Most invitations break in the same place. The picture looks good in the group chat, then the replies scatter across four different threads, and two days before the gathering nobody knows whether to buy food for twelve people or twenty. POOK keeps the picture and the answer in the same place: you publish one invitation, everyone opens the same link, and their answer is written to the invitation rather than to a message thread you have to scroll back through.

Everything happens in a browser. There is no POOK app to download, for you or for anyone you invite, and no participant login to administer. You sign in only to save and publish your own work.

What do you actually get for one link?

Publishing produces three things at once: a share link, a matching QR code, and a 9:16 story video asset you can post as a stack of images or drop into a chat. The link opens a full RSVP page 14 days before the start time and closes two hours after the end time. Between the start and end time, a paid invitation also opens its live layer — the same URL, a different screen.

• Before — build the card from 450 ready-to-edit templates or a blank canvas, then change every word, photo and colour.
• Around — RSVPs land with a nickname, a response and an optional 120-character note; see the whole list in the studio. Read what each screen looks like on the features page.
• During — a paid invitation opens group chat, a shared photo gallery, Mood Pulse, Moment Room and the Play Kit shelf.
• After — an aggregate recap stays with you; the per-guest details are deleted 48 hours after the gathering ends.

How does a guest use it, exactly?

A guest taps the link, reads the card, and answers with one of three buttons: attending, still deciding, or can’t make it. To answer they choose a temporary nickname of 2–16 characters and a gender option, both scoped to that one gathering. No name, no phone number, no email address, no password. They can change the answer at any time while the page is open, and a still-deciding answer automatically counts as can’t make it 24 hours before the start so you plan with real numbers. There is no waitlist: once confirmed attendance reaches your capacity, further RSVPs are refused.

POOK sends nothing to guests — no texts, no emails, no push reminders, because it never collects an address to send them to. Instead each invitation offers a Google Calendar link and a downloadable .ics file that sets alarms 24 hours and 2 hours before the start, so the reminder comes from the guest’s own calendar. If that trade-off matters to you, the walkthrough in free online invitation with RSVP shows what replaces the reminder blast, and how to get people to RSVP gives you wording you can paste into your own group chat.

What is free, and where does paying start?

The boundary is deliberately simple. One published invitation per account is free, with 30 guests, public templates and the blank canvas, the link and QR, RSVP with the note field, and calendar saving. It carries a POOK watermark, and the Play Kit shelf is browsable but not playable together. AI drafting, the full template library, the live realtime layer, Dress Rehearsal preview and watermark removal all sit behind a paid invitation, starting at $1.49 for One Day.

Full plan maths, add-on examples and the refund summary live on the pricing page; the shortest answers to the questions people ask before paying are on the FAQ.

Where should you start?

Pick the row that sounds like your week rather than reading everything.

The whole library is indexed on the guides hub, including the two comparison pages — the Partiful comparison and the Evite comparison — plus the birthday set at /templates/birthday-invitations, the checklist in the no-app walkthrough, the reminder steps in the RSVP guide, the headcount table in the tracking guide and the copyable lines in the housewarming wording guide.

Who is POOK not for?

POOK is built for a host gathering roughly 8–30 people who all get the link the same way. It does not send SMS or email invitations, does not import an address book or hold a contact list, and does not export your RSVP list as a spreadsheet. There is no ticketing, no guest payments, no plus-one or meal-choice field, no seating chart, no gift registry, no printing or paper mailing, no custom domain, and no public directory where strangers can find your gathering. Weddings with a formal plus-one and seating workflow, conferences that sell tickets, and mailing-list marketing all need a different tool. If your gathering is bigger than 450 guests, that is an inquiry rather than a self-serve purchase — write to us from the contact page. Everything else about the product, from editor limits to retention, is laid out from the home page outward through features and pricing.