Love Envelope and Evite, compared.
Evite is free, and free is a real answer for a barbecue. For a wedding the question is what the free version is paid for with, and the answer is advertising.
Evite has been doing this longer than almost anybody and does one thing extremely well: it gets a hundred people told about a party in about four minutes, for nothing. For most of the events in most lives, that is the correct product and no further thought is needed.
The free version is paid for with advertising, and it is genuinely generous: up to 750 guests, at no cost. That is not a criticism, it is a business model, and it is why the product can be free at that scale. It does mean that on the free tier the page your guests open carries another company marketing to them, next to the details of your day, and there are offers waiting after they answer.
A wedding invitation is the one piece of paper from a wedding that people keep. It is also, for a lot of guests, the first impression of the whole day. That is the argument for paying for it once: not that Evite is bad, but that an advert has no business being on that particular page.
Side by side.
What free costs, and what the paid alternative buys, for the one event you would not use a free one for.
What you pay
Love Envelope$100 once, permanently, with nothing recurring.
EviteFree with adverts. Their single event packages run from $17.99 for 12 guests to $99.99 for 750, and Evite Pro is $249.99 a year.
Advertising
Love EnvelopeNone, on any tier, ever. There is only one tier and it has none.
EviteOn the free tier, on the page your guests open. Clearing them for a hundred guests means the $99.99 package, since the $68.99 one stops at 75.
What it feels like to open
Love EnvelopeA full screen invitation, sealed, that a guest opens. It is the product.
EviteA functional event page. It is built to inform rather than to be a keepsake.
Replies
Love EnvelopeHead count, everybody named, dietary notes, all on the invitation itself.
EviteSolid. Replies, comments, reminders, and a guest list that works.
Design
Love EnvelopeSix compositions and ten palettes, drawn for one kind of day and nothing else.
EviteA very wide catalogue built for parties, with wedding designs among them.
Guest limits
Love EnvelopeNone. Any number of people can open the link.
EviteGenerous. Up to 750 guests on one invitation, even on the free tier.
Who it is built for
Love EnvelopeWeddings, engagements, vow renewals and anniversaries, and nothing else.
EviteEvery kind of party, weddings included.
How long it stays
Love EnvelopePermanently, once paid, with the replies behind it.
EviteTied to the event and the tier.
Their public pricing was last read on August 22, 2026. Prices move, and theirs is the page that decides what you pay them, so check it before you decide anything.
What Evite does better.
Speed, reach and price, which between them cover a great deal of life. Nothing here is faster for a casual event: you pick something, type the details, paste in a pile of addresses and it is done, at no cost, with replies collected and reminders sent. It is also the one everybody already recognises, so no guest has to be told what the link is or persuaded that it is safe to open. For a birthday, a leaving do or a Sunday lunch, paying a hundred dollars to send an invitation would be a slightly strange thing to do, and Evite is the reason why.
Where the difference actually shows.
Four things that do not matter for a party and matter a great deal for a wedding.
Another company advertising at your guests
On the free tier, the page carrying your names and your date also carries a message from a company that paid to be there, and another offer after a guest has replied. For a five a side match nobody notices. Under the words announcing a marriage, people notice.
The moment it is opened
A wedding invitation is supposed to be an object. This one arrives sealed and is opened, with the names set in a proper face on paper that has a texture to it. An event page is a good deal more useful than that and a good deal less memorable.
What the guest list is for
A party needs a head count. A wedding needs the head count, everybody in the party by name for the place cards, and what they cannot eat for the caterer. Those are different questions and they need different forms.
Keeping it
Nobody revisits a barbecue invitation. Couples come back to their wedding invitation, and so do their guests, so it is worth having one that stays where it was and still looks like something.
Which of the two to use.
Honestly, most people should use both, for different things.
It is the wedding, the engagement party or the anniversary, you would rather nobody advertised anything on it, and you want the thing people open to be worth opening.
It is any other event in your life. Use Evite, spend nothing, and put the hundred dollars towards the day.
Worth reading either way.
Guides on wording, timing and replies that apply whichever of the two you end up using.
- Invitation wording when parents are hostingThe host line is the first sentence of an invitation and the one that causes the most family conversation. Every version of it, including the awkward ones.6 min read
- Anniversary party invitation wordingWording for a fortieth, a sixtieth, one thrown by the children, and a quiet one for two. Including the line that gets the older guests to reply.5 min read
- Adults only wording that nobody takes badlyHow to say no children without sounding cold, where to put the line, and what to do about the guest who asks anyway.5 min read
- Vow renewal invitation wordingYou are not getting married, you are saying it again on purpose. Wording for ten years, twenty five, and the ones that follow something hard.5 min read
- Reception only invitation wordingInviting somebody to the party and not the ceremony, without it reading as a second tier. The wordings that work and the ones that sting.5 min read
- Asking guests about dietary requirementsAsk once, at reply time, in one open box. Why the tick list is the wrong shape, and what your caterer actually needs from you.4 min read
$100, once.
One payment for one invitation, and the link stays online permanently with the replies behind it.
Asked and answered.
What people ask when they are wondering whether to just use the free one.
For an informal one, with a paid tier so the advertising is gone, it will do the job. What it will not do is feel like an invitation. That is the whole of the trade, and plenty of couples decide it is the right one.
On the free tier, yes, which is what pays for the free tier. Their paid packages exist largely to remove them, and for a hundred guests that is the $99.99 one, since the tier below it stops at 75. Nothing here has advertising on any tier, because there is only one tier.
For one event in your life, and only that one. The argument is not that free is bad. It is that the invitation to a wedding is the piece people keep and show to somebody, and that removing the adverts for a hundred guests costs $99.99 there for one event and $100 here permanently.
Yes. Build the whole invitation free, publish it free, and it is live for 24 hours before anything is paid. Send it to yourself, open it on a phone, show it to whoever needs to approve it, then decide.
Tell us if any of this is wrong.
Their prices are theirs to change, and a page quoting them is only as good as the day it was read.
Spotted something out of date about Evite?
If a price has moved, a feature has been added or dropped, or something here reads as unfair, write and say so. It gets checked against their own pages and corrected, and the date printed under the table moves with it. A note from the service being written about is as welcome as one from a couple.
Contact usNothing on these pages is paid for. No service here has paid to be included, written about or left out.
Other comparisons
The rest of the field, one page each.
- Paperless PostDigital invitations, paid for in coins and spent per recipient.
- GreenvelopeOnline invitations for weddings, priced by the size of the guest list.
- ZolaA whole wedding planning suite, with a free website and a registry at the centre of it.
- JoyA free wedding website, guest app and digital invitations, funded by paper and the registry.
- The KnotA wedding marketplace and planning suite, with a free website inside it.
- MintedA print shop with a designer marketplace, and a free website alongside it.
- Appy CoupleA wedding website and native guest app, charged by the year or the month.
- PunchbowlSubscription online invitations and cards, aimed at parties rather than weddings.
- CanvaA design tool. It makes a picture of an invitation and leaves the sending to you.