I recently got married and had to organize RSVP's with my wife. A full-stack developer by trade, I began researching online options, figuring there would be a go-to app for us to use.
Long story short - I didn't find something that was:
Pretty to look at. Simple to setup as a host. Easy to fill out as a guest. Priced in an easy to reason way.
After licking the last envelope, I decided to create an online RSVP app for the modern host. I did a bunch of research - polling my friends and family, studying the needs of a host, and rethinking the RSVP process itself.
I think that RSVP's are still a market where most hosts, for events like weddings or showers, are sending out paper invites because of the tried and true nature of it. I feel like the ubiquity internet hasn't fully saturated this market yet.
If you have any feedback please let me know, and if you think by the looks of it that you may or may not be inclined to use RSVP Keeper for your next event, I'd love to know why. Thank you.
My take is that the effort required for paper RSVP's reflects a context that the people involved care deeply enough to go through the formalities. Where all the social conventions are not important, there's Facebook events which have broader reach than a bespoke tool; are easier to use because the scale of resources behind their development; and have much less formality.
To put it another way, an RSVP tool occupies a niche where the host does not follow convention for their own convenience but requires guests to follow convention in an unconventional and perhaps inconvenient way...setting up logins, filling out forms etc.
I'm already married, so I doubt I would use it. That's the problem with solving wedding problems...brides and grooms don't create repeat business.
There's this formality to RSVP's that I took very seriously in my development.
Little things like allowing guests to be reordered in the guest list - when I first showed that to my friends, it didn't seem like a big deal, but once I explained that certain guests could be offended by being at the bottom of the guest list (considering they're only at the bottom because of the way the host entered them), it made sense to those I was showing.
I really focused on making it as simple and clean as possible. I don't even allow theming just yet because I felt that would just distract and confuse the guest filling out their form. This is all done to the benefit of the host of course - so they can capture the highest number of RSVP's for their event.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 19.2 ms ] threadI recently got married and had to organize RSVP's with my wife. A full-stack developer by trade, I began researching online options, figuring there would be a go-to app for us to use.
Long story short - I didn't find something that was:
Pretty to look at. Simple to setup as a host. Easy to fill out as a guest. Priced in an easy to reason way.
After licking the last envelope, I decided to create an online RSVP app for the modern host. I did a bunch of research - polling my friends and family, studying the needs of a host, and rethinking the RSVP process itself.
I think that RSVP's are still a market where most hosts, for events like weddings or showers, are sending out paper invites because of the tried and true nature of it. I feel like the ubiquity internet hasn't fully saturated this market yet.
If you have any feedback please let me know, and if you think by the looks of it that you may or may not be inclined to use RSVP Keeper for your next event, I'd love to know why. Thank you.
To put it another way, an RSVP tool occupies a niche where the host does not follow convention for their own convenience but requires guests to follow convention in an unconventional and perhaps inconvenient way...setting up logins, filling out forms etc.
I'm already married, so I doubt I would use it. That's the problem with solving wedding problems...brides and grooms don't create repeat business.
Good luck.
There's this formality to RSVP's that I took very seriously in my development.
Little things like allowing guests to be reordered in the guest list - when I first showed that to my friends, it didn't seem like a big deal, but once I explained that certain guests could be offended by being at the bottom of the guest list (considering they're only at the bottom because of the way the host entered them), it made sense to those I was showing.
Another big thing was the ease of use in filling in the form for the guests. In my [example RSVP page](https://www.rsvpkeeper.com/rsvp/08c084c7-ecf2-4aed-8cfc-4fe6...) you can see how that works if you haven't already visited it.
I really focused on making it as simple and clean as possible. I don't even allow theming just yet because I felt that would just distract and confuse the guest filling out their form. This is all done to the benefit of the host of course - so they can capture the highest number of RSVP's for their event.
Thanks for your insight and comments.