Entry vs Skiddle: Why UK Promoters Are Making the Switch

Entry

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Skiddle has been around for over two decades. If you promote events in the UK, you have almost certainly heard of them. But “been around for a long time” is not the same as “best option in 2026.”

A growing number of UK promoters are actively looking for a Skiddle alternative — not because Skiddle does not work, but because the model it was built on no longer serves promoters who want to build real brands, keep their revenue, and own their customer relationships.

This is a direct, honest comparison. We will show you exactly where Entry beats Skiddle, where the trade-offs are, and why the numbers make the decision obvious for most serious promoters.

The 30-Second Version

If you are short on time, here is the headline difference between these two platforms:

Entry charges the promoter a small percentage. Skiddle charges your customers a 10% + 25p booking fee on every single ticket, plus additional fees on top — and that fee money goes to Skiddle, not you. On Entry, charge the same total and keep the difference as extra revenue. Or list lower and convert more buyers.

What Your Customers Actually See

This is the part most promoters do not think about until it is too late. When someone buys a ticket through Skiddle, here is the experience:

• They land on a Skiddle-branded event page
• They go through a Skiddle-branded checkout
• They see a booking fee added to their total — typically £1.50–£2.50+ per ticket
• They receive a Skiddle-branded confirmation email
• They get a Skiddle-branded ticket
• They download the Skiddle app to access their ticket

Your customer just went through six touchpoints. Your brand appeared in zero of them.

Now here is the same journey on Entry:

• They land on your branded event page (your colours, your logo, your domain)
• They check out on your branded checkout — with Apple Pay and Google Pay
• They see the exact price you set — no surprise fees
• They get your branded confirmation email
• They receive your branded ticket — PDF, QR, Apple Wallet, or Google Wallet

Same customer. Completely different experience. One builds your brand. The other builds Skiddle's.

The Real Cost of Skiddle

Skiddle promotes itself as “free for promoters to list events.” That is technically true — you do not pay Skiddle directly. But your customers do. And that changes everything.

Skiddle's booking fee formula is 10% of the face value + 25p per ticket (with a minimum of £1.00 per ticket). That fee gets added to every single ticket your customer buys. On top of that, there is a delivery/processing fee of £0.50–£3.00 per order.

Let us see what that actually looks like with real numbers.

And on a higher-priced ticket — say, £24.50 for a headline event — the maths gets worse:

That is an 11% surcharge your customer did not expect when they saw your advertised price. Now scale it up across your annual ticket volume.

That is revenue you could be keeping going to Skiddle. Not to you. Not back to the customer. To the platform. And that is before the RapidScan delivery fee gets added on top.

RapidScan: Charging Extra for a QR Code

On top of the booking fee, Skiddle adds a “delivery fee” at checkout. For their RapidScan option — which is a QR code emailed to your customer — this fee ranges from £0.00 to £2.00 per order, scaling with the ticket value.

To put that in context: on a £27.20 order (a £24.50 ticket after Skiddle's booking fee), the RapidScan delivery fee is 75p. On a higher-value order around £55, it climbs to £1.00. This is on top of the 10% + 25p booking fee your customer has already been charged.

What exactly is your customer paying for here? Skiddle's own description says it “covers the overheads incurred by providing the scanning technology used to produce and validate your ticket quickly and efficiently.” In plain English: they are paying for the privilege of receiving a QR code by email.

A QR code. Sent by email. In 2026. That is not a premium service. That is the bare minimum of how digital ticketing works.

With Entry, QR codes, PDF tickets, Apple Wallet passes, and Google Wallet passes are all included at no extra cost. No delivery fees. No hidden charges at checkout. Your customers get their tickets instantly in whatever format they prefer — all branded to you.

Your Brand or Theirs?

This is where the difference becomes permanent. Skiddle is a marketplace. Your event sits alongside thousands of others on skiddle.com, wrapped in Skiddle's design, navigation, and branding. Your listing competes with ads for other events. Your checkout says “Skiddle” in the URL bar.

Entry is fully white-label. Here is what that means in practice:

Read that last row again. When a customer buys through Skiddle, Skiddle has their email address. Skiddle can market to them. Skiddle can promote other events — including your competitors' events — to your audience.

With Entry, your customer data is 100% yours. Every email, every purchase, every interaction. Nobody else can touch it. Check out our full feature set to see exactly how the branding works across every touchpoint.

When You Actually Get Paid

Cash flow is make-or-break for event promoters. You need money for venues, artists, marketing, production, and staff — often weeks before the event. The timing of when you receive your ticket revenue is not a minor detail. It is the difference between running your business smoothly and scrambling.

