The sign-up sheet at the back of the church, online.

Seaty handles the events most parishes actually run: carol services with capacity reservations and optional Gift Aid donations, parish suppers with custom dietary questions, Lent and Advent talks with pre-booking, choral evensongs and organ recitals, fundraising concerts and quiz nights. The wording is ecumenical throughout, and the workflow assumes a volunteer administrator with limited time, not a full-time box-office manager.

Closely related: village halls and community venues if you also host events in the parish hall, and visiting choirs and orchestras if your church regularly hosts music groups on tour.

A church is not a venue running ten shows a week. It is a registered charity (or part of a parent denomination's registration) running a handful of well-attended events a year, mostly free, mostly fundraising, with a congregation that skews well past retirement age and a treasurer who answers to the PCC.

Stripe Checkout takes the card payment. It does not manage capacity for a free carol service, it does not capture a Gift Aid declaration that turns £1,000 of donations into £1,250 for the parish, it does not scan a ticket at the porch, and it does not hold an attendance record the new churchwarden can read next year. It is a payment tool, not a parish tool.

If your carol service is free, most commercial ticketing platforms still charge a per-ticket fee on every reservation. For a 350-pew church on Christmas Eve, that's £350 walking out of the parish account before the first verse of Once in Royal David's City. The flowers-and-candles budget for the whole of next year, gone on a fee for handing out free seats.

Most ticketing platforms also haven't thought about an 84-year-old who books one ticket a year. They assume the buyer wants an account, an app, and a password. Half your congregation is over 70. Watch what happens to your booking rate when the harvest supper requires a sign-up screen.

Seaty charges no per-ticket fee on free events, does not require attendee accounts, and captures Gift Aid declarations directly in the booking flow. The numbers are laid out in full in our guide to how UK ticketing fees actually work, and our notes on privacy for event organisers cover how the data captured at booking is held.

Carol services, Christmas Eve services, Advent and Lent talks, organ recitals, choral evensongs, Lessons and Carols by candlelight. The most well-attended events in the church year are usually free. Seaty does not charge a fee on a free ticket. Open bookings, set a capacity, close them when the church is full. Attendees receive a confirmation by email and a scannable ticket on the night.

Seaty also stays completely free when you take the payment yourself: cash on the night, a cheque to the parish account, or a bank transfer. You only pay a per-transaction fee if you take card payments through us. For events where you do charge, see how the numbers compare in our guide to UK ticketing fees.

For paid events (fundraising concerts, organ recitals with a ticket, charity quiz nights, summer fayres), Seaty works as a straightforward box office. Set a price, set a capacity, choose whether to absorb the per-transaction fee in the ticket price or add it at checkout, and open bookings. Add a donation prompt at the point of purchase to invite Gift Aid-eligible giving alongside the ticket. If your church regularly hosts touring choirs or orchestras, our notes on ticketing for choirs and orchestras cover the visiting-act side of the same arrangement.

The 84-year-old who books one ticket a year does not have to set up a password to come to the carol service. Most ticketing platforms have not thought about that buyer; they assume a sign-up screen and an app are part of the deal. Seaty does not require any of it. Bookings work from an email address; tickets arrive in the inbox; the whole thing can be done from a desktop in the parish office or a phone in the kitchen. The parish administrator can also place a booking on someone's behalf and send the ticket on, which matters when the request comes in by phone or after the Sunday service. What we do hold and how it is handled is set out in our notes on privacy for event organisers.

The collection plate still works, online bookings still happen, and nobody has to choose between them. Most church events still take cash on the night, and online sales are an addition rather than a replacement. Seaty is completely free when you take payments yourself: cash, cheques, contactless on a separate reader, or a bank transfer to the parish account. Use Seaty to manage pre-booking and capacity, then collect what people bring on the day in the usual way. Reserved seating, scanning, custom questions, and reporting all stay available with no per-ticket charge.

The person running the parish office is rarely a full-time administrator. More often it is the vicar's spouse, a retired churchwarden, or whoever was at the meeting when the question was asked. Seaty assumes that. Setting up an event takes a few minutes; the day-to-day workflow is a handful of clicks; the help articles are written in plain English; our guide to selling tickets for charity events walks through the Gift Aid mechanics in one place; and UK-based support replies to Support@Seaty.co.uk without routing through a chatbot.