Greenvelope and Fotify both put an event online, and they overlap more than their category labels suggest. Both send a designed digital invitation, both collect RSVPs, and both give you a live view of who has replied. Where they differ is what each one is built around: Greenvelope is built around the invitation and the guest list behind it, while Fotify is built around live guest photo sharing at the venue, with invitations and RSVP running as a full part of the same event. Working out which side of your event needs the most help is most of the decision.
The Short Answer
Choose Greenvelope when the invitation is the thing guests see first and judge the event by, and when you want artist-designed stationery, an animated envelope opening, and email delivery included in the price of the mailing. Choose Fotify when you also want guests uploading photos to a live display during the party, or when a multi-day itinerary needs to live inside the invitation itself. Both platforms collect RSVPs, and both offer seating charts and onsite check-in, so the deciding factor is usually the surrounding workflow rather than any single feature.
Greenvelope vs. Fotify at a Glance
| Greenvelope | Fotify |
|---|
| Core product | Designed digital invitations with built-in RSVP tracking and guest list management | Live guest photo sharing by QR code, with digital invitations and RSVP built into the same event |
| Design approach | Artist-designed stationery suites, customized through wording, fonts, preset colorways and envelope options; you can also upload your own finished card | Templates you customize with your own photos, colors and maps, plus an AI Design Studio that composes an invitation from a chat description |
| Invitation delivery | Email and text message to supported countries, or a shareable link, with an animated envelope opening available as the presentation | Link, QR code and WhatsApp at no extra cost on every plan; email and SMS delivery run on prepaid message packs |
| RSVP tracking | Included with invitation mailings at every guest-list tier. Save the dates, announcements and cards do not collect RSVPs | Included on every plan, including the free one, capped at 20 invitations on Free and Photo Gallery and unlimited from Premium Event up |
| Guest management | Custom questions, meal choices, plus-one allowances, reminder emails you send or schedule, guest list export, a seating chart with automatic table assignment, and onsite check-in through an iOS or Android app | Dietary preferences, plus-ones, custom responses, CSV export, seating charts guests can see inside their own invitation, browser-based QR check-in, and multi-day itineraries |
| Pricing model | A one-time price per mailing set by guest list size: single mailings start at $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people and run to $99 at 100 people, with no subscription required | A one-time price per event: Free, Photo Gallery $29.99, Premium Event $49.99 and Professional Event $79.99, excluding taxes. Separate subscription plans exist for organizers running events regularly |
| Email allowance | Email delivery is included in the mailing price, with no message credits to buy | Prepaid email credits at one credit per email, in packs from $4.99 for 200, with 500 credits included on Professional Event |
| Text message allowance | Every paid account starts with 500 text messages, with more available in blocks of 250 | SMS is a separate add-on from $19.99 per event, in packs of 100 to 500 messages, delivered to more than 100 countries |
| Guest experience | Ad-free, with no guest account or app required to reply | No app or account required. Free events carry Fotify branding, which is removed on any paid plan |
| Support | Phone and email support, with phones answered by Greenvelope employees during weekday business hours and same-day email replies | Email support, plus a help center and video guides |
Prices and plan features above were taken from each company's own pricing and help pages on October 19, 2026. Fotify's prices are listed in USD and exclude taxes, which are added at checkout.
Where the Two Overlap, and Where They Diverge
Fotify's photo side is built around a QR code guests scan at the venue to upload pictures, which then appear on a moderated live carousel you can display on a screen. Greenvelope has no equivalent to that live collection and display. Song requests work differently on each side rather than existing on only one. Fotify takes them live from guests' phones during the event, while Greenvelope collects them in advance as a free-response question on the RSVP page. Both platforms also run in more than one language; Greenvelope's event language setting offers English, Spanish, German, French and Dutch. Fotify's invitation side is a full product in its own right: six email template types covering save the dates, invitations, reminders, event updates, cancellations and post-event thank-yous, plus seating management, sub-events and door check-in.
