Evite Sucks!

“Evite is great if you're gonna party like it's 1999 – because that's where the site has been stuck for nearly a decade. An email arrives announcing a fete, but it's short on deets. You're forced to click to an ad-choked Web page, then another to RSVP, and then back to the first to see the info again. That faint sound you hear? It's coins tumbling into the pockets of media conglomerate IAC/InterActiveCorp, which acquired the site in 2003. And that, of course, is the point – all that clicking means dollars for them.”

“We're only mad at Evite because we need it so much, and we know it could be so much better. The site, in short, is crying out for an overhaul. With more and more sites emphasizing flexibility and user control over content, Evite's fill-in-the-blanks approach feels clumsy and dated. The ads are intrusive and navigation's a drag. The service has also been slow to adopt some of the media sharing tools that have become standard ways of the Web. You can upload photos but only after the party, and you can forget music and video. The company says these features are in development. We can't wait.”

“Oh god, Evite. It starts with an email about a party with no information about that party, and then it gets worse. The main problem with Evite is the uninformative email. "You are invited to Heather's Divorce Party," says Evite, with a personal message from the host but no actual information. The site is also annoying to use: I can only export the event to iCal, RSVPing takes me to a useless page instead of back to the event, and the site is full of ads and unrelated links.”

“I can't believe how bad Evite is as a Web application. It was bad before it got old, but now it's old and really bad.”

“I'll admit that Evite is one of the greatest viral sites the world has ever known. Yet it is absolutely horrible. Why? Evite is ridiculously slow. Even Alexa confirms that Evite is slow, claiming 63% of sites are faster. My question is: who are the other 37%? Are they all sites from Kazakhstan? I cannot imagine a site in the US being slower than Evite. Evite is even slower if I want to see my past events, import or export contacts, make a copy of an old event, or effectively manage an event.”