Planning a celebration of life means reaching a lot of people, clearly and gently, at a time when you have very little to spare. The invitation is how everyone learns where to be and when, and it is often the first place friends and family see the tone you have chosen.
This guide is published by Greenvelope and compares our invitation service with six alternatives for different memorial-planning needs. We looked at four things: whether the invitation can be designed and sent to named people, how replies are tracked, what the guest sees on arrival, and what it costs. Prices and plan limits were checked against each platform's own pricing and help pages on October 24, 2026, and a few points we could not confirm are flagged where they come up.
Three Overlapping Approaches
Most tools here lean toward one of three approaches, though several do more than one, so read these as emphases rather than categories.
- A designed invitation sent to named people, with replies tracked. The invitation reaches each person by email or text and responses come back under their names, which is what a small private gathering wants and what you need when a count matters for seating, catering or a reception. Greenvelope, Punchbowl, Evite and RSVPify all work this way.
- A memorial website holding an obituary, memories and event details. One page carries everything, shared by a link that travels, which suits a notice meant to reach everyone who might want to come. Ever Loved is built around this, and also sends email invitations to contacts you choose and collects RSVPs for events on the page.
- A design you download or print, with an online reply page linked from it. You keep the file and share it as you like. Canva and Greetings Island sit here, and each documents an online reply route, though on Greetings Island that route is documented for its invitations and we could not confirm it reaches the memorial announcement designs.
At a Glance
| Platform | Suits | Replies and delivery | Pricing |
|---|
| Greenvelope | A designed invitation to a named list, replies tracked per guest | Email, text in supported countries, or a public registration link, with custom survey questions | One price per mailing by guest-list size, from $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people, no subscription required; annual memberships also available for frequent senders |
| Evite | A free or low-cost send from a memorial collection | Email or text with RSVP tracking, read receipts and a shareable link, on free designs as well as Premium | Free designs at no cost; Premium priced by guest count |
| Ever Loved | One page holding the obituary, memories and event details | Announcement emails and RSVPs for events on the page | Free to build; Premium adds password protection |
| RSVPify | A detailed reply form, including file-upload questions | Email invitations or your own design, an event website, and QR codes for printed notices; basic RSVP tracking on the free plan, custom questions listed on the paid plans, so confirm upload availability on your chosen plan | Free up to 100 guests; Gold from $10/month or $72/year; Platinum from $15/month or $108/year (base prices for standard personal events, may vary by event type) |
| Punchbowl | Several mailings across a year under one subscription | Text or email with RSVP tracking; co-hosts and guest polls on the Premium and Platinum tiers, not the entry tier | Subscription after a seven day trial; advertised starting rates run from $2.99 to $11.99 a month, with the billing period and renewal price not stated on the plans page |
| Canva | Designing the card yourself | A file you share or print; Canva Forms collects replies into Canva Sheets, reached by a link or QR code you add | Free templates and forms; Pro content costs a fee or subscription |
| Greetings Island | A free memorial card to print or share | Download, print or share online; its Online RSVP feature adds a reply page, documented on invitations | Free and premium designs; premium layouts and watermark removal are paid |
The Seven Platforms
1. Greenvelope
We recommend Greenvelope for a designed invitation sent to a named guest list, with attendance tracked per person. Our celebration of life invitations give you a memorial design collection, replies recorded against each guest, custom survey questions on the reply page, delivery by email or by text to supported countries, no advertising in the guest view, no account for guests to create, and one price per mailing instead of a subscription. Greenvelope held a 4.9 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot when this guide was checked on October 24, 2026.
The designs are quiet: soft florals, calm landscapes, and photo layouts that keep the name and picture at the center. The invitation leads to a details page carrying service and reception times, a map and any links you add, and custom questions can ask who is coming to which part of the day or, optionally, invite a memory with the reply. Two things help when you are not doing this alone: a sibling or friend can be added as a co-host on the mailing to share the work of managing replies, and RSVP reminder emails can be sent or scheduled to the contacts who have not yet responded.
