Anyway, I get the usual “thank you for your email” auto-response. Then, two hours later, I get this:

Thank you for your patience. The issues you have experienced have been corrected, and you may now create, edit, and manage your invitation as desired. If you experience any further difficulties, you may alleviate this by deleting the cookies and clearing your browser’s cache, as they may still contain the error page information. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If we can further assist you, please contact us.

Uhh, no, it hasn’t been fixed. In fact, judging from the non-sensicalness of the response, they didn’t even read my email. What this means is:

1. They have an auto-response, on a time delay, saying that they’ve fixed the issue when they haven’t done squat.
2. Some minion clicks a button to say that they’re fixed issues when they haven’t done squat.

Either way, they’re just blindly telling their users that they’re fixed issues that they haven’t even looked into. Sweet.

Funnily enough, this response probably actually works a good percentage of the time out of the pure flakiness of their site.

By contrast, I’ve had pretty good experience with customer support at other companies:

1. Facebook: Once Seattle Anti-Freeze exceeded about 1500 members, we could no longer send messages to the group or invite the group to an event. Facebook employees Luke Shepard and Paul McDonald got those limits raised. Thanks guys!!
2. Pingg: I’ve written in feature / bug requests. Their support team has promptly responded with well thought out responses.
3. MyPunchBowl: After I posted about MyPunchBowl, the founder emailed me – within hours.
4. Zoji.com: I have exchanged numerous emails with the founders.

The lesson is: Don’t automatically respond to users saying that their issue has been fixed.

Drink for the Cure / Bid for the Cure – Charity Auction
Oct 1, 2008 at 8pm (Location TBD – Belltown / Downtown)

Every three minutes, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer. One out of every eight American women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives. Seattle Anti-Freeze invites you to make a difference.

On Oct 1st, please join Seattle Anti-Freeze members for a silent auction to benefit Susan G. Komen foundation. Mix & mingle – drink & bid.

There is no cost for this event, but donations at the event for the Susan G. Komen foundation are, of course, appreciated.

DONATING ITEMS
Got something cool, funky, unique or useful that you’d be willing to part with? It doesn’t have to be anything fancy – all donations are appreciated! In return, you receive good karma, and two free tickets to a Seattle Anti-Freeze event of your choosing.

If you have something you could donate, I’d really appreciate it . Click here (or just shoot me an email).

Want to come? Join the Seattle Anti-Freeze list.

First Glance

BRADvite.com pops up with a loading screening. Literally – the background says “loading” all over it. It’s sort of distracting. And then in the center, there’s a picture of a guy talking on his cell phone. Brad, is that you? Why are you hanging out in the middle of the screen?

Invitation Themes

The various background images load relatively quickly in the background. Options include waterfalls, oceans, leafs, classical music sheet, etc. But my party is a toga party. On a boat. With a DJ. And drinking. As beautiful as a waterfall is, it has absolutely nothing to do with my party, nor does it express the “fun party” vibe. A picture of a keg would be more appropriate.

Tucked away in a corner is a little button to change the main image: a rose, secret service cartoon drawing, asian-style flowers, a man fighting off an elephant, aliens, etc. And, of course, a picture of our new friend Brad on a cell phone. Again, none of these match “toga party”. Or even, say, a birthday / Christmas / Halloween party.

Registration

At least registration is fairly painless. It just asks me name and email address. The registration email didn’t actually work, but they fixed that for me pretty quickly.

Event Details & Sending Invitation

I can’t specify the time for the party. ‘Nuff said.

Email Invitation

At least the email invitation is clean, elegant and provides useful information: host name, email address, date, location, and invitation details. To open the invitation, I see three links: View Comments | Click here to RSVP | Click for Map.

Yikes. I just want to open it. Shouldn’t I be able to view comments and RSVP at the same time? And why not put “Click for map” next to the address, where it’s most relevant and out of the way?

After the Invitation Is Sent

Host options are limited. I can edit the text of the invitation after I’ve sent the invitation, but not the background or main image. I can’t export the guest list. I can’t see when people RSVPd. There’s no integration with Google Calendar or Outlook. I can’t message guests.

Summary

The limitations of BRADvite are fairly significant, so I won’t reiterate them. There is a more interesting point to be made.

Brad of BRADvite is clearly focusing on high quality images. Good. Far too many websites underestimate the importance of their user interface. The issue is that while the images are high quality, they don’t very well match what the user wants to do. Brad needs to create user scenarios, such as the following:

1. Mary: 50 year old mother who is creating an invitation for her husband’s 50th birthday party. It’s a dinner party for 20 guests at their house.
2. AEPi: Fraternity which is inviting a sorority to their winter formal
3. Jake: 20 year old boy, soon to be 21. He’s throwing a party for his 21st birthday in Las Vegas.
4. Gayle: throws large monthly parties with thousands of invited guests. (Hey, I had to throw myself in there.)

