Digital invitation: what to check before you buy

It's Friday night, the kitchen table is covered in open chats, and nobody can say whether dinner is at one or half past one. A digital invitation settles that with a single link, if you choose one that holds up in real use. You can pick a design, edit the cover and send it today from the catalogue. Before you buy, run these checks.

What separates a digital invitation that works from a pretty PDF shows up on a phone, and at the first change of time. Not on a laptop screen, at full size, in the design gallery.

A digital invitation is judged on the phone, not in the design gallery

Open the link on your own phone first, in daylight, at normal brightness. Read the date, the time and the place without zooming. Then look at the guest side: it should open in the browser, let someone confirm from the phone and finish there. No app, no download, no PDF to pinch and drag. If the key details only read well on a big screen, the design isn't finished.

• Read the date, time and venue on your own phone without zooming out.
• Confirm the RSVP yourself and check where your name lands in the list.
• Change the time and the place before you send: the link must stay the same.
• Count long names and photos: do they fit without cuts or half sentences?

Digital invitations: one link that updates without resent envelopes

Ask what happens when the sit-down moves from 13:00 to 14:30. With a properly built digital invitation you change the time and the link stays exactly the same, so you don't message forty chats one by one. The map and the dress code are the two details that get corrected last, so make sure you can edit both without publishing the invitation again.

If the link changes every time you edit something, you'll feel it later. The cousins' group keeps showing the old version for weeks, and somebody turns up at the venue you already moved away from.

How much a digital invitation costs, and alternatives to paper invitations

One payment of 29,99 EUR per invitation, no subscription, and you can keep editing after you send. It stays a web page, so nothing is printed or posted. If your grandfather wants the card in his hand, the sensible answer is the mix: a link for everyone, a few printed copies for whoever will keep them. And every guest needs a phone, a tablet or a computer with a connection. If your aunt has none of the three, she needs a call, not a link.

What you're buying is a page you can still correct after you send it, not a picture you have to reprint.

The RSVP decides whether your digital invitation works or just decorates

Answers should land inside the invitation, in one ordered list, so on the Friday you know how many of you there are without opening twenty conversations. Check that you can set the exact questions you need, because a rigid form pushes the missing details back to WhatsApp. Then send yourself a test confirmation and find your own name in the list. If you can't do it in ten seconds, your guests won't either. Pick a design, edit the cover for free, and pay once the invitation reads well on your own phone.