An Evite alternative with no ads and no price tiers

The question most hosts arrive with is narrow: will my guests see advertising on the invitation I send, and what does it cost to stop that. Evite answers it on its own support pages. Its Free versus Premium table lists "No ads" as a Premium-only row, its premium page says "Premium experiences are advertisement-free, and include a matching envelope, stamps, and additional photo and text cards", and its pricing page lists "Ad removal" and "Gifting suggestions removal" among the paid upgrades.

Bringalong has no paid tier to compare against that. One version, free, no ads on the site, and no upgrade screen in front of a guest trying to say yes. You build the event in about a minute with no account and get two links: a public invite link to share and a private manage link you keep.

It is also the smaller tool by a wide margin, and that shows up fast. There is no app, no email or text sending, no reminders, no printed products and no gift registry. Evite has apps on iOS and Android, sends invitations by text, and has a design gallery far larger than twelve themes. Decide on the rows that matter to your event rather than on the total.

What Evite's paid tiers cost, and what sets the price

Evite publishes the figures, which makes this the easiest part of the comparison to check. Its premium page says "Pricing is based on the size of your guest list", and its support page on invitation pricing lists five options: Silver at $17.99 for up to 12 guests, Gold at $36.99 for up to 30, Platinum at $68.99 for up to 75, Diamond at $99.99 for up to 750, and Evite Pro at $249.99 a year for up to 2,500 guests per invitation.

Per head those work out differently. Silver is about $1.50 a guest, Gold about $1.23, Platinum about 92 cents, and Diamond about 13 cents at the top of its band. The awkward spots are the band edges: a party for 13 people pays Gold, so an invitation for 13 costs twice what an invitation for 12 costs.

Design is priced separately from the tier. Evite says "All designs in the Evite gallery are labeled as Free or Premium, look for the Premium crown icon on Premium designs." There are also paid upgrades listed one by one: envelope and stamp, sticker, background, backside text, ad removal, and gifting suggestions removal.

• Silver, $17.99, up to 12 guests.
• Gold, $36.99, up to 30 guests.
• Platinum, $68.99, up to 75 guests.
• Diamond, $99.99, up to 750 guests.
• Evite Pro, $249.99 a year, up to 2,500 guests per invitation.

Where the advertising sits

Three separate Evite pages say the same thing in different words. The premium page: "Premium experiences are advertisement-free, and include a matching envelope, stamps, and additional photo and text cards." The Free versus Premium support table lists "No ads" as a Premium row. The pricing page lists "Ad removal" as a paid upgrade, alongside "Gifting suggestions removal".

Read together, those lines tell a host what to expect: on the free version, advertising and gifting suggestions are part of the page, and taking them off is a purchase. That is a documented product decision rather than a complaint. A free invitation that funds itself through advertising is a trade, and some hosts will take it.

Bringalong runs no ads anywhere, has no premium tier that removes them, and has no gifting suggestions to remove. The invite page shows the event, the reply buttons, the bring list and the replies. On data, Evite's privacy policy says "These disclosures may be considered a 'sale' or the processing/sharing of personal information for targeted advertising purposes under applicable law", and separately that "We do not sell or share your phone number with third parties for their own marketing purposes without your consent." Both sentences are theirs.

What the money actually buys

Separate the things a paid tier adds from the things it removes, because hosts tend to buy for one reason and get the other. Evite documents a premium experience as including no advertising, a matching envelope, stamps, and additional photo and text cards. The upgrade list adds a sticker, a background and backside text.

So the spend is mostly about presentation, plus taking something off the page. If the look of the invitation is doing real work, a milestone birthday or an engagement party where guests will screenshot it, that is money with a visible result. Twelve themes drawn in code will not compete with a labeled gallery.

If the look is not the job, the arithmetic changes. For a Friday game night with 14 guests you are at Gold prices, $36.99, mostly to take advertising off a page people will look at for eleven seconds. That is the case where a free tool with no ads is the better buy, and it is a common one.

Where Evite is the better tool

Several rows go to Evite outright, and two of them are things Bringalong cannot do at all.

