Most people collecting RSVPs are not trying to run an event website. They want to know how many people are coming, before the caterer needs the number. Eventinary is free to use for that, and the part that matters most is what a guest has to do: open a link and tap once.
A shared event page has one link for everyone, which means it cannot tell your guests apart. Anyone who has the link can reply as anyone, replies arrive without a reliable name attached, and forwarding it quietly adds people you never invited.
A private link per guest fixes all three at once. The reply is already attributed, so nobody has to type their name and you never have to reconcile "Dave" against "David Okafor". It also means a reminder can go only to people who have not answered, which is the single most effective thing you can do to a response rate.
The most common headcount failure is not people forgetting to reply. It is a "yes" from an invitation addressed to two people, which could mean one guest or four. You find out at the door, after you have paid per head.
Asking every guest to confirm a number turns the running total into something you can hand to a caterer. It also surfaces the plus-one nobody agreed to while there is still time to talk about it.
Dietary requirements, allergies and access needs are all things you will need eventually, and all things that take a second round of messages to gather if you do not ask up front. Asking at the moment someone replies costs the guest nothing extra — they are already thinking about your event.
Ask as open text rather than checkboxes. Allergies, intolerances, religious requirements and plain dislikes do not fit a fixed list, and guests under-report when the options do not match their situation.
Free means free to send and free to reply to. There is no per-guest fee, no credit or coin system, no charge to see who has answered, and no watermark on what your guests receive.
The reason to be specific about that is that "free" in this category often means free until the guest list passes a threshold, or free unless you want to see the responses. Those are the two places worth checking on any tool you compare.
Give a reply-by date about two weeks before you need final numbers. Guests treat an open-ended invitation as something to deal with later, and later does not arrive.
Then send one reminder, to non-repliers only, roughly a week before that date. One reminder converts most of the silence. A second one mostly annoys the people who already answered, which is why sending only to non-repliers matters.
Yes. Sending invitations and collecting replies is free, with no per-guest fee and no charge to see who has responded. Guests never pay and never create an account.
No. Each guest gets a private link that opens straight to their invitation, and replying takes one tap. There is no login, no password and no app to install.
Yes. Their link keeps working, so a guest can reopen it and update their reply. Your total updates immediately, which is what you want when plans change in the last two weeks.
Yes, and it is worth doing. Asking at the point of reply rather than in a follow-up round gets you most of the answers weeks earlier and roughly halves the chasing.
Yes. Send by email, by SMS, or both from the same guest list. Guests with only a phone number get a text, and guests with only an email address get an email.
Each link is tied to one guest, so a forwarded link replies as the original guest rather than adding a stranger to your count. That is the main practical advantage over a single shared event page.
Track RSVPs in one place: who replied, who has not, how many people are actually coming, and what each guest still needs. Free, with a guest list you can export.
Make an invitation online for free: pick an editable design or upload your own artwork, send it by email and text, and track every reply in one place.