1. Home
  2. Compared To
  3. Chobble Tickets vs Parentkind

Chobble Tickets vs Parentkind

Parentkind is popular with schools and PTAs, so here's a detailed look at how Chobble Tickets compares for school event ticketing.

Different platforms, different goals

Parentkind is a membership organisation for PTAs that bundles several tools together: public liability insurance, PTA management guides, community advisers, and templates. It's designed specifically for the school fundraising context.

Chobble Tickets is a general-purpose ticketing platform. It doesn't have school-specific features like Gift Aid or PTA insurance, but it's simpler, cheaper, and gives you full control over your data.

Pricing breakdown

With Parentkind, the costs add up from several layers:

  • Parentkind membership: from £121/year by Direct Debit for schools with 100 pupils or fewer (£171 for schools with 101+ pupils)
  • PTA Events platform fee: 3.95% per transaction on the Starter plan, or 1.50% on the Premium plan (which costs £299.99+VAT/year)
  • Payment processing: Stripe charges 1.5% + 20p per transaction (1.2% + 20p for registered charities)

So for a £10 ticket on the Starter plan, you'd lose roughly 55-75p per sale in combined platform and payment fees, on top of the annual membership.

With Chobble Tickets, it's a flat £50/year (£25 for charities and community groups), with no per-ticket fees or platform commission. You only pay the standard payment processing fee from Stripe or Square. Sell 100 tickets or 10,000 - the cost to you stays the same.

Interactive cost calculator

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

Total takings £2,000.00
Chobble Tickets Parentkind
Annual fee £50.00 £121.00
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

Parentkind costs: from £121/year membership (by Direct Debit, schools ≤100 pupils; £171 for 101+ pupils) + 3.95% platform fee per transaction on the Starter plan (1.5% on Premium at £299.99+VAT/year) + Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Chobble Tickets: £50/year flat (£25 for community groups) + Stripe processing (1.5% + 20p). Source: parentkind.org.uk/pta-membership-fee-update (November 2025).

Feature comparison

Both sites share some features:

  • Online ticket sales via Stripe
  • QR code scanning for check-in at the door
  • Email confirmations to attendees after booking
  • Capacity management to prevent overselling
  • Free event support with no payment setup required
  • Refund processing
  • Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout (via Stripe)

Ticketing and events

Both platforms handle the basics: creating events, selling tickets, and managing attendees. PTA Events includes prize draws, online auctions, and a volunteer management tool, which are useful for school fundraisers. Chobble Tickets focuses on doing core ticketing well, with features like pay-what-you-want pricing, registration deadlines, overbooking prevention, and event grouping for multi-event bookings.

Check-in and entry

Both offer QR code scanning for event entry. On PTA Events, QR scanning via Qflow is included free on the Premium plan and available as a paid add-on on the Starter plan (£48-72/year depending on school size). On Chobble Tickets, QR code check-ins work with any phone camera and are included at every price point with no add-ons needed.

Data and privacy

PTA Events is a proprietary platform - you can't see how your data is stored or processed. Chobble Tickets is open source and encrypts all attendee data at rest using hybrid RSA-OAEP and AES-256-GCM encryption. You can inspect the code, self-host, and export your data at any time.

Customisation

Chobble Tickets offers custom domains, light and dark themes, markdown event descriptions with image uploads, customisable email templates, and an embeddable widget for your existing website. PTA Events provides a branded microsite for your PTA with advertising and sponsorship options on the Premium plan.

Integrations

Chobble Tickets includes a public API, webhooks, RSS and ICS calendar feeds, Apple Wallet support, and a choice of email providers (Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, Mailgun). PTA Events integrates with Stripe and offers comprehensive reporting with 14 built-in reports.