Worth knowing before you buy. Under single-mailing pricing each mailing is bought separately, so an announcement now and a full invitation later are two purchases; annual memberships covering unlimited mailings suit people sending through the year rather than one memorial. Text delivery draws on an allowance rather than being unlimited, and sending more texts than the allowance covers costs extra. Wording, fonts and preset colorways are editable; changing the artwork is a paid design service, saving the card as a file to print needs a paid account, and collecting payments through the RSVP page is a business-account feature.
2. Evite
Evite publishes a Celebration of Life collection in both free and Premium options, so there is no need to adapt a design meant for something else. Free designs carry RSVP tracking, read receipts and a shareable link, and the guest list can be made private. Per Evite's Free versus Premium comparison, free invitations display ads, while Premium removes them, offers the option to remove Evite's gift guides, and adds animated effects, envelopes and stamps, a host photo gallery and exclusive designs. Premium is priced by guest count and a free design can be upgraded at any point, so you can start free and decide later. Uploading your own artwork is a Premium-only tool, and read receipts do not apply to invitations sent by shareable link.
3. Ever Loved
Ever Loved builds a memorial website, and it covers more of this job than an invitation tool does. Its published feature list includes an obituary, photos, a life timeline, funeral event information, a memorial fundraiser, and photos, stories and condolences that visitors add themselves. It also sends memorial announcement emails and collects RSVPs for events on the page, so a family using it does not need a second platform just to announce the service and track attendance. Each event entry holds the type, date, location, RSVP requirements, a livestream link and extra notes.
Replies are identifiable, not anonymous counts: the dashboard shows who is coming and who cannot make it, with a button to message them, and the host can add RSVPs by hand with a first and last name, email address and the number in that person's party, which covers relatives who phone instead. The page is not the only way in either, since Ever Loved has an invitations page where you import contacts, choose who to include and send an email invitation.
So Ever Loved combines memorial content, email announcements and identifiable RSVP management in one place. Sharing is by link, and Premium adds password protection, a single shared password every visitor enters once, which limits who can open the page.
4. RSVPify
RSVPify starts from the reply form, and it has a celebration of life page describing custom questions that invite memories, stories, photos or video clips, which families keep as a tribute. Around the form sit email invitations or your own uploaded design, an event website, and QR codes for printed notices. The free plan covers up to 100 guests with email invitations and RSVP tracking, while custom questions are listed on the paid personal plans. RSVPify supports file-upload questions; confirm upload availability on your chosen plan before purchasing. Gold starts at $10 a month, Platinum at $15; a year costs $72 and $108, and RSVPify attaches "no auto-renewal" to that yearly option while monthly plans bill until you cancel. These are base prices for standard personal events and may vary by event type. On cancellation, paid access continues until the end of the current billing period. Once the account downgrades to Free, access to events created on a paid plan is lost, so export anything you want to keep before that date.
5. Punchbowl
Punchbowl has a Celebration of Life collection beside its sympathy cards, with photo layouts among the designs, delivered by text or email with RSVP tracking. It makes most sense for a family sending more than one mailing over the year, since a membership covers unlimited events. Co-hosts and guest polls come with the Premium and Platinum tiers rather than the entry tier, and co-hosts matter here, since sharing the replies with a sibling is often the difference between manageable and not. On cost, read the plans page carefully: a seven day trial takes payment details and converts to a subscription unless canceled, the figures shown are starting rates from $2.99 to $11.99 a month, and the page does not state the billing period you commit to or the renewal price. Tiers cap guests per event at 50, 100 and 500 and advertising is removed only on the top tier, so check your guest count and the checkout total first.
6. Canva
Canva offers flexible editing of the wording, photos, and layout: free celebration of life templates to adjust, then download or print the result. It also collects replies, which is easy to miss: Canva Forms attaches a form to a design and gathers responses into Canva Sheets with CSV export, with RSVPs among the uses it names. Plan for the handoff: a form works where a guest can click it, so a printed card or downloaded image needs the form's link or a QR code on it. Free templates and assets cost nothing, while Pro content takes a per-design fee or a Canva Pro subscription. A finished Canva design can also be uploaded to Greenvelope as a whole card image if you would rather hand the sending to a guest list you manage there.
