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Prepay hosting, not subscriptions

Chobble Tickets does not use subscription billing. Organisers pay for hosting in advance, a month or a year at a time. If a paid term ends without renewal, the site stays online in read-only mode for 24 months, and no back-payment is owed for that period.

How prepay billing works

Managed hosting is paid in advance. An organiser pays £50 for a year or £5 for a month, and the site runs until that term ends. Annual hosting is £25 for charities, community groups, artists and musicians.

Chobble does not store card details to take automatic renewals. Nothing is charged unless the organiser returns and pays for another term. There is no recurring payment that can fail, and no cancelled subscription to recover from.

When a term ends, the organiser decides whether to pay for the next one. The pricing page lists what each term includes.

Read-only mode after a term ends

If a paid term ends without renewal, the site enters read-only mode. New events, new bookings and new attendees cannot be created through the admin area or the public site.

Existing tickets keep working. Attendees can still open their confirmation page, present a QR code at the door, and add a pass to Apple or Google Wallet.

The organiser keeps full read access. They can still log in, view every record, export attendee lists as CSV and download a full database backup. Read-only mode lasts for 24 months, and Chobble sends reminders during that period.

Months of read-only access
24
Back-payment to restart
£0
Automatic card charges
0
Prepay for a year
£50

Restarting payments

The organiser can restart payments at any time during read-only mode. As soon as a new prepay term is paid, the site returns to full operation and new sales can resume.

No payment is owed for the months the site spent in read-only mode. The new term pays for the next month or year ahead, not for time that has already passed.

Restarting does not need a new site. The database, listings, attendees, settings and domain all remain in place during read-only mode, so a restarted site picks up where it stopped.

After 24 months

After 24 months in read-only mode, the site and its database are deleted. The deletion is permanent. Thirty days after deletion, any remaining encrypted backup is also removed.

The read-only period exists so the organiser has time to act. Records can be exported as CSV, moved to another Chobble Tickets site using catalogue import and export, or migrated to an independent self-hosted deployment. None of that requires Chobble.

Why prepay instead of subscription

Subscription billing keeps a service active while a recurring charge succeeds. Stopping the charge stops the service. Under that model, an organiser's access to their records and to the tickets already sold depends on the recurring payment continuing.

Prepay separates paying for hosting from keeping access to records. The organiser always knows when a paid term ends, because they paid for it in advance. A missed renewal never removes access without notice, and the read-only window gives a long, fixed period to export or migrate.

Chobble's income comes from the prepay terms organisers choose to buy, not from automatic charges that continue until cancelled. This is part of how the platform avoids lock-in: the data stays readable, the source is published under AGPL-3.0-only, and the organiser can move at any time.

How this compares

Most hosted ticketing platforms reviewed on this site charge a recurring subscription or a fee on each ticket sold. A subscription keeps the service active while a recurring charge continues, and stops it when that charge stops. A per-ticket platform stops processing sales when payments to it stop.

Chobble Tickets instead sells prepay terms and keeps an unpaid site readable in read-only mode for 24 months, with no back-payment owed for that period. The provider directory and the platform fee calculator show how each reviewed provider charges.

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