Whenever a niche gets really crowded with startups, you know that something is broken. Online invitations, which has been dominated by Evite for the past decade, is one of those areas where there is literally a dozen services trying to make it better—MyPunchBowl, Amiando, Invitastic, MadeIt, Socializr, iPartee, Renkoo, ImThere, Skobee, Zvents, Zoji, Windows Live Events. Now add Pingg. The site launched publicly last week. A little late to the party perhaps. But it starts from a very basic premise that most other online invitation sites surprisingly have ignored. Says co-founder and CEO Lorien Gabel: “We have taken the approach that the invite matters.”
When you get an invite from Pingg, you don’t have to click through to a Website blaring with advertisements just to find the address for a dinner. All the information is right there where it should be, in your email. Pingg’s invites are drop-dead gorgeous. A lot of care and attention has been put into the design of each one (you can choose from about 45 themes like dinner party, baby, wedding, food, travel, and eco-friendly). The invite, image, and event details all come through in your email. And you can RSVP from the email as well.
Of course, each invite is linked to a dedicated Website, where more photos, maps, videos, gift registries, and payment options exist (if guests want to pitch in to fund an event, for instance). The e-mails and Website are free. But you can also send out printed invites as postcards for $1.50 each (including postage) or send the invites as text messages to guests’ mobile phones ($1.50 for 20 messages). Gabel explains why he thinks Pingg is different in this blog post.
In addition to making money from printed invitations and sending SMS messages, Pingg has various other affiliate deals in place. If you don’t like any of the images Pingg provides for its invites, you can purchase one directly on Pingg through micro-stock photography site Fotolia (or upload your own image for free). The gift registry, which is currently linked to Amazon, offers other affiliate-fee opportunities. A ticketing feature will soon be launched, as will premium subscriptions for professional and power users. But advertising will never be part of the equation. “That detracts from the event,” says Gabel. Nobody wants to see a Weight Watcher’s ad next to a dinner invitation.
The site has some other nice touches, including guest-list management and event-reporting tools. Event hosts can set up automatic reminder messages and thank-you notes when they are creating their invites. And the RSVP options include the ability to limit an event’s capacity, or to allow invitees to bring guests or transfer their invites to others.
Pingg is based in New York City (the CEO and VP of marketing share an office with Clickable. First30Days, and independent film company PalmStar Entertainment). Its development and design team is in Toronto. The co-founders, brothers Gabel and CTO Matt Harrop, are Canadian. They founded the company in January, 2007 and self-funded it with $500,000. Then they raised an $800,000 angel round in March, 2007 led by the early-stage Actarus Funds, the investment vehicle of Stephan Paternot, co-founder of TheGlobe.com. (Paternot now runs PalmStar). At least that 1.0 money is now being put to good use.
Finally… The good taste and non-intrusive business models are coming…
That’s good!
Site does look nice but that’s probably not enough to justify switching from evite to pingg
Damn! Only US times zones ?
wins the record for the worlds largest form on 1 page.
Is it me or are some of the images on the frontpage not loading?
What’s wrong with using plain email to invite people? Though if Pingg could add some event management and vendor selection tools this could actually be usable for larger events.
Thanks for the mention, Eric, but Zvents has almost nothing to do with invitations. We’re all about local search and advertising, and our minimal invite functionality is strictly focused on local public events.
@Dyde: Because this handles it in a much simpler way. It handles RSVP’s, creating a web page with directions and details, etc.
Wow, this thing is much, much nicer than any of the other competing sites. It’s slick, simple, has more features, and the invitations are much more professional.
One of my beefs with the other ones is the advertising. If I’m throwing a nice party, I don’t mind shelling out money for nice email invitations and a good RSVP system. I certainly don’t want any advertising on it.
As mentioned in the post.
Overcrowded.
http://yooflix....earchVideo.aspx
What, no hCalendar?
Disappointed. Other than that, looks good.
Just in case the folks of pingg are watching this, have a look here:
http://microfor.../wiki/hcalendar
One site that was not mentioned is Planaganza.com. This site offers electronic invites as well as several tools to help facilitate the event planning process including a vendor matching technology that allows users to input the services they need from a photographer to a caterer and the site finds vendors for you!
Plus Planaganza has no advertising on their invites and you can customize them with video or your own photos!
There are several sites that are attacking event planning through electronic invites but no one is aggregating the process to make it more efficient for people planning events. That is what Planaganza does!
Don’t underestimate Facebook’s share in this space… Esp among college students.
@Nick, Stop it with the facebook crap, not everybody uses facebook and a lot of facebook members go their once a month and sometimes a year. i havent visited my account in almost a month.
@ techiegirl,
Just a heads up, planaganzas homepage shows up all messed up on both safari and firefox on my mac.
stuff is out of place and broken borders.
Privacy has not been addressed here and of concern. May be not of an issue for most. Read here
“In consideration for using the Services, You agree to provide complete and accurate information about You when using the Services, including without limitation, promptly updating such information to keep it complete and accurate. ”
I wonder how they are selling the info?
