FormSide vs generic ticketing tools
Generic ticketing tools are built to sell a place at an event and stop at the payment. A sports camp carries on after the payment: medical notes, a registration desk, coach groups, and a register that records who collected each child. FormSide is a sports camp booking system built for that second half, and it is free while in beta.
Event ticketing is a mature category and much of it is very good at what it does: a listing, a checkout, a ticket with a barcode, and a payout. This page compares that category as a whole with FormSide, without naming products, because the gap is in the category rather than in any one tool.
WRITTEN BY THE FORMSIDE TEAM · LAST REVIEWED 22 AUGUST 2026 · FORMSIDE IS OUR OWN PRODUCT
SIDE BY SIDE
Where ticketing stops, and where a camp keeps going.
Every row is a job between a family finding the camp and a child being collected on the last day. The ticketing column describes the category in general: individual tools vary, and some add a custom question or two, but none of them is built around a child arriving at a desk.
| WHAT A CAMP NEEDS | FORMSIDE | TICKETING TOOL |
|---|---|---|
| Public event page with dates, price and places left | Yes | Yes |
| Card payments with a payout to youFormSide uses your own Stripe account; ticketing tools typically pay out from theirs. | Yes | Yes |
| Commission or per-ticket fee on what families payTicketing tools commonly add a booking fee per ticket, paid by you or the family. | None | Usually |
| Bank transfer with a unique reference matched to the booking | Yes | No |
| Cash at the desk recorded against the booking | Yes | No |
| Deposit now, balance later, or instalments charged on a date | Yes | No |
| A place held while the family fills in the formMost checkouts hold a ticket for a few minutes; few hold it through a long medical form. | Yes | By hand |
| Several children in one checkout, each with their own passMultiple tickets, yes; a child record per ticket, rarely. | Yes | By hand |
| Book the whole camp or individual days, each with its own capacity | Yes | By hand |
| Weekly training blocks sold as one booking with every date on the pass | Yes | No |
| Medical notes, allergies and emergency contact on the bookingA free-text question is not a medical record with restricted access. | Yes | By hand |
| Medical notes visible only to the people running the day | Yes | No |
| Signed, versioned waiver stored with the booking | Yes | No |
| QR check-in with the staff member and time recordedBarcode scanning at the door is common; sign-out is not. | Yes | By hand |
| Sign-out that records who collected each child | Yes | No |
| Coach groups, split by age or surname, each coach seeing their own | Yes | No |
| Incident log with the family told in writing | Yes | No |
| Waitlist that offers a freed place automatically | Yes | By hand |
| Direct messages between the family and the organiser | Yes | By hand |
| Review request after every camp, published with consent | Yes | No |
| Family can download or erase their own data | Yes | By hand |
| Retention period enforced automatically, financial record kept | Yes | No |
| Read-only API and signed webhooks | Yes | Yes |
| Your own domain for camp pages and forms | Yes | By hand |
“By hand” means it can be done, but someone has to do it each time: a formula, a copy-paste, or a phone call. Every FormSide row describes what the product does today; see the product page for the detail behind each one.
HONESTLY
When a ticketing tool is still the right call.
Ticketing tools are excellent at what they were built for. If your event looks like the list below, a ticketing tool is probably the better fit and we would say so.
- A one-off event — a tournament, a fun run, a presentation evening — where the ticket is the whole relationship.
- Adults buying for themselves, with no medical notes, no emergency contact and no question of who collects whom.
- Everyone pays by card, in full, at the moment they book.
- You want a large public marketplace to find the event for you, and you are happy to pay a fee for that reach.
- Nobody needs a register, a group list or an incident log on the day.
WHEN IT STOPS BEING FINE
The moment it stops being the right call.
- The “ticket holder” is a seven-year-old and the person who paid is not the person collecting them.
- A coach needs an allergy note before lunch and the only copy is a free-text answer in an export.
- Families ask to pay by bank transfer, or a deposit now and the rest at half-term.
- The same children come back every term, and you are rebuilding their details from scratch each time.
- A parent asks what you hold about their child, and the answer is spread across a ticketing export and your inbox.
Is FormSide a ticketing tool?
No. FormSide is a booking system for UK sports camps and weekly training programmes. It does issue a QR admission pass per child, so the door works the way a ticket scanner does, but the pass is the start of the record rather than the end of it: the same booking carries medical notes, the waiver, payments, check-in and check-out, coach group and any incident.
Does FormSide take a booking fee like a ticketing tool?
No. FormSide takes no commission and no per-booking fee. Card payments go straight into your own Stripe account and Stripe charges its published processing fee; bank transfers and cash cost nothing. While FormSide is in beta there is no subscription either, and the commission stays at zero whatever happens to plan pricing.
Can families pay by bank transfer or in instalments?
Yes. Every booking gets its own payment reference and deadline, the place is held while the transfer clears, and the reference matches itself when the money lands. Organisers can also ask for a deposit and collect the balance later, or set up an instalment plan that charges the family's saved card automatically on the dates set.
What happens at the registration desk?
Each child has a QR pass unique to their booking. Staff scan it on a phone; the roster shows the child's medical notes, emergency contact and whether anything is still owed, and records who checked them in. Sign-out records the adult who collected them and the staff member who handed over. Coach groups and an incident log sit on the same desk.
Can my club website still list camps and take bookings?
Yes. A read-only REST API lists your live camps with dates, price and places left, signed webhooks tell your systems when a booking is created, confirmed, cancelled, paid or reviewed, and camp pages and booking forms can be served from your own domain, such as camps.yourclub.co.uk.
RELATED
Keep reading
- The registration deskQR check-in, medical notes on arrival, coach groups, the incident log and who collected whom.Read
- Safeguarding at a sports campDBS, medical notes and collection: what the desk has to get right.Read
- FormSide vs spreadsheets and Google FormsThe other common starting point, job by job.Read
- PricingFree while in beta, no commission, and how each payment route is charged.Read
FREE WHILE IN BETA
Try it on one camp before you move anything.
Publish one camp page in about twenty minutes, take a real booking, and see the register. No card, no contract, and no commission on what families pay you.