Greenvelope works from the other end. The product is the invitation itself, and the rest is built to serve it: the design, the animated envelope your guests open, delivery by email or text, and an RSVP that lives inside the card rather than on a separate page. So the comparison is not an invitation tool against a photo tool. It is two platforms that both invite and both track replies, one putting its depth into the stationery and the mailing, the other into what happens at the venue on the night.
Design and the Invitation Itself
Fotify offers templates you customize with your own photos, color palettes, text and location maps, alongside an AI Design Studio you use by chatting with it: you describe the event and the look you want, and it composes a cover, color palette, typography, section layouts and backgrounds as a live preview, generating artwork from your description or your uploaded photos. Nothing reaches guests until you apply it. Fotify's Studio documentation, updated September 28, 2026, states that Studio is available on every plan including Free, that applying a Studio design needs no upgrade, and that free events can publish one; it also notes that Studio and the AI Design Studio are in beta. The differences by plan are allowances rather than access: free events get a shorter chat allowance and a small trial allowance of AI image generations shared across all free events on the account, and a free event's published invitation carries a "Made with Fotify" badge that any paid plan removes. The Studio can also set the envelope artwork and the postcard that slides out of it, so an envelope presentation is something both platforms offer.
Greenvelope's collection is artist-designed: an in-house team works with independent illustrators, calligraphers and artists to produce the suites. You customize a card by editing the wording, choosing fonts and picking from preset colorways and envelope options rather than regenerating the artwork, and you can upload a finished card of your own instead. With a paid account you can also save a high-quality version of your finished design to print yourself or take to a local print shop. The practical difference is in where the artwork comes from: a Greenvelope card starts from a piece an artist drew, and a Studio invitation is composed to your description.
RSVP and Guest Management
Both platforms collect RSVPs, and on Fotify that is true on every plan, including the free one. Its upgrade documentation states the position plainly: every plan includes digital invitations with RSVP, with Free and Photo Gallery allowing up to 20 invitations each and the guest list unlimited from Premium Event up. Fotify counts in invitations, which it defines as how many guests you can invite digitally with responses tracked in your guest list, so a host inviting couples should check how their own list is entered rather than assume a household counts once. Upgrading from Free or Photo Gallery to Premium Event lifts the limit immediately and reopens the guest list and the registration link.
On Greenvelope, mailing type determines whether you can collect RSVPs, while the purchased guest-list tier determines how many people the mailing covers. Greenvelope's documentation states that RSVP functionality is included in invitation packages, and that save the dates, announcements and cards cannot accept RSVPs. Every invitation package carries it, from the smallest tier up.
Beyond the response itself, both platforms go further than a yes or no. Greenvelope gives you custom questions you write yourself in four formats, meal choices, plus-one allowances set per guest, reminder emails you send or schedule to contacts who have not responded, and export of the guest list when you need it elsewhere. It also includes a seating chart, reached from the Track step, where you build a floor plan, set table shapes and seat counts, and assign guests automatically while keeping linked contacts together or manually with filters by company or tag. Onsite check-in runs through a dedicated iOS and Android app and reports live on tickets sold, guests checked in, payments collected and RSVPs, with attendance filters for follow-up messaging.
Fotify covers the same ground with a different shape. It collects dietary preferences, plus-ones and other responses in one form, filters a live dashboard by status, sends targeted reminders to guests who have not replied, and exports to CSV. Its seating assignments are visible to the guest inside their own invitation and the layout can be exported for the venue, its QR check-in runs in the browser with no separate app, and it carries multi-day itineraries inside the invitation. Its Professional tier adds sub-events with their own RSVP, capacity and access rules.
A save the date is not an invitation on either platform. On Greenvelope it can collect mailing addresses, and the formal response begins with the invitation mailing that follows. On Fotify the save-the-date email carries event details and add-to-calendar links but no RSVP form, and the invitation email is the one that adds the response button.
