Why we made Gathrd free (and kept it that way)

The problem with 'free' in the events world

Every major events platform talks about being free to list. Eventbrite does. Ticketmaster does. But the moment you take a ticket payment, the fees arrive. Eventbrite charges 6.95% of ticket value plus 59p per ticket. That's not free. That's a trap dressed up as generosity.

When we started building Gathrd, we knew churches and community organisers weren't going to accept hidden fees buried in the small print. Most faith events run on threadbare budgets. A youth group raising funds for a mission trip can't afford to lose 7% to platform fees. A local prayer meeting with a voluntary £3 entry can't either.

So we asked ourselves a harder question: what if free actually meant free? No upfront subscription. No monthly costs. Just a small take on the money that flows through the platform when someone books a ticket.

3% covers what matters

We landed on 3% for paid tickets. That's it. No hidden per-ticket charge. No setup fees. No monthly minimums you're forced to swallow even if nobody books anything that month.

The maths is straightforward. A user books a ticket to your worship night for £5. Gathrd takes 15p. The other £4.85 goes to your church or community group. You pay nothing to list the event. You pay nothing if nobody shows up.

For UK churches, we've added Gift Aid automation with split-checkout. You can collect the donation separately from the ticket price, which means Gift Aid goes to your organisation, not the platform. It's a feature Eventbrite doesn't offer because they're not built for faith communities.

The Church plan at £19.99 a month gives you unlimited events and some admin features if you're running lots of bookings. But it's optional. If you're a small group running one event every quarter, free is genuinely free.

What free for community use actually protects

When we designed this model, we were thinking about real scenarios. A mid-sized church with twelve different ministry groups shouldn't pay twelve subscription fees. A retreat organised by volunteers for a weekend shouldn't face upfront costs before ticket sales open. A prayer network spanning five parishes shouldn't choose between centralised booking and financial sustainability.

Free for community use means those scenarios don't require compromise. Each group can list their events at no cost. If fifty people buy tickets at £4 each, Gathrd takes £6 from that revenue. Your church gets £194. Everyone wins because the fee scales with your actual income, not against it.

This also protects discovery. We built Gathrd as a faith-only directory because we wanted worship nights and prayer meetings discoverable in one place, without nightclubs or secular events cluttering the results. But that only works if organisers actually use the platform. The free model removes a barrier. You list your event because there's no friction. People find it because we've built search and filtering around denominations, event types, and locations.

The door check-in piece that nobody was offering

Launch week, we got an unexpected request from a conference organiser in Birmingham. She had 400 tickets sold and no way to check people in without a third-party system. We built QR door check-in into Gathrd at no extra cost because that should be table stakes, not premium add-on.

For larger events or churches wanting to go further, we've integrated with TapTrust so you can check people in via NFC wristbands. That integration still sits within the same pricing. You're not paying extra per scan or per feature unlock.

The free model means we can't bloat the platform with pointless features you won't use. Instead, we focus on what community organisers actually need: a way to list events, take secure payments, communicate with attendees, and check them in on the door. Everything else is noise.

Why this matters for your event right now

If you're running a church event, a community gathering, or a ministry initiative and you've been avoiding booking platforms because of cost, Gathrd removes that excuse.

List your event today. You won't see an invoice. You won't encounter a subscription wall. The only time money changes hands is when someone actually buys a ticket. At that point, Gathrd takes 3% and everyone else benefits.

We've made this choice deliberately. We're betting that churches and communities will use the platform more frequently, recommend it to others, and stay loyal, if we respect their budgets and their time. That bet shapes everything we build.