Short answer: RSVora asks a guest for nothing at all — they open the link and reply. Evite, Paperless Post, Punchbowl, Mixily, Greenvelope and Hobnob also let guests reply without an account. Partiful requires a phone number and a code texted to it. Facebook Events requires a Facebook account. Ticketing platforms — Eventbrite, Luma, Eventzilla, Cvent, Splash — all require registration, because registration is the product.
This matters more than it sounds. Every extra thing you ask a guest for is a place where somebody quietly does not reply, and the people it stops are disproportionately the ones you most want at the party: an older relative, a colleague who does not want to hand over a mobile number, a friend whose phone is a work device.
What each product asks a guest for
Checked 25 August 2026 against each company's own help documentation.
| Product | What a guest must provide to RSVP |
|---|---|
| RSVora | Nothing. Open the link, tap yes or no |
| Evite | Nothing. No account required to reply |
| Paperless Post | Nothing |
| Punchbowl | Nothing |
| Mixily | Nothing |
| Greenvelope | Nothing |
| Hobnob | Nothing. Reply by text or open the web invite |
| Zola / The Knot / Joy | Nothing, though Joy also offers an app |
| Partiful | Name, phone number, and a verification code texted to it |
| Facebook Events | A Facebook account |
| Eventbrite | Registration; an account is the normal path |
| Luma | Registration; an account or email is required |
| SignUpGenius | Nothing for most sign-ups |
| Doodle | An account requirement applies in the current free tier |
| Google Forms | Not by default, but restricting duplicates usually means requiring sign-in |
The phone number question
Partiful is the interesting case, because it is otherwise one of the better free products in the category — genuinely free, no advertising, funny, with date polling and waitlists built in. The trade is explicit: a guest enters a name and phone number and then types a code texted to that number to complete the RSVP.
Partiful's own help documentation describes what the number is then used for: automatic reminders, host text blasts, and surfacing events that a guest or their mutuals are invited to. That is a coherent product decision — it is what makes the mutuals feature work — but it is a broader use of a number than answering one question about one Saturday.
If your guest list is young and entirely mobile, nobody will blink. If it has a school class, a set of colleagues and a grandparent in it, this is the step where replies stop coming.
The Facebook question
A Facebook event is free and requires nothing of the people who are already there. It requires everything of the people who are not: anyone who has left the platform, or never joined, cannot see or answer your invitation at all.
Two other things worth knowing before you use it for a private event. Facebook does not let you convert a public or group event to a private one after it has been created, so a privacy mistake at creation is not fully reversible. And a Facebook event counts people, not headcounts — there is no way to record that one invitee is bringing two adults and three children, which is precisely the number you need for catering.
What "no account" looks like in practice
On RSVora, a guest receives a link. Opening it shows a sealed envelope that opens with confetti and reveals the invitation, rendered in their own device language. They tap yes or no, set how many adults and children are coming, and can leave a note. That is the entire flow. No email, no phone number, no password, no code, no app.
The link itself is the credential: each guest's page lives at an unguessable token URL, disallowed in robots.txt so it is never indexed. It is the same model as a password reset email, and it is why nothing further needs asking.
The practical rule
If the event needs a headcount, remove every step between the link and the answer. If the event needs a ticket, or a payment, or capacity control with a waitlist, then registration is doing real work and a product that requires it is the right tool.
Most parties are the first kind.