The cheapest way to send wedding invitations, priced out

Five routes for sending wedding invitations priced with published vendor rates, from free digital sends to per-card printing and per-recipient charges.

Invitations are one of the few wedding costs where the cheapest option and the best option can be the same thing, which is not true of catering or photography. Here are the five routes, priced at 100 and 250 guests using each vendor published rates.

Route 1: free digital, $0

Several platforms genuinely charge nothing at wedding-sized guest lists:

Dawat is free at every guest count, with unlimited guests, unlimited sends, RSVP tracking and no per-recipient charge.
Partiful states it is 100 percent free with no paywalls. Guests verify a phone number by SMS to RSVP.
Evite sends free to up to 750 guests, with third-party ads displayed to your guests.
The Knot and Zola both give you a free wedding website with RSVP collection. Zola states plainly that it does not offer digital invitations, only digital save the dates, so the invitation itself has to come from somewhere else.
Joy publishes a free core product covering website, registry, RSVP and unlimited guests, with hundreds of free digital invite designs.

Route 2: flat fee per event, $19 to $250

You pay once and guest count either does not matter or moves you between bands:

Greenvelope charges per mailing by list size: $19 up to 20 guests, $59 up to 60, $99 up to 100 and $249 up to 250.
Evite Premium is banded per event at $17.99 for 12 guests, $36.99 for 30, $68.99 for 75 and $99.99 for up to 750. A 100-guest list falls into the $99.99 band because the $68.99 package only covers 75.
Punchbowl sells subscriptions with per-event guest caps: Premium from $4.99 per month covers 100 guests, Platinum from $5.99 covers 500. Ads are shown on every plan below Platinum.
Mixily bills monthly with no contract: Lite $19 per month for 100 invites, Pro $29 for 250. Its free plan stops at 50 invites.
Riley & Grey is $299 for twelve months with unlimited invitation sending and a custom domain included.

Route 3: per recipient, $50 to $360

Paperless Post publishes per-guest rates of 50 cents on Basic, $1.05 on Premium and $1.44 on All Access. That is roughly $105 for 100 guests and $263 for 250 at the Premium rate, and about $360 at All Access for 250. Paperless Post notes the per-guest rate falls at higher volumes, so treat those as upper bounds. Its Paperless Pro subscription starts at $250 a year for 250 annual guests.

This is the model that punishes exactly the weddings that need the most invitations. If your list grows by 40 people, so does your bill.

Route 4: print, $72 to $585 plus postage

At published starting rates, for 100 and then 250 cards:

Basic Invite, from 72 cents per card: about $72 and $180.
Vistaprint, from 84 cents on promotion against a $1.40 list price: about $84 to $140, and $210 to $350.
Shutterfly, from $1.35 per card: about $135 and $338.
Zazzle, at listed sale prices of $1.79 to $2.45: about $179 to $245, and $448 to $613 before its quantity discount over 50.
Minted, at $2.34 per card for Classic 7x5 at quantity 100: about $234 and $585.

Postage is extra at every one of these vendors and is not included in any of those figures. Reply cards are usually a separate enclosure, which adds both a card and a return stamp per household. The Basic Invite and Vistaprint comparison covers the cheapest two in detail, including what each includes in the price.

Route 5: free, but you pay in something other than money

Free tiers usually charge you in one of four currencies. Ads shown to your guests, as on Evite free, SignUpGenius free and Doodle free. A guest cap, as with Facebook Events allowing 500 invites per person per event. Friction at the reply, such as a phone verification. Or a watermark: Greetings Island puts one on free downloads, removable with premium at $26.99 a year or a single design purchase at $8.99.

Decide which of those you are willing to spend. Most hosts find ads beside their wedding details the hardest to accept and a guest cap the easiest.

The honest summary

At 100 guests the range across these routes is roughly $0 to $585. At 250 guests it is roughly $0 to over $600, and the per-recipient route is no longer cheaper than printing. The pricing model matters more than the sticker price, which is why the full comparison lists cost at 100 and 250 guests for every one of the 33 platforms.

Dawat sits at the free end without the usual trade: no ads to guests, no per-recipient charge, no guest account, and no card required to create or send. The only paid item is Dawat Signature, eight long-scroll cinematic experiences at $89 one time per event, and it is labelled as paid before you publish. Price it against your own guest count.

Create your invitation — free →Unlimited guests. No card required.