Delivery: How the Invitation Reaches Guests
On Fotify, sharing the invitation by link, QR code or WhatsApp is free on every plan. Email and SMS are the metered routes, and they are bought separately. Email runs on prepaid credits at one credit per email, sold in packs at $4.99 for 200, $9.99 for 500 and $14.99 for 1,000; the Professional Event tier includes 500 credits, and credits never expire but cannot be moved between events. SMS is its own add-on from $19.99 per event in packs of 100 to 500 messages, delivered to more than 100 countries and sent within local daytime hours.
Fotify's two reminder types are worth separating, because only one is free. A reminder to guests who have not responded is an ordinary send and uses your credits, whether you trigger it yourself or let Fotify send it automatically as your RSVP deadline approaches; each guest receives at most one. The pre-event reminder is the free one: it goes out three days before the event, only to guests who accepted, and only to those who have already received an email from you through Fotify for that event, so guests you added to the list and never emailed are left out. Automatic RSVP confirmations and test sends to yourself are also free. Alongside this, Fotify documents scheduled sends and per-guest delivery, open and click tracking, with its own caveat that open and click figures are directional and that delivered means the recipient's mail server accepted the message. Per-guest send caps apply by email type, with invitations capped at two sends per guest and reminders at one.
On Greenvelope, email delivery is included in the price of the mailing, so an invitation to 300 people needs no message credits. Text messaging is the metered channel: every paid account starts with 500 text messages, more can be purchased in blocks of 250, and Greenvelope currently limits purchases to 1,000 SMS per month. Neither platform is unlimited in every direction. Greenvelope's limit sits on texting, and Fotify's sit on email and SMS, while its link, QR and WhatsApp sharing stay free.
Pricing Compared
Fotify prices per event, as a one-time purchase, across four tiers: a Free Event with up to 20 invitations with RSVP, 50 photos and a 7-day upload window; a $29.99 Photo Gallery tier adding unlimited photos, full-resolution uploads, AI photo moderation, bulk download and branding removal, while keeping the 20-invitation limit; a $49.99 Premium Event adding unlimited invitations and RSVP, video clips, custom branding and event games; and a $79.99 Professional Event adding event collaborators, a custom domain, 500 included email credits, multiple seating arrangements, sub-events and its planning hub. Prices exclude taxes. Events can be bought ahead and activated later, upgrades are charged as the difference between tiers, and Fotify separately offers subscription plans for organizers running events regularly, which is a different product from the one-time events above.
Greenvelope prices per mailing rather than per event. Single mailings start at $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people and are set by list size, with no subscription required: $39 up to 40 people, $59 up to 60, $79 up to 80 and $99 up to 100, continuing up from there. Every person on the list counts toward the tier, including household members entered individually. Because the unit is the mailing, a save the date and the invitation that follows are two separate mailings on Greenvelope, where on Fotify both emails sit inside one purchased event. Annual memberships are also available for hosts sending repeatedly. You can send to up to 10 people in trial mode with no credit card required, which is the simplest way to see the envelope opening and the guest-facing RSVP before committing.
A worked example, using only the tiers and pack sizes published on October 19, 2026. Assume 80 invitees, each emailed individually, and a reminder later sent to 40 of them who have not replied. On Fotify you would need Premium Event at $49.99, since 80 invitations is above the 20 allowed on Free and Photo Gallery, plus email credits: 80 invitation emails and 40 reminder emails is 120 credits, so one 200-email pack at $4.99 covers it, for $54.98 before taxes. Adding a save-the-date email to the same 80 would bring the total to 200 emails, exactly filling that pack. Avoiding the credit purchase altogether means sending the invitation and any follow-up reminders through the free channels; switching only the first send to a link or WhatsApp still leaves the reminder emails running on credits. On Greenvelope, an 80-person guest list is the $79 tier for that mailing, one time, with email delivery included; a save the date to the same list would be a second mailing at the same tier. Your own numbers will land differently depending on how you invite.
