In the Evite vs Paperless Post fight, Evite wins on free (but your guests see ads), and Paperless Post wins on looks (but you pay per guest for anything fancy). Evite premium runs $17.99 for up to 12 guests to $99.99 for up to 750. Paperless Post's paid features are priced per guest, roughly $0.50 to $1.44 each on a small list. For casual parties, Partiful is free and ad-free. For weddings, pay for polish or use an invite platform with built-in RSVP tracking. Nobody needs envelope liners on a Tuesday taco night. Probably.
Evite is free because your guests are the product. Paperless Post is pretty because you're the customer. That's most of the decision, honestly.
The rest of it lives in the details: how many people you're inviting, whether Grandma will open a link, whether you care that an ad for mattress toppers sits under your baby shower invite. So here's the whole thing laid out, with real 2026 prices, what each platform does badly, and the alternatives that have quietly gotten better than both for certain events.
Full disclosure before we start: Eventic is a digital invitation platform too, so we have skin in this game. We'll mention where we fit, once, and we'll tell you when a competitor is the better call. Deal?
Evite vs Paperless Post at a glance
Prices below come from each company's published pricing and help pages as checked in September 2026. They change, so glance at the checkout screen before you commit.
| What matters | Evite | Paperless Post |
|---|---|---|
| Free option | Yes, with ads shown to guests | Yes, basic Cards and Flyers, no ads |
| Paid pricing | Per event: $17.99 (up to 12 guests) to $99.99 (up to 750) | Per guest, by feature tier: roughly $0.50 to $1.44 per guest on small lists |
| Annual plan | Evite Pro, $249.99/year | Paperless Pro, from $250/year (250 guests) |
| Design feel | Casual, playful, huge template library | Polished, designer collections, envelope animation |
| Best for | Kids' parties, casual get-togethers | Showers, holiday parties, weddings on a budget |
| Weak spot | Ads on free invites feel cheap for anything formal | Costs creep as you add liners, backdrops and extras |
If you only read one line: Evite for a free casual party where nobody cares about ads, Paperless Post when the invite itself needs to look like the event matters.
Where each one actually wins (and loses)
Evite: the default, for better and worse
Evite has been around forever, and it shows in good ways. The template gallery is massive, the RSVP flow is familiar to almost everyone over 35, and a free invite takes about four minutes to send. For a 7-year-old's trampoline party, that's the whole brief.
The catch is the free tier. Your guests see banner ads on the invitation page, and that's fine for a backyard barbecue but gives off serious ick on a bridal shower. Paying removes the ads and adds premium designs, but the pricing is per event and tied to guest count, so a 40-person party lands in the $68.99 Platinum bracket (up to 75 guests) because the $36.99 Gold tier stops at 30.
Paperless Post: gorgeous, with a meter running
Paperless Post's designs are the reason people use it. The envelope-opening animation, the designer collections, the fonts that don't look like a school newsletter. For holiday parties and showers, it genuinely understood the assignment.
But the pricing model trips people up. You can send free designs to your first 50 guests, and after that the paid feature tiers are billed per recipient through Coins. A liner here, a custom backdrop there, and a 'cheap' invite quietly doubles. Their Flyer format is the budget-friendly escape hatch: textable, simpler, and free on basic designs.
If you're wondering exactly what the paid tiers include and whether any of it changes your RSVP rate, we broke that down in what you really get when you pay for premium invites, tier by tier.
The alternatives that are quietly better for some events
Here's the thing nobody at Evite or Paperless Post will tell you: for a lot of events, neither is the best tool anymore. A few worth knowing:
- Partiful — free, no ads, built for texting a link to your friends. Gen Z's default for birthdays and house parties. Too playful for formal events.
- Apple Invites — per Apple's launch announcement, creating needs an iCloud+ subscription, but anyone can RSVP without an Apple account. Shared photo albums are the standout.
- Greenvelope — elegant, wedding-leaning, paid. Single mailings start at $19 for up to 20 guests.
- Zola and The Knot — free wedding websites with RSVP built in. Great if you're mailing paper invites and just need the replies tracked.
- Canva — brilliant for designing, but it's a design tool, not an RSVP tool. You'll still need somewhere to collect answers.
- Punchbowl — subscription-based now, leaning toward kids' parties with licensed character themes.
Want the ones that cost nothing and don't slap ads on your guests? We tested the field in our roundup of free invitation sites that skip the ads. And if your crowd is mostly under 30, read the head-to-head on whether Partiful beats Evite for your party before you send anything.
Where does Eventic sit? We built it for people whose guests live on WhatsApp and text, with RSVPs landing in one list and a QR code on every invite. If RSVPs are the part you care about, our free RSVP tool gives you one link and a live headcount, free for the first 25 attending guests, and you can judge it against the rest. It's one option, not the only one.
Which one should you use? Match it to the event
The platform matters less than the fit. A few quick calls:
| Event | Best pick | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Kid's birthday | Evite free or Partiful | Parents know the RSVP flow; nobody minds ads |
| Adult birthday / house party | Partiful | Free, no ads, text-first, feels current |
| Bridal or baby shower | Paperless Post Flyer or Card | Looks like effort without a big bill |
| Holiday or office party | Paperless Post or Evite premium | Branded look, no ads in front of colleagues |
| Wedding | Greenvelope, Paperless Post, or an invite platform with RSVP tracking | Polish matters and so does meal-choice tracking |
| Multi-event wedding (Indian, weekend-long) | A platform with per-event RSVPs | You need separate headcounts for each function |
The table's the short version. For the reasoning behind each pick, plus the edge cases like hybrid events and guests who refuse to download anything, see our event-by-event guide to picking an invitation site.
One wedding-specific note: the Emily Post Institute still treats digital wedding invitations as fine for showers and informal events but prefers paper for the main wedding. Lots of couples ignore that now, and we've written about whether digital invites come across as tacky if you're worried. The practical middle ground is paper for the ceremony invite, digital for everything else.
The feature that matters more than design: RSVP tracking
People pick invite platforms by the thumbnails. Then three weeks later they're scrolling through 60 texts trying to work out who said yes. That's the real test.
Before you choose, check four things:
- Can guests reply without creating an account or downloading an app?
- Can you ask custom questions (meal choice, plus-one names, kids' headcount)?
- Can you export the guest list to a spreadsheet?
- Can you send a reminder to only the people who haven't replied?
A platform that fails two of those will cost you more hours than it saves dollars. If RSVPs are your main worry, our walkthrough on tracking RSVPs properly with a digital invite covers the setup, and this list of free RSVP tools is handy if you only need the tracking part.
Already picked one and regretting it?
Happens all the time. You sent save the dates on Evite, then saw a Paperless Post design you actually love. Or your free tier ran out at guest 51.
Switching mid-planning is doable, but the RSVPs you've already collected won't follow you automatically, and guests get confused by two links. Our guide to moving to a new invitation platform without losing RSVPs has the export-and-announce steps, plus the exact message to send guests so nobody RSVPs twice.
The honest verdict
Evite is the minivan: not cool, completely reliable, and free if you tolerate the ads. Paperless Post is the nice dinner jacket you pay for by the hour. Partiful is the group chat that became an app.
For a casual party, don't spend money. Seriously. For anything where the invite sets the tone — showers, milestone birthdays, weddings — spend a little, and put that money toward removing ads and getting clean RSVP tracking rather than animated envelope liners. Your guests will remember the party, not the liner.
Whatever you send, hope the yes replies come in fast and the maybes make up their minds before the caterer needs a number.
People Also Asked
Explore common questions related to this blog.