If Brad walked through these scenarios, he might see that as pretty as the background images are, none of them match what Jake or Gayle is doing. He might notice that AEPi, which is hosting a party as a group, might want to let multiple people edit the invite. He might notice that Mary needs the ability to message all the guests to tell them that they don’t need to bring gifts. He might notice that if I’m throwing parties regularly, I need the ability to grab my guest list after each event.

Issues like this aren’t limited to BRADvite, of course. Websites of all kinds need to stop thinking in the abstract “I am a website which provides [invitations, job listing, etc]” and start thinking concretely about exactly what problems they’re trying to solve.

Prior to this, I had a simple little form app that I wrote. It wasn’t great, but it kind-of-sort-of did the trick. There were two versions that I used for Seattle Anti-Freeze:
1) Public Access – anyone can add or remove rows. All updates get emailed to me.
2) View-Only Access – only admins can add or remove rows. Anyone can view the data.

For the “add yourself to the invite list” form, I used #1. This was mostly ok – I just had to be diligent about monitoring the list. I got a lot of comments about why there isn’t more security on my forms, but it really wasn’t a problem. Sure, I could lock stuff down with a password – but why? There’s a balance between security and the user interface – more security is not always a good thing (although it would have been nice if a certain someone stopped adding Barney Stinson to my lists…).

For the guest list, I used #2. It let anyone view it but not edit it. Technically Google Spreadsheets could do this before, it was just a little more work to add rows (since you have to be logged in to gmail). Easy adding and removing, but there was no ability to edit the contents of a row. One day I fully meant to get around to implementing this, but now… meh.

Hellooooo forms. Beautiful. Perfect. I’ve got a little bit form happy today by replacing my old forms with new Google Spreadsheets form. I’ve got a new invite list form, an idea submission form, and a form to track the guest list for parties. Excellent.

And, you can monitor any changes to the docs via iGoogle. Wheeeee! This makes me a happy person.

I’ve evaluated the following: Evite, Socializr, MyPunchBowl, Zoji, Renkoo,

Problem Description: I’m looking for an invite application for planning large events. These events have 1000+ people invited, and around 200 people can buy tickets. Guests need to be able to respond and invite more people with minimal hassle, and they need to be able to easily view who’s actually coming (eg, paid). It also needs to be easy for me, as the organizer, to be able to copy the invite list over to the next one.

Evite: It’s a bit buggy, but it works fine for smaller events. For large events, it’s pretty weak. Guests can spam all other guests. There’s a cap on the number of guest you can invite. You can’t easily export and import guest lists. Slow and buggy.

Disclaimer: Evite is the standard in invite apps, which both helps and hurts its assessment. I know its negatives better than anything else, which hurts its grade. However, I’m also accustomed to Evite’s features and expect every other service to have the same things.

Pros:

• Templates: Large selection (although fairly mediocre design)
• No forced registration: Guests can RSVP and invite others without registering
• Guest List Management: Supports exporting as a .CSV, I can edit guest responses,
• I can set a public url for people who aren’t on the invite
• I can add a field for payment (which is really just a link to paypal)

Cons

• Lacks security on the guest list: guests can spam other guests. Unacceptable with 1000+ people.
• Guest list cap of 750 – too small for me.
• Description field: max character counts of 3000 – the count is buggy and include HTML characters.
• Unable to importing guest list
• Garbles links inserted into invite.
• Invite email doesn’t provide date or time.
• Annoying banner ads
• Painfully slow

Grades

• Ease of Use for Guests: A. (It doesn’t require registration for RSVPing or inviting people).
• Guest List Management: B (You can export guest lists, but you can’t import them).
• Elegance: B- (Lots of mediocre templates, and a lot of ads).
• Final Grade: B-
  

Socializr: It does almost everything evite does, and is actually better in a few ways. It’s an invite service, plain and simple. However, it requires guests to register in order to invite more people. That’s a deal breaker for me.

Pros:

• Supports closing the guest list to future RSVPs. Awesome feature!
• Templates: elegant, and you can save your own template or use other people’s.
• Description field: sufficiently long, and you can edit the HTML directly.
• Good guest list management: guests can remove themselves from the invite, and you can export and import guest lists. Organizer can edit guest responses.
• Can redirect users to another website to pay after RSVPing.
• Invite email provides the date and time.
• Registration is not require to RSVP.

Cons:

• Not enough templates
• Requires guests to register an account in order to invite more people. So close….

Grades

• Ease of Use for Guests: C+. (Docked for requiring guests to register to invite people).
• Guest List Management: A+
• Elegance: B
• Final Grade: C

MyPunchBowl: Slick design for invitations, but the invite email is pretty ugly. It does little more than evite does, and it doesn’t have a way for guests to reply “maybe”. Well, that’s just crazy!

Pros:

• Very slick designs!
• You can load guests lists from previous parties
• Invite email provides the date and time.
• Organizer can change guest’s display names after inviting them.
• You can edit guest responses (sort of – you can move yes -> no or no -> yes), and you can do this quickly.
• Registration is not required to RSVP or to invite more people.
• People who respond “No” can’t leave a public comment with their response (instead this gets emailed as a private response to the host). I’m not totally sure if this is actually a good or bad thing, but I’ll put this as a pro.