Sending is the big one. Evite's support pages say: "Yes, add guests by phone number and send the Invitation as a text, from desktop, mobile browser, or the app." Bringalong sends nothing. You copy a link and share it yourself, which is fine in a group chat and useless if you were hoping the tool would do the chasing. Evite also has iOS and Android apps, each with its own support section, and says "Guests can RSVP from any device."

Then there is everything around the invitation. Evite documents wishlists and registries, event sign-ups, polls, cost sharing and SignUp Sheets. Bringalong has a bring list and nothing else of that kind: no polls, no cost splitting, no registry. For a group trip or a shared-cost dinner, those are real features and their absence here is real too.

• Sending invitations as a text to guests added by phone number.
• Apps on iOS and Android, each with its own support section.
• A design gallery with free and premium designs, labeled with a crown icon.
• Documented wishlists, registries, polls, cost sharing and sign-up sheets.
• An account that holds your events and can be signed into again.
• Printed and physical options you should check on their current pages if paper matters.

What a guest does on each

This row is close to a tie, and worth saying plainly, because guest friction is the usual reason people go looking for an alternative. Evite's support page is clear that guests need nothing: "No. The link the host sent you is all you need, open it, answer, done." An account is optional and is what "lets you RSVP from the app".

Bringalong works the same way for guests, with a little more attached to the reply. A guest taps the link, picks Going, Maybe or Can't go, adds a plus-one, writes a note, leaves a dietary line that only the host sees, claims a line on the bring list, and adds the date to their calendar from an .ics file or a Google or Outlook link.

So if your reason for switching is that guests cannot reply without an account, that is not the difference here. The differences are advertising, price tiers, and what the host signs up for.

What the host hands over, and what no account costs

Evite's terms describe registration like this: "In order to register with Evite you may be required to supply a valid email address, which will be used as a unique identifier for your account, and your first name, last name, birthday, gender, country of residence and ZIP code." The same section says "You will also be asked to set a password." Note the hedge in their own wording: it says may be required.

Bringalong has no form of that kind because it has no accounts. The cost lands in one place instead. The manage link is the only way back into your event, there is no password to reset, and nobody can look you up to restore it, so if you lose that link it is gone.

Which is a real trade, not a footnote. An account means your events are recoverable from any device and your old guest lists sit somewhere you can sign into. A manage link means nothing to remember and nothing held about you, as long as you keep the link.

• Email the manage link to yourself with the event name in the subject.
• Paste it into a note and pin the note.
• Send it to a co-host so two people can edit or cancel the event.
• Export replies to CSV before the event, since invitations and replies are deleted ninety days after the date.
• Keep the public invite link separate, so you never paste the wrong one into a group chat.

Moving an existing guest list

If you have run events on Evite, you have an address book there and no way to pour it into something that collects no addresses. Bringalong has no contact fields at all, so the move is a routing exercise: names on one side, a channel for each name on the other.

Do it on paper once. Export or copy out the names, then write next to each the way you actually reach that person. A list of fifty names usually collapses into four or five routes, and the whole thing takes about ten minutes.

Then the link goes out once per route. Pin it in each group chat, send ten personal messages to the guests who make the room feel full, email it to anyone who does not use chat apps, and print one QR code for the neighbors. Replies collect under your manage link with notes and dietary lines attached to names, and the CSV export gives you next year's list.

If you need something on paper

Bringalong prints nothing and sells nothing. There are no cards, no envelopes and no stamps, and no tier where those turn up later. If paper is part of the occasion, the card has to come from a stationer or a print shop, and this tool handles only the replying half. Evite lists an envelope and stamp among its paid upgrades, so check their current pages if that is the part you need.

The replying half travels on paper well enough. Every event has a QR code you can print at any size. Put it on the back of a card with one line of instruction, "scan this to tell us if you can come", and a guest who will not type a web address can reply from their own phone.

For a street party, printing twenty codes and putting them through twenty doors collects replies from people whose numbers you do not have. Those replies land in the same list as the ones from the group chat.