Event Windows and Invitation Lifetimes
Fotify runs three timelines that are easy to confuse with each other, and its own documentation is explicit that they are independent. The photo upload window is how long guests can add photos after you start the event: 7 days on Free, 30 on Photo Gallery, and 90 on Premium and Professional. Gallery access is how long the photos stay viewable afterwards: 7 days on Free, 90 on Photo Gallery, and 365 on Premium and Professional. Neither governs the invitation. Fotify states that the RSVP system runs separately, that you do not need to start the event to send invitations, and that each invitation accepts RSVPs for 18 months from the moment it is created. So the 7-day figure on the free tier is a photo window, not a seven-day invitation.
Greenvelope has no photo upload or gallery window, so there is no equivalent countdown to read. Greenvelope lets hosts set a requested RSVP date and separately close response collection through a maximum capacity setting.
When Fotify Is the Right Choice
If you want to walk away with hundreds of candid photos your guests took, appearing live on a screen during the party, Fotify does something Greenvelope does not do at all, and the same goes for live DJ song requests taken from guests' phones during the event, as opposed to the song preferences Greenvelope collects in advance on the RSVP page. It is also worth a look when you want a multi-day itinerary living inside the invitation, when sub-events each need their own RSVP and capacity, or when you would rather your guests opened their table assignment in the invitation than received it at the door. For a gathering of 20 or fewer where you are sharing by link or WhatsApp, the free tier covers the invitation and the RSVP, with Fotify branding on the guest experience as the trade-off.
When Greenvelope Is the Right Choice
Greenvelope is the better fit when the invitation carries weight: weddings, milestone birthdays, galas and donor events, corporate dinners, anything where the card sets expectations for the evening. The reasons are artist-designed stationery, an arrival experience built around the envelope opening, RSVP tracking on every invitation mailing, an ad-free experience with no account required of your guests, email delivery included rather than metered by credit, a predictable total you can see before you start, and phone and email support. Greenvelope has been sending invitations since 2008 and holds a 4.9 out of 5 rating across more than 10,000 reviews on Trustpilot.
Using Both Together
Running both is a workflow worth considering. Send the invitation and manage the guest list on Greenvelope, where the design and the RSVP live, then create a Fotify event used only for photo collection. In that arrangement you do not need a second guest list at all: Fotify places no limit on how many guests can scan the QR code and upload photos, so there is nobody to import. The setup is creating the event, generating its QR code and putting it where guests will see it, on table cards or a screen.
What you should check before assuming it is free is the photo side. A Free Event holds up to 50 photos with a 7-day upload window and 7 days of gallery access afterwards, carries Fotify branding, and does not include bulk download, so you would be saving pictures individually. Free events are also capped at three per account at any one time. If 50 photos will not cover your party, or you want to download the album in one go and keep it longer, the $29.99 Photo Gallery tier lifts the photo cap, extends the window to 30 days of uploads and 90 days of access, removes the branding and adds bulk download. Either way the invitation stays on Greenvelope. Every Fotify tier includes invitations, so the only question is which tier covers the photos: Free or Photo Gallery may be enough for a photo-only setup, depending on how many photos you expect and how long you need the album to stay open.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Greenvelope and Fotify?
Both send digital invitations and track RSVPs, so the difference is emphasis rather than category. Greenvelope is built around the invitation itself: artist-designed stationery, an animated envelope opening, delivery by email or text, and RSVP tracking included with invitation mailings at every guest-list tier. Fotify is built around live guest photo sharing by QR code at the venue, with invitations and RSVP running as part of the same event. Both offer seating charts and onsite check-in. Choose Greenvelope when the card and the mailing matter most, and Fotify when what happens at the venue matters as much as the invitation.
Is Fotify legit?
Fotify is a real product operated by Lumenlio, LLC. It publishes current per-event pricing, a help center covering its invitation, RSVP, messaging and photo sharing features, and terms, privacy and refund policies, with checkout through Stripe. It is a newer entrant than the long-established invitation platforms. None of that measures how well the service performs for any particular host, which is worth judging separately.