Cons:

• Invite email is pretty ugly (or I just don’t like the gray background).
• RSVPing is a multiple page / tab process. (1) Click yes, no or maybe. (2) Are you bringing anyone with you? (3) Comment. I prefer being able to do all of these at once – it’s easier.
• Guests can’t view the comments unless they RSVP. (This might be a pro for a lot of people, but not for me.)
• There’s no “maybe” option. There’s a “decide later” option, but that’s just a way for someone to send themselves a reminder.

Grades:

• Ease of Use for Guests: C (there’s no maybe option)
• Guest List Management: B (you can copy invites, but you can’t move guests to “Decide Later”)
• Elegance: B+ (Slick invites, but ugly emails)
• Final Grade: C-

Zoji.com: A worthy competitor to evite which doesn’t try to force guests into registering. It’s missing a few guest management features that I’d like, but the groups ideas shows a lot of potential.

Pros:

• Registration is not required to RSVP or to invite more people.
• Payment info: provides field for this info.
• No cap on invite lists. Yay!
• People can comment on your response. Cool!
• Contact groups: you can invite people as a group. These can be public groups which anyone can add themselves too. This is potentially very useful for me.
• Guests can remove themselves from the invite.
• Founders are very responsive to feedback. (Thanks Dan and Kevin, who will no doubt be reading this ).

Cons:

• Display names: tedious to set. You can copy and paste email address with display names (but I hear they’re working on this).
  
• It appears to not accept “+” signs in email addresses – even though that is a valid character.
• Templates: limited options.
• Messaging guests: I can’t message the “no response”s without message the “no”s too.
• Organizer can’t edit guest responses.
• Exporting guest lists is not supported.

Grades:

• Ease of Use for Guests: A (It never forces people into RSVPing)
• Guest List Management: B
• Elegance: B+
• Final Grade: B+ (with high expectations for the future)

Renkoo: Slick and elegant invitation system with one awesome feature: guests can reply directly from the invitation email. But… guests can’t invite people. Importing guest lists is a pain. And guests have to RSVP to register.

Pros:

• Guests can reply directly from the email invitation. That’s awesome!
• Slick, AJAXy at points.
• Provides a message board for guests
• Default theme is pretty, but a bit girly

Cons:

• No bulk adds for guests – I can only import from address books.
• Invite email: text is garbled, and it doesn’t provide date or time.
• Template: none.
• Registration required to RSVP.
• Guests can’t invite more people.
• Organizer can’t edit guest responses.

Grades:

• Ease of Use for Guests: D (you have to register to RSVP. You can’t invite more people.)
• Guest List Management: C (difficult to import guest lists, you can’t edit guest responses.)
• Elegance: B+ (some slickness and pretty default, but you can’t customize the design.)
• Final Grade: D+

And our winner is… Zoji. It doesn’t quiet do everything I need it too, but it’ll work well for my guests – and that’s the most important thing.

I can’t take the risk of using Zoji for my huge events of 1000+ people, much as I do like the service. I’ll probably start by using Zoji for a smaller event – you know, test the waters and see how it goes. Then… just maybe

Evite gets more quick responses – that makes some sense. First, Facebook bugs you about lots of stuff (wall posts, etc), so you overlook those emails much more easily. Second, Facebook invites aren’t going to get lost in your inbox like Evite – there’s no pressure to respond. Third, Evite doesn’t include any useful information in the invitation – guests have to open up the invitation in order to know when it is.

Example: I’m planning a very large event. The Evite has 1400 people on it, and the Facebook event has 650. Within two hours, I had 100 accepts on Evite and 5 on Facebook.

Facebook gets a higher response rate over all. Why? Well, an Evite comes in – you either open it… or it trickles down in your inbox. You might see one or two reminders about an event, but it’s not continuously bugging you about it. On Facebook though, it’s on the main page every time you log in, poking you to respond.

Example: I recently hosted a very large event. The Evite had about 800 people on it. After numerous messages, begging people to respond, I got almost 50% of people who responded. When I didn’t do that, I got about 35%. The Facebook invite had about 550 people on it. 65% responded, without any bugging.

Both have their own network effect properties. On Facebook, people discover invites for (public) events through their friends – but without their friends inviting them, because of mini-feeds. Evite guest lists, however, tend to grow through direct invitations.

So what to do? I can’t use Facebook instead of Evite – not everyone is on Facebook. I like the network effect of Facebook though. So what do you do? Continue using both.

Or, ditch Evite for something else (Zoji.com?) . Who’s with me on the Evite strike? Anyone? Anyone?

Here’s what I’ve looked at so far, but none of them are quite fitting my needs:
What’s the Plan
Planypus
Socializr
MyPunchBowl
Renkoo
Google/Outlook/Etc Calendar Invites
Facebook Invites
Any that I’m missing here?