble read my attendees' personal information?

On managed hosting, the application decrypts attendee data when an authorised keyed user needs it. Chobble does not use attendee records for advertising or event marketing. An optional recovery owner can also decrypt protected fields if the organiser enables it. On an independently self-hosted site, Chobble has no operational access unless the operator grants it.

Does Chobble market to my attendees?

No. Managed hosting stores the encrypted booking records that organisers collect, but Chobble does not use those records to build audience profiles, advertise, or market other events. Attendees do not need a Chobble account, are not prompted to download an app, and are not added to a Chobble mailing list. Read more on the no attendee marketing page.

Who owns the attendee data?

The organiser is the data controller. Chobble does not claim rights to attendee data or use it for advertising, audience profiles, or product analytics. A payment or email provider processes the details needed when the organiser enables that service. Organisers can export attendee records as CSV and set retention controls.

What happens if I lose my admin password?

Without another keyed owner or an enabled recovery owner, losing the last keyed administrator password makes the encrypted attendee data inaccessible. A password reset cannot recreate the private key protected by that password. Keep a secure backup of owner credentials before adding bookings.

Is Chobble Tickets hosted in the EU?

Not exclusively. Chobble managed hosting uses Bunny.net, a company headquartered in Slovenia, but its databases use all primary and replica regions returned by Bunny's configuration API, including regions outside the EU. The storage region is set to eu-west-1. Optional providers may also process data elsewhere. A self-hosted operator can choose another database arrangement. Read the provider breakdown on the hosting locations and data page.

Is Chobble affected by the US CLOUD Act?

Chobble CIC is a UK company and Bunny is headquartered in Slovenia. Bunny database replicas and optional payment, email and integration providers operate in several jurisdictions. Organisers with specific legal requirements should review each provider before enabling it. The hosting locations and data page lists the main providers and regions.

Open source and self-hosting

Why is Chobble Tickets open source?

The complete product source is published on GitHub under AGPL-3.0-only. The licence permits people to inspect, fork, modify and run the software subject to its terms. Managed hosting and self-hosted deployments use the same product code, with no separate proprietary feature tier.

Can I self-host Chobble Tickets?

Yes. Chobble charges no software licence fee for self-hosting, while the operator pays for infrastructure and configured services. Supported approaches include Bunny Edge, Deno Deploy and Docker-capable hosts. The recommended Bunny approach uses a fork of the GitHub repository and deploys through GitHub Actions. Read more on the hosting page.

Is self-hosting difficult?

It depends on the deployment method. The recommended approach requires a Bunny account, database, edge script, repository fork and deployment secrets. Docker deployments require the operator to maintain a compatible host and database. Managed hosting is available for organisers who do not want to maintain those systems.

What happens to my ticketing if Chobble shuts down?

The software is published under AGPL-3.0-only, so a copy of the repository can be run independently of Chobble. An existing self-hosted deployment does not depend on Chobble's managed service. A managed-hosting customer would need to arrange infrastructure and migrate to an independently maintained deployment.

Can I switch away from Chobble Tickets?

Yes, and the platform is designed to make this straightforward. You can export your attendee data as CSV at any time. The codebase is open source, so you can fork it and run it independently. There are no long-term contracts and no exit fees. One of Chobble's principles is honesty: if another provider would suit you better, Chobble's position is that you should use them. The platform does not create lock-in through proprietary data formats, mandatory contracts, or features that only work inside Chobble.

What is a community interest company?

A community interest company (CIC) is a UK company structure for organisations that work for community benefit. Chobble CIC, company number 17050113, is limited by guarantee without share capital and has an asset lock. It reports on its community benefit activities. Chobble receives income from managed hosting and technical work rather than advertising or attendee data sales.

Features and customisation

Can I use my own domain name?

Yes. On managed hosting, you get an instant subdomain (yourname.tix.chobble.net) from day one, and you can add your own custom domain at any time. Up to three URLs can be active at the same time. If you self-host, you control the domain entirely.

Can I send emails from my own domain?

Yes. Chobble Tickets supports four email providers: Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, and Mailgun. You configure your own account with one of these providers, and confirmation emails are sent from your domain with your branding. Email templates are customisable using Liquid syntax, with built-in filters for formatting currencies and pluralisation.

How customisable is Chobble Tickets?

You can customise the header image, website title, and theme colours from the admin dashboard. Email templates use Liquid syntax so you can change the subject line, HTML body, and plain text body of confirmation emails. Event descriptions support Markdown formatting. You can set custom thank-you URLs, configure terms and conditions, and add custom multiple-choice questions to the checkout form. If you self-host, you can modify the source code.

Does Chobble Tickets support recurring or daily events?

