Goovite - Another Evite Alternative
A while back I did an extensive study on Evite alternatives, which unfortunately showed that there really wasn’t a full-featured product that could compete with the popular online invitation service.
Recently I came across a new option, Goovite, brought to you by Mark Hurst and the people of Good Experience. While Goovite, as the others before it have done, fails to compete with Evite on breadth of features, it does have several advantages and is probably the best alternative I’ve seen thus far.
One of the main problems with Evite is the clever response conundrum, the fact that people are hesitant to post responses if they don’t have something witty to say. This is heightened if the first few people who respond are funny. On Goovite, the responder can add comments, but they are only visible to the organizer, limiting this awkwardness. (The best solution would let the organizer decide how to share responses, but neither Evite or Goovite allows for this.)
Another problem with Evite is the email itself — all they offer is the title of the invite (and a link). Goovite shows the entire invitation text, allowing the reader to get all the information they need about the event without having to visit another page. (A link is needed to RSVP.) A better solution would be to allow the reader to choose yes, no or maybe directly from the email, but Goovite is still a step ahead of Evite’s lame “big envelope” graphic. One problem Goovite’s email does have is that the email is sent by “Goovite Inviter” (inviter@goovite.com), not the organizer of the event. This increases the probability that the email will be taken as spam, either by the software or the individual reader.
The Goovite invite itself is extremely simple and has no customization. I would, however, suggest that they improve the few things mentioned above before focusing on presentation. If the invite is easy and “inviting” to use, presentation is less important. Ultimately, however, usage would increase if the users could customize design.
Bottom line here is that Goovite is a solid alternative to Evite, but is not perfect. I may try it to see if my response rate increases (and I’ll be sure to let you know).
December 27th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
[…] My 2005 series on Evite remained popular, especially with the addition of a review of Mark Hurst’s Goovite. I even got an email from Mark saying that he liked the post and was implementing two of my ideas: from address as the sender, and allowing commenters to choose whether to share their comments. […]
February 6th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Thank you very much for your informative articles. I absolutely LOOOOVE evite, but I became frustrated with evite recently because they changed their structure to disallow use of HTML in creating the invitation description. I can’t imagine why they took this giant step backwards. They tried to go the way of a WYSIWYG editor, but any good WYSIWYG editor always includes a code view option.
May 24th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I agree. I really like evite, but their latest round of updates stinks. The unfolding card is awful. I liked it a lot better when I could see everything all at once. Now I have to scroll around in one of their little frames just to read the invitation. I’ve sent them a number of emails on it and the new bugs they introduced. They seem to be gradually fixing the bugs but I’d be surprised if they update their interface back to the nice prior version.
September 17th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
I agree with everyone’s critiques of e-vite…and now they’ve eliminated an extremely helpful option of blocking mass responses to the e-vite invitation and say that the only alternative to hide the guest list so no one can see who is invited or planning to attend!
I’m seriously looking for an alternative that will work for my group.
November 15th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Evite stinks! I’ve used it for about 4 or 5 years now, and they have taken such repeated steps backward in both ease of use and robustness of interface that I am now committed to finding an alternative. If there isn’t one, this sounds like a good business opportunity for someone with that inclination. Too bad, Evite - You’re in the process of losing what I imagine is perhaps 95% market share… But, you completely brought it on yourselves…
August 1st, 2008 at 9:55 am
Thanks for the article! Yeah, I’m behind the times but it is still relevant because Evite still stinks. They have recently started screwing up the recurring evites (mine keep getting deleted or just creating a draft and not being sent out) and their customer service has been absolutely horrible. I hope Goovite is a better alternative.