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Chobble Tickets vs libreevent

libreevent is free open source ticketing software that you install on your own web hosting. Its code has not been updated since June 2026.

Maintained & hosted libreevent alternative

Chobble Tickets is made in the UK by a community interest company. Its source code is published under the AGPL-3.0-only licence, and it can be run as managed hosting or on the organiser's own infrastructure.

libreevent is self-hosted only. There is no managed version to sign up for, so running it means installing Node.js on a web server, keeping that server online and applying updates yourself. The libreevent software is free of charge, and the project asks for optional donations.

The main difference is upkeep. The libreevent GitHub repository was archived by its owner on 9 June 2026 and is read-only, so no further releases, bug fixes or security patches come from the project. Chobble Tickets is under active development, and managed hosting includes updates.

What libreevent is

libreevent is event management software written by Janis Hutz. It is built with Node.js and Vue, and it is published under the GPL-3.0 licence.

The organiser installs it on their own hosting, creates events in an admin panel, and sells tickets from the pages libreevent serves. The installation guide asks for a host that lists Node.js as a feature, and the author sells a paid setup service for organisers who would rather not install it themselves.

The admin panel is in English, and the version recorded in the archived repository is 1.1.16. Each installation sells in one currency, set with a three-letter currency code.

Other open source comparisons cover Pretix, Hi.Events and Swicket with alf.io. The open source page describes Chobble Tickets without a competitor comparison.

Cost comparison

libreevent charges nothing for the software. The organiser pays for web hosting that supports Node.js, and pays Stripe's or Payrexx's charges on ticket sales. Ticket income goes to the organiser's own gateway account. The documentation names asurahosting, novatrend and Hetzner as hosts that fit, and marks those links as affiliate links. Donations to the project are optional.

Chobble Tickets managed hosting costs £50/year or £5/month, or £25/year for charities, community groups, artists and musicians on the annual plan. That covers hosting, updates, backup tools and support. There are no per-ticket platform fees and no feature tiers. Ticket income goes straight to the organiser's Stripe, Square or SumUp account, and those providers charge their own processing fees.

Chobble Tickets can also be self-hosted with no software fee, in which case the costs are the same shape as libreevent's: infrastructure and payment processing.

Neither product charges a software fee to self-host, and neither takes a percentage of ticket sales. Because libreevent has no managed price and no per-ticket fee, the fee calculator does not cover it. The only figure to compare is Chobble's managed price against the cost of running a server yourself.

Feature comparison

Both platforms share some features

  • Open source code that anyone can read, modify and self-host
  • An admin panel for creating and editing events
  • Online ticket sales through a payment gateway
  • Attendee accounts and self-service order pages
  • Ticket checking at the door with a scanner
  • Email confirmations after booking, sent from the organiser's own email account

libreevent has features Chobble Tickets doesn't

  • Seat plan editor - a visual editor for drawing the seating layout of a venue, so attendees pick a numbered seat. Chobble Tickets sells against a capacity figure and has no reserved seating
  • Native entry control apps - free iOS and Android apps for scanning tickets at the door. Chobble Tickets uses a browser-based scanner on a phone camera instead of a native app
  • A plugin system - extra functions can be added as plugins, and the project ships a newsletter plugin and a polls plugin. Payment gateways can also be added this way
  • Two-factor authentication on accounts - admin and attendee logins can require a code or link sent by email, and the root admin account always requires it
  • Tickets held during checkout - libreevent reserves the tickets an attendee has selected, and returns them to the pool after a period of inactivity that the organiser sets in seconds. Chobble Tickets uses capacity when payment confirmation arrives instead

Chobble Tickets has features libreevent doesn't

  • Managed hosting - Chobble runs the software, applies updates and keeps backups. libreevent has no hosted option, so the organiser runs the server
  • Encryption at rest - attendee data is stored with hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM encryption. libreevent stores attendee records as ordinary rows in MySQL or as entries in a JSON file, and passwords are hashed
  • Stripe, Square and SumUp - three payment providers are supported directly. libreevent ships Stripe and Payrexx, a Swiss gateway, and one gateway is active at a time
  • Pay-what-you-want pricing - attendees choose their own price
  • Promo codes, add-ons and price rules - discount codes, extras sold alongside tickets, surcharges and prices that change for returning customers
  • Apple and Google Wallet tickets - attendees add tickets to their phone wallet
  • Daily and recurring events - events that repeat on a schedule, with capacity per date
  • Event groups with shared capacity - related events booked together in one checkout, sharing a venue cap
  • A public website and CMS - a homepage, content pages, news posts and a contact form with spam protection, edited in Markdown from the admin panel with custom CSS
  • RSS and calendar feeds - event listings syndicated to feed readers and calendar apps
  • Email provider APIs and editable templates - confirmations are sent through Resend, Postmark, SendGrid or Mailgun, and the subject and body are edited from the admin panel. libreevent sends through an SMTP account entered during setup
  • An admin API - authenticated API keys for reading and writing event data
  • Activity logs - an audit trail of admin actions and booking activity
  • Active development - the libreevent repository is archived and read-only, so anyone using it maintains their own copy of the code

What running libreevent involves

libreevent needs a web host that supports Node.js. The documentation asks for a current Node.js version, and the repository records Node.js 16.0 or newer as the minimum. The application listens on port 8080, and the install uses FTP to upload files.

Setup offers two databases. MySQL takes about ten minutes to create and has to have InnoDB enabled. The alternative stores data in a JSON file, which the documentation says suits events selling fewer than ten tickets per minute. The same documentation warns that libreevent must never be uploaded to a publicly reachable folder, because a JSON database there would expose every attendee record.

Updates are manual. The organiser downloads the new release, uploads the files over FTP without overwriting the data and config directories, and restarts the application.

Chobble Tickets runs on Bunny Edge, Deno Deploy or a Docker-capable host. The recommended Bunny deployment compiles to a single JavaScript file and uses a Bunny database, and Docker deployments use SQLite or a remote libSQL database. On managed hosting there is no server to set up at all.

The archived repository

An archived GitHub repository is read-only. Nobody can merge a fix into it, and the project publishes no new releases. Anyone running libreevent keeps their own copy of the code, and any change, including a security fix, is theirs to write and apply.

That is a fork rather than a dead end. The GPL-3.0 licence allows anyone to take the code and continue it, and the seat plan editor and entry control apps still work as built. It does mean the software needs a developer, not an organiser.

When libreevent might be better

  • You need reserved seating with a visual seat plan
  • You want tickets held while an attendee completes checkout
  • You want native scanning apps on iOS and Android
  • You already use Payrexx and want to keep it
  • You have ordinary shared web hosting with Node.js and want to run ticketing software on it. Self-hosting Chobble Tickets needs Bunny Edge, Deno Deploy or a Docker-capable host
  • You have a developer who can maintain an archived codebase

When Chobble Tickets might be better

  • You want someone else to run and update the software
  • You want the code to keep receiving fixes and new features
  • You want attendee data encrypted at rest
  • You want Stripe, Square or SumUp, wallet tickets, or calendar feeds
  • You are a charity, community group, artist or musician paying £25/year
  • You sell against a capacity limit rather than numbered seats

Who builds libreevent?

libreevent is written by Janis Hutz and published as a personal open source project, funded by optional donations. The sources reviewed named no registered company behind it. Its GitHub repository was archived by its owner on 9 June 2026.

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. The code is published under AGPL-3.0-only with no attribution requirement, so anyone can self-host it without depending on Chobble as a company.

Sources

This information was checked on 30 July 2026. Details may change. Check the links below for the latest position.