Yes. Daily events have per-date capacity with a calendar date picker, so attendees choose which date they want to attend. You can set holiday and blackout dates to block bookings on specific days. This is designed for weekly classes, workshops, and attractions that run on a regular schedule.

Can I sell different ticket tiers like VIP and general admission?

Yes, using event groups. You create separate events for each tier and group them together. Groups can share capacity, so a confirmed VIP booking reduces the number of general admission tickets available. Attendees see all the options in a single checkout. This also works for early bird and standard pricing, or adult and child tickets.

How do QR code check-ins work?

Each booking gets a unique URL with a QR code, which can represent several admissions. Attendees receive it in their confirmation email and can add it to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet. Authorised staff scan the code through a connected browser with a phone camera. The scanner warns about previous check-ins and bookings for a different event.

What payment providers does Chobble Tickets support?

Chobble Tickets supports Stripe, Square, and SumUp, with one active card provider per site. You enter the provider credentials in the admin settings. Listings can use fixed prices or pay-what-you-want pricing, and free events need no payment setup. Full refunds can be issued for one booking or in bulk from the admin area.

Can I integrate Chobble Tickets with other tools?

Yes. Chobble Tickets has a public JSON API for event listings and booking (no authentication required), an admin API with HMAC-secured keys for full event management, and webhooks that send a POST request on every booking. Webhooks can connect to Slack, Zapier, CRMs, or any service that accepts HTTP requests. There are also ICS calendar feeds and RSS feeds for event listings.

Can I collect custom information from attendees at checkout?

Yes. Custom questions can be multiple-choice or free text. This supports meal preferences, clothing sizes, transport choices, access requirements, and other information needed for the event. Answers appear in administration views, CSV exports, and webhook payloads. For multi-event group bookings, the same question is only asked once.

Can I set capacity limits for events?

Yes. Each event has a capacity set by the organiser. Chobble Tickets checks capacity before checkout, but this does not reserve anything or use capacity. For a paid booking, capacity is checked again and used only when payment confirmation arrives. If two payments race for the last ticket, the later one is refunded automatically and recorded for the organiser. When an event is full, the booking form shows a sold-out message. The checks are a best effort rather than a guarantee against software or infrastructure failures. Daily events have separate capacity for each date, with holiday and blackout dates.

Can I embed ticket sales on my own website?

Yes. The embeddable widget adds your event listings to any website with a single line of HTML. The iframe automatically resizes to fit the content. Content Security Policy headers are configurable, so you can control which domains are allowed to embed your booking pages. If you prefer to build your own integration, the public JSON API is available with no authentication required.

What features does Chobble Tickets not have?

Chobble Tickets does not have an event discovery marketplace, social media advertising tools, reserved seating with venue maps, waitlists, multi-currency support, virtual event hosting, an organiser mobile app, or telephone support. It includes emailing for existing attendees and promo codes, discounts and add-ons. Organisers who need discovery or venue seating may be better served by another platform; the Eventbrite comparison gives one example.

About Chobble

Who runs Chobble Tickets?

Chobble Tickets is built and run by Stefan Burke, who has worked in software and web technology since around 2007. He spent five years at Bandcamp and ten years as the lead developer at Bouncy Castle Network. Stef began trading as Chobble in 2024. Chobble CIC was incorporated on 24 February 2026 as Community Interest Company 17050113. Read more on the About page.

Where is Chobble Tickets based?

Chobble CIC is registered in England with its office at 27 The Crescent, Prestwich, Manchester M25 1FL. The platform itself runs on Bunny.net infrastructure in the EU. Read more about hosting locations on the European page, and more about the company on the about page.

Features and customisation

Can Chobble Tickets handle equipment hire and deliveries?

Yes. Listings can span consecutive days with a total price for each offered duration. For a paid booking, capacity across every occupied date is checked and used when payment confirmation arrives. Administrators can assign drop-off and collection work, and logistics agents receive a browser-based run sheet.

See the logistics, multi-day hire, and servicing events pages, or the equipment hire page.

Can customers pay a deposit and settle the balance later?

Yes. Once the deposit payment is confirmed, Chobble Tickets creates the reserved booking and uses capacity. The customer receives a link to a balance page where they can pay the rest later. Payments taken outside the checkout, such as cash or bank transfer, can be recorded against the same balance.

See the deposits and balance payments page.

Can Chobble Tickets sell bundles or packages?

Yes. A group of listings can be sold as a package with a single price, booked together in one checkout. Package members can have fixed quantities and their own price overrides.

See the packages page.

Can bookings be taken from an existing website?

Yes, in two ways. An iframe snippet shows listings inline on any page, and a single JavaScript file turns links on an existing website into add-to-cart buttons with a floating cart.

See the embeddable widget and order widget pages.