Skiddle has two payout models, and the difference between them is worth understanding.

Standard Remittance (Default)

By default, Skiddle holds your money until after your event. Remittance is processed on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then takes another 2–3 working days to clear into your bank. If your event is on Saturday, you might not see the money until the following Thursday or Friday — at the earliest. Need it faster? Skiddle offers “Same Day Payment” for £10 + VAT per request.

DirectPay via Stripe

Skiddle does offer a Stripe integration called DirectPay, and plenty of serious promoters already use it. Credit where it is due — DirectPay does get your money to you faster than standard remittance. Funds settle on a rolling 7-day basis after each transaction, which is a significant improvement over waiting until after the event.

But there are some important caveats. DirectPay is only available through Skiddle's legacy Promotion Centre — an older version of their platform. The decision to enable it is irreversible (once you opt in, you cannot switch back). You become the merchant of record, meaning you take on full chargeback liability. And the transaction visibility is limited compared to what you would get with a native Stripe Connect integration — you are working through Skiddle's system, not directly within your own Stripe dashboard.

Entry's Approach

With Entry, Stripe Connect is the default — not an opt-in, not a legacy feature, not irreversible. It is how the platform works from day one. Payments go directly through your own Stripe account. Payouts land in your bank within 1–2 business days of each sale. You have full visibility into every transaction, every refund, and every payout in your own Stripe dashboard. No middleman. No legacy platform. No hoops.

Who Owns Your Customers?

This might be the most important question in this entire comparison, and it is the one most promoters forget to ask until it is too late.

When someone buys a ticket through Skiddle, Skiddle captures that customer's data. Name, email, purchase history — it all lives in Skiddle's database. Skiddle can use that data to:

• Send marketing emails promoting other events (including your competitors)
• Retarget your buyers with ads for other promoters' events
• Build their own audience off the back of your events

With Entry, every piece of customer data belongs to you. Full stop. No shared databases. No platform marketing to your audience. No competitor events being pushed to people who bought your tickets.

The Full Feature Breakdown

Beyond the fundamentals, here is a comprehensive feature-by-feature comparison of everything that matters for UK event promoters.

That is 17 rows. Entry wins 15 of them. Skiddle wins one — marketplace listing. The rest is not close.

The Real Numbers

Let us model what switching from Skiddle to Entry actually looks like for a mid-size UK promoter running monthly events.

That last row is the one that should stop you. Over £30,000 per year extracted from your customers and sent to Skiddle. Not to you. Not reinvested in your events. To the platform. Booking fees plus delivery fees — for a QR code and a checkout page.

With Entry, your customers pay exactly what you advertise. You pay a small transaction percentage on your side — transparent, simple, and visible on our pricing page. The rest is yours.

The “Discovery” Argument

This is Skiddle's strongest card, and we will be honest about it. Skiddle has a marketplace. People browse skiddle.com looking for events. If you list your event there, some people who were not looking for you specifically might find you.

But let us be realistic about what that actually means in 2026:

• Most ticket sales come from your own marketing — Instagram, TikTok, word of mouth, email lists. Not from people randomly browsing Skiddle.
• Skiddle's marketplace promotes your competitors alongside you. Your event listing sits next to every other event in your city on the same night. You are paying with your brand and your customers' data to be one listing among hundreds.
• Discovery does not build loyalty. If someone found you through Skiddle, they are a Skiddle user first and your customer second. They will use Skiddle to find their next event too — which might be your competitor's.

Entry does not have a marketplace. But Entry gives you the tools to build your own discovery engine: a built-in rep program, full ad tracking so you know exactly which campaigns convert, abandoned cart recovery to recapture lost sales, and beautiful branded pages that make sharing natural.

The Verdict

We said this would be honest, so here it is: if you are a brand-new promoter with zero audience and no marketing capability, Skiddle's marketplace can give you initial visibility. That is a genuine advantage for people just starting out.

But if you have any audience at all — even a small one — the case for Entry is overwhelming:

Skiddle built a platform for a different era of events — one where promoters needed a marketplace to reach buyers and were willing to trade their brand, their data, and their customers' money for it. That era is over.

Today, promoters have their own audiences on social media, their own email lists, and their own communities. What they need is a platform that amplifies their brand instead of replacing it. That is exactly what Entry was built to do.

Ready to see what your events look like without booking fees, without someone else's branding, and with instant access to your revenue? Check our pricing or just get started free and see the difference for yourself. For a deeper look at how booking fees impact your sales, read how booking fees are killing your ticket sales. And if you want to understand why white-label ticketing matters, we have broken that down too.