7. Greetings Island
Greetings Island publishes free memorial and funeral card templates to personalize with a photo, then download as an image or PDF, print at home, share online or order as prints. Its memorial designs sit under announcements rather than invitations.
It also documents a full reply route. Online RSVP is added while customizing an invitation, putting a link or QR code on the card or sharing the RSVP link separately. On the management page, replies are recorded as Yes with a number of attendees, No or Maybe, filtered by response, with messaging to everyone, to one response group or to a single guest, and a CSV download of name, email, status and total guests. One unresolved point: the help centre describes this on invitations, while the memorial artwork sits in the announcements catalogue, so whether the Create RSVP step appears on those designs is not published either way. If you want that artwork and tracked replies together, open a memorial design in the editor and look for the Create RSVP step first.
Setting Up on Greenvelope
A simple setup sequence. Our guide to collecting RSVPs online and our guide to custom RSVP questions cover the detail.
- Settle the details, then decide how many sends you need. Name, date, start time, venue and address, host, and whether a reception follows. If everything is settled, one send is simpler; if the date is firm but the venue is not, a brief announcement now and the invitation later is reasonable, knowing each is its own mailing.
- Choose the design and photo, from the memorial collection or your own card image.
- Choose how it travels. For a private gathering, send to named contacts by email or text so each reply arrives under a name. For a wider notice, create a public Share URL from the Send step; guests register and reply through it, and turning off Enable Sharing stops further registrations. In between, you can copy one guest's personalized card link and pass it to that person directly.
- Decide whether you need a reply at all, before sending. RSVP collection belongs to invitation mailings and can be turned off when you are simply announcing the service, and a phone number on the card gives anyone who cannot manage the form someone to call. Give any livestream start time with its time zone.
- Count the reception with a question of its own. A checkbox question listing the parts of the day is the documented way to track sub-events, and selections save to each guest's record beside the main RSVP, so the headcount comes off the same guest list. Since the answer belongs to the person giving it, aim for a reception response from everyone attending, partners and children included. Household members you already know go on the list by name; for additional guests whose names you do not have yet, the plus-one settings can collect or require their details when the guest replies, so you do not need to know every additional guest's name before sending. A plus-one allowance is permission to bring someone, not a confirmed attendance, so read the reception selections alongside the replies that confirm attendance.
- Add a memory question only if you want one. Many families skip it. A free-response question collects a story with the reply, saved to that guest's record, and leaving it optional means a guest can reply without answering it, which matters when someone cannot find the words. Ask the writer before reading one aloud or printing it in a program; a reply written for the family is not automatically meant for the room.
- If arrangements change, say so deliberately. The card can be edited for up to five months after sending and the update reaches cards already delivered, but editing does not notify anyone, so a guest who already read the invitation may never see the change. For changes guests need to know about, send a message by email or SMS from the Message Center, and contact anyone who may miss the update or need help with the changed arrangements.
Three Things Worth Separating
A private memory response is not a public tribute wall. On Greenvelope, a memory given through a survey question is saved to that guest's record for the host, not published for other guests to read. Where replies end up visible differs by service and by setting, so check that on whichever one you use. If the family wants an open page where everyone reads and adds tributes, that is a memorial website, which is what Ever Loved builds.
A link is not the service it points to. Adding a livestream or donation link sends guests elsewhere, and the link alone does not turn on payment collection inside the invitation. Some services here do handle fundraising themselves: Ever Loved runs memorial fundraisers on the page, and Greenvelope can collect donations through the RSVP page as a business-account feature with its own fees. Set the money route up deliberately rather than assuming a link does it.
Hiding a guest list is not restricting access. On Greenvelope the guest list is private by default and the host can choose to display it by adding a guest list section to the details panel. Either way, that setting controls what guests see on the page, not who can reach the invitation: a forwarded link or a shared phone takes it further. If something must stay within a small circle, say so in the wording and keep private arrangements out of a notice that may travel.
