If all you need is a checkout, do not pay us £199 a month. A handful of platforms will sell your tickets with no booking fee at all, and one of them will probably do the job.
This page is about the difference between a checkout and a website, and how to work out which one you actually need. We sell one of them, so read it with that in mind.
Answer these honestly. If you say no to most of them, a free platform is the right call and you should stop reading.
If a promoter or theatre sells the tickets on twenty of your thirty shows, your audience still needs one place to see all thirty. A ticketing platform can only show you the ones it sold.
A free platform gives you a page on their site, at their domain, alongside other people's events. Fine for a one-off. Odd as the home of a touring act with a name.
On most free tiers this is where the money is. Campaigns and analytics are usually a paid add-on, or you are pushed to Mailchimp, which is another bill that grows with your list.
Free means self-serve. You set it up, you keep it current, you work out why something is not showing. That is genuinely fine for a lot of people. It is not fine for everyone.
| What you need | Free ticketing platform | Your own site, built for you |
|---|---|---|
| Booking fees | None on the good ones | None |
| Card processing | Stripe at cost | Stripe at cost |
| Cost to start | Free | £199 + VAT a month |
| Set-up work | Yours | Ours |
| Dates the venue sells | Not shown | On your page, linked out |
| Your own domain | No | Yes |
| Tour page, about, contact | No | Yes |
| Door scanner | Usually included | Included |
| Wallet tickets | Often included | Not yet |
| Seating plans | Often included | Not yet |
| Marketplace discovery | Some have one | None |
| Email campaigns | Usually a paid tier | Included, no per-contact charge |
| Members' area | No | Included |
| Merch shop | Some do add-ons | Full shop |
| Someone to ring | Support desk | The person who built it |
Where a free platform wins, we have said so. Wallet tickets, seating plans and marketplace discovery are real advantages and we do not currently offer them. If those matter most to you, go and use one.
Low volume, no touring, no brand to build, and somebody on the committee will happily set it up. Paying £2,388 a year for this would be daft and we would tell you so.
The fee saving on thirteen dates roughly covers our cost, so the real question is whether you want to build and run a website. If you enjoy that, a free platform plus a site you make yourself is cheaper. If the thought makes you tired, that is what we are for.
The bit a platform cannot do: put the other forty-seven venue-sold dates on the same page.
Corporate and wedding enquiries do not come through a ticket checkout. You need rates, a line-up, a tech spec, a contact form and a tour page — and a second act on the same system. No ticketing platform does any of that.
Because you are not buying ticketing. You are buying a website that somebody builds, hosts, updates and answers the phone about, with ticketing inside it. The free platforms are software. We are software and a person.
Usually the checkout is. Campaigns, analytics and higher limits are commonly on a paid plan — typically from around £29 a month. Read the pricing page properly before you compare it with ours.
Yes, and some people should. Sell through whatever platform you like and let us build the website that lists every date and links out to it. You lose the fee saving and keep everything else. Ask us and we will price that.
Fair question to ask anyone small, including the free platforms, several of which are newer than us. You own the domain. The customer records and the mailing list are yours and export in one click, whenever you want, not just when you leave.
You do. Payments go from the buyer's card into your own Stripe account. We never touch it and we take no commission. Worth checking with any platform you consider — several hold your money until after the event.
We will tell you which dates are yours to sell, what the booking fees on them come to, and whether we think you need us at all. Sometimes the answer is no, and we would rather say it now than take twelve months off you.
[email protected]Or ring 07849 599933
Platform features and pricing checked August 2026. These change often, and we have deliberately not named competitors because what is true today may not be next month. Spot something wrong? Tell us and we will fix it.