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

Chobble Tickets vs Swicket

Swicket is the commercial, managed version of the open source alf.io ticketing platform — built for large conferences and medical congresses. Here's how it compares to Chobble Tickets for independent event organisers.

What is Swicket?

Swicket is the enterprise managed service built on top of alf.io, a GPLv3-licensed open source event attendance management system. Swicket is run by Vivento Lab (based in Lugano, Switzerland), and one of Swicket's co-founders — Celestino Bellone — is also a co-creator of alf.io itself.

alf.io is the open source engine: a Java/Spring Boot application that handles ticket reservation, payment processing, and check-in. It's been active since 2014, has ~1,600 GitHub stars, and supports self-hosting via Docker, Kubernetes, Heroku, and more.

Swicket wraps alf.io with managed infrastructure, enterprise SLAs (99.95% uptime), dedicated support, and additional modules like badge printing, CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot), and abstract management for scientific conferences. It targets large events: 2,000–15,000 attendees at tech conferences (Devoxx, Spring I/O), medical congresses, and association meetings.

So there are really two comparisons here: Chobble Tickets vs alf.io self-hosted, and Chobble Tickets vs Swicket managed.

Pricing comparison

alf.io self-hosted is free — you pay only for your own server infrastructure and payment processing fees. The GPLv3 licence has no commercial restrictions beyond the copyleft requirement.

Swicket managed does not publish its pricing. Based on their target market (enterprise clients like CERN and Devoxx), costs are negotiated per contract via a sales call.

Chobble Tickets managed is £50/year (£25 for charities and community groups) with no per-ticket fees. Self-hosted Chobble Tickets is free under AGPLv3. No sales call required for either option.

Feature comparison

Both alf.io / Swicket and Chobble Tickets handle:

  • Online ticket sales with payment processing
  • QR code scanning for check-in at the door
  • Email confirmations to attendees after booking
  • Capacity management to prevent overselling
  • Refund processing
  • Free event support
  • Open source code (alf.io: GPLv3; Chobble Tickets: AGPLv3)
  • Self-hosting option
  • API access for custom integrations
  • Apple Wallet and Google Wallet — attendees can save tickets to their phone wallet (alf.io supports Apple Pass and Google Wallet natively, but self-hosted deployments require you to configure your own Apple Developer and Google Wallet API credentials; Chobble Tickets managed handles this setup for all customers)
  • Customisable email templates — both platforms let organisers edit confirmation email content; alf.io uses MJML templates while Chobble Tickets uses Liquid syntax
  • Configurable email providers — both platforms support using third-party email services; alf.io self-hosted supports Mailgun, Mailjet, and SMTP (configured at the server level), while Chobble Tickets managed lets you switch between Resend, Postmark, SendGrid, and Mailgun through the admin UI so emails come from your own domain

alf.io / Swicket has features Chobble Tickets doesn't:

  • Multiple payment gateways — Stripe, Mollie, Revolut, PayPal, bank transfer, and on-site payments, compared to Chobble's Stripe or Square
  • 14 languages (alf.io) / 50+ languages (Swicket) — built-in internationalisation for multilingual events
  • Offline check-in stations — alf.io-PI runs on Raspberry Pi hardware with local encryption and cross-station duplicate prevention
  • Exhibitor lead capture — sponsors and exhibitors can scan attendee badges to capture leads, with GDPR-compliant data handling
  • Google Analytics integration — built-in tracking for event pages
  • Pre-pay and post-pay options — flexible payment timing for different event types
  • On-site badge printing (Swicket) — instant badge generation and printing at check-in with customisable templates
  • CRM integrations (Swicket) — native sync with Salesforce, HubSpot, and Mailchimp
  • Abstract management (Swicket) — submission, review, and scheduling workflows for academic and medical conferences
  • CME credit tracking (Swicket) — continuing medical education credit management for medical congresses
  • Group registration (Swicket) — complex multi-attendee registration for corporate and association bookings
  • Mobile conference app (Swicket) — dedicated attendee app for navigation, schedules, and Q&A polling
  • Live streaming (Swicket) — virtual event and hybrid conference support
  • Enterprise SLA (Swicket) — 99.95% uptime guarantee with 24/7 monitoring and dedicated account management

Chobble Tickets has features alf.io / Swicket doesn't:

  • End-to-end encryption — attendee data is encrypted at rest with hybrid RSA-OAEP + AES-256-GCM, not just row-level database security
  • Transparent flat pricing — £50/year managed hosting with no per-ticket fees, no sales calls, no contract negotiation
  • ICS calendar feeds — subscribers get automatic calendar updates
  • RSS feeds — syndicate your events to feed readers
  • Pay-what-you-want pricing — let attendees choose their own price
  • Daily/recurring events — per-date capacity with calendar picker and holiday blackouts
  • Custom questions — add multiple-choice questions to events and collect answers at checkout
  • Webhooks — outbound POST on every registration for custom integrations
  • Custom domain — your ticketing lives at your own web address (relevant vs Swicket managed; alf.io self-hosted runs on whatever domain you configure)
  • Embeddable widget — drop an iframe into your own website
  • Event groups — organise related events into collections for multi-event bookings with a single checkout
  • No marketing to your attendees — your audience stays yours
  • Community Interest Company — run by a CIC, not a commercial software studio

When Swicket / alf.io might be the better choice

  • You're running a large conference or medical congress with thousands of attendees
  • You need on-site badge printing, abstract management, or CME credit tracking
  • You need deep CRM integration with Salesforce or HubSpot
  • You want exhibitor lead capture with badge scanning
  • You need offline check-in stations (alf.io-PI on Raspberry Pi)
  • You need multilingual registration across 14–50+ languages
  • You want PayPal, Mollie, Revolut, or bank transfer alongside Stripe
  • You require enterprise SLAs and dedicated support (Swicket managed)
  • Budget is not a concern and you want a fully managed enterprise solution

When Chobble Tickets is the better choice

  • You're a community group, school, charity, or independent venue
  • You want transparent, flat-rate pricing with no per-ticket fees
  • Privacy and encryption matter to you — not just row-level security but end-to-end encryption
  • You want to start immediately without a sales call or contract
  • You want calendar feeds or RSS
  • You don't want a platform marketing to your attendees
  • You're a charity or community group (£25/year)
  • You want webhooks or a public API

Who owns Swicket and alf.io?

Swicket Sagl is a Swiss limited liability company founded in 2018 by Celestino Bellone, based in Viganello (Lugano), Switzerland. Bellone is also the founder and lead developer of alf.io, the open source ticketing engine that Swicket is built on. The other core alf.io maintainer is Sylvain Jermini.

In December 2024, Swicket established a "strategic partnership" with Vivento Lab — a separate Swiss company (formerly CRYMS Sagl) backed by Tinext Group. While Vivento Lab describes Swicket as "part of Vivento" on some marketing material, the Swiss commercial register shows them as separate legal entities.

alf.io itself is a community open source project licensed under GPL-3.0, with transparent finances on Open Collective and no formal governance foundation.

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.

Sources

The information on this page was verified in March 2026.