Cost, Delivery and What to Include
One price per mailing suits a single event, which is how Greenvelope prices; a subscription suits repeated sending, which is how Punchbowl and RSVPify price; and free options exist on Evite, RSVPify, Canva, Greetings Island and Ever Loved, each trading something else, whether advertising in the guest view, plan limits on the feature you wanted, or more of the work falling to you. For scattered families, choose email or text for each guest according to how they can reliably be reached, checking the text allowance on whichever service you use; our comparison of text and email invitations goes further into that choice.
Whatever you choose, the invitation needs the name, date, time, venue, host, tone and how to reply, plus anything guests must plan around. Our guide to celebration of life invitation wording has phrasing for each line, and the memorial design roundup shows the range of designs. Set the reply deadline against the date the venue or caterer needs a count, leaving a few days for follow-up. Afterward, the same guest list makes acknowledgement and thank you notes lighter work, and our roundup of the best digital invitation platforms covers these tools across other occasions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best platform for celebration of life and memorial invitations?
It depends on the job. For a designed invitation sent to a list you build, with replies tracked per person, Greenvelope is our recommendation, with a memorial design collection, custom reply questions and one price per mailing. For one page holding the obituary, memories and event details, Ever Loved covers announcement emails and event RSVPs too. Evite's Celebration of Life collection includes free designs that track RSVPs, and Canva and Greetings Island suit a design you handle yourself.
Can you send celebration of life invitations by text message?
Yes. Greenvelope sends the same designed invitation by email or by text to numbers in supported countries from one guest list, and both lead to the same details page and reply form. Text delivery uses an allowance rather than being unlimited, and sending beyond it costs extra. Evite and Punchbowl also deliver by text.
How do you collect RSVPs and memories for a celebration of life?
Put both on the reply form. A Greenvelope invitation records each reply against the named guest, and a free-response question can invite a memory, saved to that guest's record for the host rather than published. Leave it optional so a guest can reply without answering, and ask the writer before reading a submission aloud. RSVP reminder emails go only to contacts who have not responded.
Can you collect RSVPs with a free memorial invitation template?
Often yes, though check the plan. Evite's free designs include RSVP tracking, and RSVPify's free plan covers up to 100 guests, with custom questions listed on its paid plans; it supports file-upload questions, so confirm upload availability on your chosen plan before purchasing. Canva Forms collects replies into Canva Sheets at no cost, reached by a link or QR code you add. Greetings Island documents Online RSVP with response tracking and a CSV download on its invitations; whether that reaches its memorial announcement designs is not published, so check in the editor.
What should a celebration of life invitation include?
The full name of the person being honored, the date, time and venue, who is hosting, the tone of the gathering, and how to reply. Add what guests must plan around: the reception, attire, parking, a phone number for anyone needing help to reply, a livestream link with its time zone, or a note on giving in lieu of flowers.
Is it appropriate to send a celebration of life invitation online?
Yes. Online invitations reach scattered friends and relatives without collecting mailing addresses, and carry clickable links and details you can update. Printed notices remain entirely appropriate, and plenty of families use both, posting a notice publicly while sending the invitation to the people they are inviting.
How far in advance should you send celebration of life invitations?
Send once the date and venue are confirmed. Because these gatherings are often held weeks or months after a passing, some families send a short announcement first and the full invitation once details are set; on Greenvelope each is its own mailing. Set the reply deadline against the date your venue or caterer needs a count.
Can a digital memorial invitation include a livestream or memorial fund link?
Yes, as links. A Greenvelope details page can carry a livestream link for family who cannot travel and a memorial fund or charity page for people asking where to give. When you add an external livestream or donation link, guests use the service at that destination. Adding the link does not itself enable streaming or payment collection within the invitation. Set those up first, then add the links, and give the livestream start time with its time zone.
Do guests need an account to RSVP to a digital memorial invitation?
Not on Greenvelope. Guests open the invitation and submit the reply from it, with no account to create and no app to download. Requirements differ by platform, so if guests span a wide range of ages and devices, check the reply flow on whichever service you choose and include a phone number for anyone who would rather tell a person.
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