Although our site allows for private invites, our core functionality is a tool that allows users to meet NEW people off-line using our Simple Steps:
1. Post a “Public Invite” describing who you’d like to meet or the purpose of the proposed meeting, whether it’s coffee, lunch, drink, golf or some other activity.
2. You’ll be notified by email when someone accepts your Public Invite.
3. You can approve or decline anyone’s acceptance for any reason – it’s entirely up to you. Approve at least one acceptance, and your meeting is on!
We agree the private invite space is already crowded and are therefore focusing on our public invite functionality.
Facebook app definitely needed – the traffic would be immense — great idea and I want to see how automated the system is before I make any other comments on the web app
@Benoit
That’s a strange mentality. If something is nicer, why not use it. I throw a bunch of big parties each year and i have hired artists to make the invites and send as pdf’s just so I could avoid using ugly online invites, but pingg.com actually has nice invites that I would put my name to. And then I don’t have to go through the rigamaroll of printing a guest list and all that stuff because pingg has it all set up for me. seriously online invites were a good idea when they came out but i cringe when i get an evite cause they are hideous and juvenile.
at a glance, pingg’s invites are very artistic and cool-looking. way better than the alternatives I have seen. tres bien.
This looks really nice, except that I’m trying to send out an invitation and am waiting (and waiting…) for the email confirmation link to come in. Please don’t make users confirm their email (it’s mostly pointless, and it doesn’t always work).
I think Pingg has gone in the exact right direction here. People want a simple tool that looks great. There is tremendous dissatisfaction with the leader in this space and the reason you’re seeing so many entrants is because the space is ripe for improvement.
I say this with a bit of authority because we at enclude.com have a similar tack in mind. You can take a look at http://www.enclude.com for a closer examination and I think you’ll also find beautiful invitations (and eCards).
John at 11:50 am: Well that is nice to clarify that it is ‘public’ and designed to meet new people off line. Why would I want to meet an unknown weirdo at some place? is it meant for dating? Am I not giving everythig on me by doing this? complete loss of privacy?
You mention that private invite place is crowded? which ones? if you mean evite, it is not private. Can you name some? Also, just because something is crowded doesn’t justify doing something that is of no value. There was a recent article that people are scared of facebook as one cannot take their profile off and while I respect the artwork in pingg, it is scary in my opinion. may be it is another meetup.com
Wait… there’s a TechCrunch NYC dinner?? When?! How do I get invited?
@Joanna:
Regarding private invites, I was referring to the sites that allow you to invite friends to private events (e.g., birthday party, superbowl party, etc.) (e.g., Evite, socializer, etc.). I view those as private since the invite isn’t published on the site for any user to view and accept.
With our Public Invites, you can describe the type of people you want to meet in your Invite and can decline to meet with anyone who has accepted your Invite for any reason – it’s entirely up to you. We recommend that user’s create a Profile (you can add a link to your facebook or linkedin profile), but not include any personal contact info. We believe the profile info helps at either end of the public invite (whether you’re deciding to accept a posted invite or are the inviter deciding to approve another user’s acceptance of your invite). For example, if you post a public invite to meet for lunch with fellow alumni in your area, you can decline any acceptance from a user who’s profile is blank or doesn’t show went to your school or any other reason.
You can also select to keep the meeting venue (the starbuck’s around the corner from your office) private and we’ll only disclose to the users you approve to attend your meeting. We provide you with a high degree of control in organizing networking meetings, even when you are looking to meet new people!
We are not targeting dating, but are instead focusing on off-line business or social networking. Maybe not for everyone, but we’re getting good feedback thus far (although we still have work to do) from users interested in meeting new people for business or social purposes (e.g., client generation, job inquiry, etc.). Thanks for the feedback.
Great features, nice design. Tried it right away.
But in the invitation they send, the email adress is pingg’s. Which means, that it is likely to find its way into spam…
Is there any service which lets you email under your own adress, so that people really know, the invitation is from you?
Any suggestions?
Any clue how Pingg (or any of the other event management programs mentioned) compares to Cvent?
There is no comparison. Pingg’s “surroundSend” tops all the other players, not to mention their beautiful designs and banner free website. I am hooked. http://www.pingg.com
Since reading this post, I used Pingg a couple times for small parties. The interface is nice and the invitation designs are beautiful, although I did find some shortcomings. The biggest flaw, in my view, is that it’s hard to be selective about who to send invitations to. For example, I like the idea of sending printed invitations to people whose email address I don’t have (or, in a couple cases, who don’t have email at all). There’s no way to do that — you have to send to everyone or nobody.
I also found a bug in their system, unrelated to the flaw I describe above.
I posted both (my feedback on invitations and the bug I found) to the Pingg site. They’ve been very responsive, and in fact have already addressed the bug.
Responsiveness and willingness to fix problems win me over. I’ll use Pingg again.