Product Review:Purple Trail Event Invitation & Planning Site

Have I been under a rock when electronic invites got so high tech? I've used Evite.com which was the standard bearer and is the brand benchmark when it comes to electronic invitations. I love e-vites because as a busy mom, wife & business owner, I just can't find the time to do paper invites and keep up w/ RSVPs. Online works best for me! Over the years, I have noticed the designs have gotten even more elaborate and varied on Evite. Kudos to them, but yet for the creative person who wants more personalization, there are limits. Several online photo uploading and printing websites like Shutterfly and Kodak Photo Gallery have jumped the bandwagon and also give the option of designing eye-catching invitations, announcements and photo cards.

So far though, none matches the depth and range of designs and party theme ideas I saw while perusing through the Purple trail.com's website. No, seriously. I am one of those people who has to sit down when walking into a store with goo gabs of visual stimuli and goodies. I just don't know where to start and I get overwhelmed. Not sure that is a good thing, but that is the same feeling I got when I first opened the website.

Purple Trail is an online and paper card event design site that lets users create invitations, customize them and send them online and track responses or print them out and mail via snail mail. Okay, you can order the prints at .95 a copy, which isn't' too bad, but even cheaper is ordering the download at $3.95 and either printing from home or taking the disk with the image to the local drug store or price mart and copying them there for maybe a cheaper price. The only thing I'd fear is possibly getting an inferior image quality perhaps since it isn't company directly from the site, but who knows.

I was genuinely impressed by the style of designs available made by the site's community of users. Also, it is cool that under the religious holiday category, there were options for Eid and Diwali, Muslim and Hindu holidays. My husband hails from Trinidad where it is so diverse that government workers get extra holidays than us in the US celebrating different folks' religious feasts! The community section of the site lets users set up a profile and share designs. Other users can rate the design or indicate if they liked it or not. And, they can totally steal it for their own event! Yay for Pirates! ha!

As a lover of social media, I really liked the following:

1. You have the option of creating an event fund (at an extra cost I believe) so participants can pitch in to the final cost of an event. Paypal, which is a trusted medium for sending and receiving funds, is used.
2. You can send a tweet or Facebook message about the event to your followers and friends;
3. Participants can add messages to the event that could be visible to the host or all guests (that can be good or bad) but it's not just a text message. They could infuse bold, italics and smiley faces and totally personalize their message.
4. There's an option to upload multiple photos and even a video to the invitation and you can allow guests to as well. This is a great option for anniversaries or retirement parties when it can be a great idea to cull resources and photos that a guest may not have in their possession.
5. The option to get text message when other guests replies.

You're supposed to be able to skip signing up and sign in using your Facebook account but for some reason I was unable to.

If properly marketed and used, it could easily replace Eventbrite and Facebook events because it is more visually appealing and the absence of ads gives credibility to the event.

Purple Trail also has a chunk of party ideas for every occasion from Weddings to showers to Birthday parties to farewell parties and the site also features lots of crafts, decorations food and game ideas too. They go well beyond traditional and typical ideas you've seen before.

All in all, Purple Trail is great for the party planner decorator wanna be in all of us.

I will certainly be using them to send out GG's second birthday party invites and for future events. I'm sold and I say that not because I was given a basic membership while checking it out to write this review. You have to take a look for yourself and you'll see...

Though there's loads of free stuff on the site, with a Year Basic membership, you get more. Because I was wondering if there is no advertisement yet, how does this company make money? So here' the answer: Starting at $14.95 up to $49.95 annually, paid subscribers can send Text invites, a certain number of print downloads, 1-day shipping (vs 2 day w/ the Free account), animated cards, payment collection, scheduled sends, limited RSVPs, real time chat and more.

If you want a shot at one annual basic membership of your own, Party Trail is giving one away to one lucky Bellyitch Reader. Simply fill out this form below and in it let me know which article form http://purpletrail.com/partytrail you like best.

For additional entries, simply follow Purple Trail on Twitter or become a Facebook Fan of theirs. But to get the extra entry, please fill out a fresh form indicating for each way you entered. I'll pick the winner via Random.org's interger thingamabob.

Deadline shall be December 5 at Midnight. Limit to US residents and those over 18. The winner will be sent a code to enter for the year's membership.

Good LUCK!

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