Digital invitation cost: a Halloween party in the garage

The garage door is half open, the fake cobwebs are up and there are three carved pumpkins on the table. You count the names on your phone: fifteen twelve-year-olds. Then you picture fifteen cards, fifteen envelopes and fifteen stamps, plus the one envelope that never leaves the bottom of a school bag. A digital invitation is one link, and you can build and send it today from the collection, before the door starts creaking.

Here is what it actually costs to fill a decorated garage for Halloween, and where the money goes instead.

Paper cards vs a digital invitation: the real Halloween garage party cost

Fifteen cards isn't one purchase, it's fifteen. You pay per child, and then you pay again for the one you have to redo because the time moved or a card never made it home. A digital invitation from Send The Joy is 29.99 EUR per invitation, paid once, no subscription. Fifteen guests or seventeen, the price is the same.

• Count cards per child, not per family: 15 guests means 15 cards, 15 envelopes and 15 stamps.
• Add the reprints: every change of time or place gets paid again in paper.
• Add the hours spent writing 15 envelopes by hand in the same week as 31 October.
• Compare that with 29.99 EUR once, for a link with photos and replies on the same page.

What the 29.99 EUR digital invitation includes, and what it doesn't

You get a web page for the event, not a PDF and not an image. Text goes in field by field — the label at the top, the names, the date, one line about the evening, the address — with a character counter so nothing spills out of the design. Up to six of your own photos go in and frame themselves: the carved pumpkin at the door, the table with candles and dark cloths, the lantern at the back of the garage.

Paper isn't included, and nobody pretends otherwise. If a grandparent wants something for the fridge, the sensible combination is a link for everyone plus two or three printed copies for the people who will keep them.

Replies inside the invitation, not in a group chat

Confirmations arrive in the same invitation, in one ordered list, so there's no “are you coming or not?” repeated every two hours on a Tuesday night. You set the questions on the RSVP form yourself, which means you ask exactly what you need for a garage afternoon — who's coming, and whether a parent is staying — and nothing else. The site runs in Spanish, English, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese and German, and the invitation content can be set per language if someone on the list lives abroad.

You're not paying for fifteen cards. You're paying once for a link that stays right all evening.

If two more siblings turn up, the price doesn't move

Same link for everyone: change the time, the place, the map or the line on the door after you've sent it and guests see the updated version without a second message. Nobody installs an app — they open the link in a browser, look at the photos of the decorated garage and reply in two taps. The pumpkins are already sweating wax. Filter the collection by style, try a cover for free, and publish before the door creaks open.