Taking the most of the party planning tools of evite

If you like to throw parties, there is a good chance you are already familiar with evite. I visited the sites several times before but I never really took the time to explore it in details.

Over the years, I developed my own set of party planning tools. With the Web 2.0, I am intrigued to see what is out there. In the following months, I will examine other online event-planning service on the Web so you will be able to select the right one for you.

I started this column with an old timer. evite is far from a Web2.0 site but it does the job. I tested drive evite to see how deep it goes in the planning stage. In theory, evite can save you time.

What in it for you?

First of all, this is a free online event-planning service on the Web. Basically, evite provides online invitations, eCards plus a series of party-planning tools and tips.

I was mostly interested by the planning tools. This is what I tried out. You get access to a party budget estimator, a useful checklist tool, the drink calculator and more. You create your personalized eCard invites, manage your guest lists and keep track of responses.

You can manage the list of things you ask your guests to bring, suggest multiple dates for the event to see which one is the most popular, poll your guests and even request a payment by Paypal from your guests.

evite also provides ideas on party themes and menus. There is more pressure for me to continue to bring you interesting and unique party content.

Pros and cons of email party invites

The bad thing is that evite works only if your guests have an email. Nowadays it is a lesser problem than in the past.

Still in a real life, you may need to take the phone or send a letter to a few guests to get all the answers anyway. But at least you can contact most of your guests in one shot by email. You can set a URL for your invitation.

I did not complete the guest list part neither send any invitations. Therefore, I cannot tell you if that part works great or not. I know that you can customize the reply responses to your invitation. Since evite is operational since 1998 and it is very popular, it is safe to assume they do it reasonably well.

If you have used evite before, what can you tell us about your experience?

Sourcing:
Learn more: Web site of evite