Ummah vs Qariyb A Qariyb alternative for Muslim event organizers
Qariyb is a UK-built Muslim event ticketing platform: one clear fee, no subscription, Islamic-specific event fields, multi-currency, email campaigns and a public API. Ummah is the operating system a Muslim organization runs on, of which ticketing is one module. If you only ever sell tickets, read the fee rows carefully. If you run a community, read the rest.
Qariyb sells the ticket well. The question is what happens for the other fifty weeks.
This is a good product and the comparison should say so plainly. Qariyb publishes its pricing on one page with a calculator you can check, supports sixteen currencies, and has built Islamic-specific event fields — halal food options, gender-based seating, wudu facility information — that generic ticketing tools have never thought about. Their site is properly built, with real structured data on every event, and their terms were updated the day we read them. They have also shipped things we have not: multi-day events with separate schedules, an email campaign tool with open and click tracking, webhooks and a public API.
The fee is where the two products differ most, and it is not about the percentage. Qariyb’s 3.5% is deducted from the organizer’s payout — their own FAQ says it is "automatically deducted from each ticket sale" — and Stripe’s fee comes out of the same payment before it reaches you. Their own calculator, on a hundred $50 tickets, shows $5,000 gross becoming $4,650 net at an effective rate of 7.0%. On Ummah the platform fee is added on top at checkout and paid by the buyer, so you bank the face value: on Free that is $50.00 a ticket, not $46.50.
And then there is everything that is not a ticket. A masjid takes donations and has to issue a year-end receipt. A school runs a term where the second child is half price and a family pays across three months. A community publishes prayer times, keeps a member directory, charges dues, and needs the people who came in March to still be reachable in October. Qariyb does none of that, and says so by omission rather than pretending. Ummah is built around it.
Side by side
Qariyb's column was read from qariyb.com, /pricing, /about, /discover, /terms and two event pages, plus their pricing bundle, because the FAQ answers on /pricing are not in the served HTML on September 19, 2026. Where something is not published on their site, this table says so rather than guessing. Bold is the side that is ahead on that row. Prices move, so check theirs before you act on it.
| Feature | Ummah | Qariyb |
|---|---|---|
| Subscription | Free $0/mo, Basic $19/mo, Advanced $75/mo. Free events are free on every plan | None. "No monthly costs", "no setup fees", one fee per ticket sold |
| Who the platform fee comes out of | The attendee. It is added on top at checkout, so the organization banks the full face value | The organizer. Their FAQ: the fee is "automatically deducted from each ticket sale". Stripe’s fee is also "taken out of the ticket amount... before it reaches your account" |
| What the organizer keeps on a $50 ticket | $50.00 on every plan. The attendee pays $1.50 on Free, $0.75 on Basic, $0.00 on Advanced, plus card processing | $46.50 by their own calculator: 3.5% platform fee and 2.9% + $0.30 Stripe, both deducted. They put the effective rate at 7.0% on a US card |
| Free events | Free on every plan, with no platform fee | Free, with "all features included, unlimited registrations" |
| Currencies | Currency picked per event, through your own Stripe or PayPal | 16 currencies, with lower displayed Stripe rates in GBP and EUR. Events supported in 35 countries |
| Payouts | Straight into your own Stripe or PayPal account at the time of sale | Standard payouts in 2 to 7 business days, or instant payouts within minutes, which carry an additional fee |
| Islamic-specific event fields | Amenities per event including halal food, a family section, childcare and parking, prayer times for the venue on the event page, and gender-specific ticket types | Halal food options, gender-based seating and wudu facility information, built into event creation as a named feature |
| Ticketing depth | Multi-tier tickets, capacity, waitlist, promo codes, a custom registration form, an optional donation on top at checkout, complimentary tickets for speakers | Multiple ticket types, discount codes, custom registration questions, an approval workflow, guest list and attendee export, multi-day events with separate schedules, recurring events, virtual events |
| Check-in at the door | QR check-in from any phone, a kiosk app for tablets, double-scan protection, and the QR code in every confirmation email | QR scanning with real-time tracking and gate management |
| Members between events | Everyone who registers lands in a member directory you filter, tag, tier, charge dues to and export, reachable by email, push, in-app and SMS | Attendee exports and public organizer and attendee profiles. No member directory, tiers or dues |
| Donations and fundraising | Campaigns with goals, recurring giving, a donor directory, an optional donation on top of a ticket, tax receipts with your own EIN and logo, embeddable widgets and a kiosk app | Not part of the product |
| Programs, classes and weekend school | Sessions, early-bird price windows, payment plans with a deposit and up to 36 installments, automatic sibling and family discounts, parent and child registration fields, waitlists, attendance and refunds against a policy | Not part of the product. Multi-day events are the closest thing and are not a term with a roster |
| Prayer times | Calculated adhan for 2,000+ masajid, 300+ with real iqama schedules, on the community page, on event pages and as a widget on your own site | Organizer-entered information about prayer facilities at a venue. No adhan or iqama times |
| Community feed and app | A private moderated feed, and a shared iOS and Android app plus a web app | Neither. Their terms mention mobile applications but we found no App Store or Play listing |
| Email marketing | Broadcasts by email, push, in-app and SMS, to everyone or to a tag, scheduled or now, with delivery stats | Email announcements and campaigns with templates, scheduling, open and click tracking and unsubscribe handling |
| API and integrations | Google Sheets and attendee exports. No public API today | Webhooks and a public developers area |
| On your own website | Copy-paste widgets for events, prayer times, donations and programs that run on your own domain, plus a website we design and build, included on Basic and Advanced | Per-event SEO fields and social marketing asset packs, and public organizer profile pages. No embeddable widget or custom domain found |
| Getting found | Server-rendered event pages with Event structured data, per-city and per-state pages, a listing in the Ummah app, and a sitemap | Fully server-rendered with Event and ItemList structured data on their listing and event pages, which is well done. No city or state pages, and no sitemap: /sitemap.xml returns 404 and robots.txt declares none |
| Published numbers | 3,000+ communities, 30,000+ Muslims, 15,000+ events, $80K+ processed for organizers | "185,000+ Muslims worldwide" and "320+ cities", both in meta tags on their about page rather than in visible copy. Their public catalogue on September 19, 2026 showed 4 upcoming events across 4 cities |
Where Qariyb is the better choice
No product wins every row, and a comparison page that pretends otherwise is not worth reading. Here is where we would point you at them instead.
No subscription at all
One fee, no plans, no tiers, nothing monthly. If you run two events a year and nothing else, paying nothing until you sell something is simpler than picking a plan, and we will not pretend otherwise.
Multi-currency and international reach
Sixteen currencies, events in 35 countries, and lower displayed Stripe rates for European cards. If your organization runs events across borders, that is a real advantage over us today.
Multi-day events, email campaigns and webhooks
A multi-day conference with a separate schedule per day, a campaign tool with open and click tracking, and webhooks with a public developers area. Three things they have shipped and we have not.
Islamic fields as a first-class feature
Halal food options, gender-based seating and wudu facilities are part of event creation rather than a free-text note. We cover the same ground through amenities and ticket types; theirs is the more deliberate design.