What Parentkind does that we don't

Let's be straightforward about what Parentkind offers that Chobble Tickets doesn't:

  • Insurance: Parentkind membership includes public liability insurance (up to £10 million), trustee indemnity, employer's liability, and theft cover. This alone can be worth the membership fee for many PTAs.
  • PTA advisers: Phone and email support from people who understand the specifics of running a PTA, available 9am-5pm on weekdays, including legal and financial advice.
  • Gift Aid: Tools for managing Gift Aid declarations on donations, helping PTAs claim an extra 25% from HMRC on eligible donations.
  • Fundraising resources: Templates, posters, planning guides, risk assessment templates, and exclusive fundraisers like the Big PTA Walk and Cash Draws.
  • Prize draws and raffles: Built-in tools for running raffles with automatic random winner allocation, prize listings, and ticket bundles. Platform fee: 7.5% (Starter) or 4.95% (Premium).
  • Online auctions: Standard incremental bidding and blind sealed-bid formats, with starting bids, reserves, and bid increments.
  • 100/200 clubs: Recurring number-draw fundraisers popular with PTAs.
  • Online shop: Sell school uniforms, merchandise, and fundraising items with order and payment tracking.
  • Volunteer management: Recruit volunteers, create time slots, track sign-ups, and send automatic reminders — purpose-built for school events.
  • Newsletter and CMS: Built-in email and newsletter tools with a news article CMS for communicating with parents.
  • 14 built-in reports: Financial reports, sales reports, attendee information, orders, bookings, shipping, volunteer reports, and treasurer reconciliation tools.
  • Branded PTA microsite: A dedicated web presence for your PTA with event listings, news, and sponsorship/advertising options (Premium plan).
  • Advertising and sponsorship tools: On the Premium plan, sell advertising space on your PTA site, add sponsor logos to event pages and tickets, and use templates for contacting local businesses. Includes a dedicated "Advertise" page with metrics.
  • Fire register: Generate attendance lists for fire safety compliance at school events.
  • Donations page: Accept standalone donations outside of events.

These are genuinely useful for PTAs, and if you need them, Parentkind is a solid choice.

What we do that Parentkind doesn't

  • Flat pricing: No per-ticket fees or platform commission, ever.
  • Open source: Every line of code is public and auditable under AGPLv3.
  • Encryption: All attendee data is encrypted at rest with hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM, not just in transit.
  • Self-hosting: Run the entire platform on your own infrastructure if you want to.
  • Custom domains: Your ticketing lives at your own web address.
  • Custom questions: Add multiple-choice questions to events and collect answers at checkout.
  • Public & admin API and webhooks: Build custom integrations and automations, with API keys for admin access.
  • Apple & Google Wallet: Attendees can add tickets to their phone wallet.
  • RSS and calendar feeds: Subscribers get automatic updates.
  • Event groups: Organise related events into collections for multi-event bookings with a single checkout.
  • Custom email providers: Use Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, or Mailgun so emails come from your domain.
  • Customisable email templates: Full control over confirmation emails with Liquid syntax for a fully white-label experience.
  • Embeddable widget: Drop an iframe into your existing school website.
  • No membership required: Sign up and start selling tickets immediately.
  • Works beyond schools: Use the same platform for music gigs, charity fundraisers, community events, or anything else.

When Parentkind makes more sense

If your PTA needs the full package - insurance, Gift Aid, advisers, fundraising resources, volunteer coordination, and auctions - then Parentkind offers genuine value as a bundled membership. The insurance alone can justify the cost for many PTAs.

When an alternative to Parentkind makes more sense

If you already have insurance sorted and just need affordable, straightforward ticketing for school events, Chobble Tickets saves you money. At £25/year for community groups with no per-ticket fees, the savings add up quickly, especially for popular events where percentage fees can eat into your fundraising total. It's also a better fit if you care about data privacy, want to use your own domain, or need a platform that works for non-school events too.

Who owns Parentkind?

Parentkind is a registered charity (Charity Commission #1072833) and a company limited by guarantee (Companies House #03680271). It traces its roots to 1956 as the National Council of Parent Teacher Associations (NCPTA), later rebranded to PTA UK, then to Parentkind in 2018. It operates two subsidiaries: Parentkind Enterprises Limited (which holds a Gambling Commission licence for PTA raffles) and Parentkind Trading Limited.

Parentkind and PTA Events are separate organisations. PTA Events Limited is an independently owned private company (see our PTA Events comparison for details). The two have a commercial partnership — Parentkind promotes PTA Events to its member PTAs — but there is no shared ownership or directorship between them.

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 March 2026. Fees may change — check the links below for the latest figures.