Is Fotify free?
Fotify has a free tier and three paid tiers, all priced as a one-time charge per event and listed excluding taxes. The Free Event tier includes up to 20 invitations with RSVP, up to 50 photos, a 7-day photo upload window and Fotify branding on the guest experience, and free events are capped at three per account at any one time. Paid tiers are Photo Gallery at $29.99, Premium Event at $49.99 and Professional Event at $79.99. Greenvelope does not run a free or branded tier; single mailings start at $19 for a guest list of up to 20 people, priced by list size with no subscription required, and you can send to up to 10 people in trial mode with no credit card required.
Does Fotify have RSVP tracking?
Yes, on every plan including the free one. Fotify's upgrade documentation states that every plan includes digital invitations with RSVP, with Free and Photo Gallery allowing up to 20 invitations each and the guest list unlimited from Premium Event up. Guests respond through a link and can add plus-ones, dietary requirements and other preferences, and hosts get a live dashboard, targeted reminders to non-responders, CSV export, seating assignments and QR check-in. On Greenvelope the two limits are separate: whether a mailing can collect RSVPs depends on its type, since RSVP tracking comes with invitation mailings and not with save the dates, announcements or cards, while how many people a mailing covers depends on the guest-list tier you buy.
How do guests receive a Fotify invitation?
Fotify shares invitations by link, QR code or WhatsApp at no extra cost on every plan. Email and SMS are metered and bought separately: email runs on prepaid credits at one credit per email, in packs starting at $4.99 for 200 emails, with 500 credits included on the Professional Event tier, while SMS is its own add-on from $19.99 per event covering more than 100 countries. Reminders to guests who have not responded use credits like any other send. The automatic pre-event reminder three days before the event is free, but reaches only guests who accepted and who already received an email from you through Fotify. Greenvelope includes email delivery in the mailing price and meters text messages instead, starting every paid account with 500.
Does Fotify use AI to design invitations?
Yes. Fotify's AI Design Studio composes an invitation from a chat description, setting the cover, color palette, typography, section layouts and backgrounds, and generating artwork from your description or uploaded photos, with nothing shown to guests until you apply it. Fotify's Studio documentation, which marks the feature as in beta, states that it is available on every plan including Free and that publishing needs no upgrade; free events get smaller allowances and a "Made with Fotify" badge that any paid plan removes. Greenvelope's artwork comes from its artist-designed collection instead, customized through wording, fonts, preset colorways and envelope options, or replaced with a finished card you upload.
Which is better for weddings, Greenvelope or Fotify?
For the invitation and the guest list, Greenvelope is our recommendation: artist-designed suites, an animated envelope opening, delivery by email or text, and RSVP depth including custom questions, meal choices, plus-one allowances and reminders, plus a seating chart and onsite check-in for the day. Fotify is the stronger choice if you want guest photos appearing live at the reception, a multi-day itinerary inside the invitation, or table assignments guests open in their own invitation. Note that Fotify's photo upload and gallery windows are separate from its invitation, which accepts RSVPs for 18 months from creation, so a short photo window does not limit your RSVP period.
Is Greenvelope an alternative to Fotify?
For the invitation half, yes. Greenvelope covers what most hosts come to Fotify's invitation side for: a designed card, delivery by email or text, RSVP tracking with custom questions and meal choices on invitation mailings, guest list export, a seating chart and onsite check-in. It is the better fit when the stationery matters and you would rather not meter email sends against a credit pack. For live guest photo sharing specifically, Greenvelope is not a replacement, since it has no photo wall or QR upload feature; one option is to send the invitation on Greenvelope and run a separate Fotify event purely for photo collection.
Related Resources
Fotify details above come from Fotify pricing, Upgrade Your Event, How to Send Email Invitations, AI Design Studio, the Studio template guide and Understanding Event Times and Durations. Greenvelope details come from the Greenvelope pricing page, the RSVP tracking, seating chart, onsite check-in and text message sending help articles. All checked October 19, 2026.