The core of it is, and unusually so: the wedding website, the registry, unlimited guests, online RSVP, hundreds of digital invitations and multiple editors cost $0 forever. Joy earns its money from registry commissions and a short list of upgrades. Those upgrades are scheduled sends, Messaging Plus for SMS, a custom domain at about $19.99 a year, premium card designs, and printing from $1.39 a card. Joy does not publish what Messaging Plus or the premium card bundles cost, so budget for them only after you have seen the price in your own account.

What does a cash gift cost on Joy?

It depends on how the guest pays. Through Venmo, PayPal or Cash App, nothing — those routes are zero-fee. On a card, Joy passes a 3.5% Stripe fee to the guest, and card contributions are supported from the US, UK, Canada and the eurozone in USD, CAD, GBP or EUR. Moving the balance to a bank account costs $1.70 per transfer. The GuestlistOnline gift fund is dearer on card gifts — 5% + 0.25 in the currency of the event, payment processing included — and cheaper in a different way: it runs through your own Stripe Connect account with iDEAL and the local methods European guests expect, and it needs no US bank account.

Can Joy check guests in at the door?

No. Joy has no check-in feature, no QR pass per guest and no scanner; the QR codes it produces are printed on cards so guests can open the website. On the day you are reading a list. GuestlistOnline gives every guest a QR code and checks them in either in the browser or in a PWA scanner installed straight from the browser on iOS or Android, with no app store involved. That scanner downloads the list in advance, scans and validates while completely offline, and syncs the results back afterwards — and several phones can work the same list at once with door-staff tokens, which is what a 200-guest reception with one entrance actually needs.

Does Joy speak Dutch?

It does not. Joy offers six interface languages — English in US, UK and Australian variants, plus German, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese — and there is no automatic translation, so a bilingual wedding is handled by duplicating pages and targeting them with tags. GuestlistOnline runs in seven languages including Dutch, across both the dashboard and the pages your guests see, so a Dutch family and a German family read the same invitation in their own language without you maintaining two versions of it.

How do I move my Joy guest list?

Export it as a CSV from Joy — everything or a selection, with the RSVP answers included — and import that file into GuestlistOnline, mapping the columns you want to keep. Names, envelope names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, parties, tags and RSVP answers all come across; parties and tags map onto our tags, and meal and dietary answers land in registration fields you can filter and export. What stays behind is the Joy-specific layer: the wedding website and its design, the registry and any cash fund balance, and the card designs and scheduled sends.

Wedding Platform Comparison

GuestlistOnline
vs Joy

A free wedding website with registry and cash funds vs a guest list platform that runs the door.

Try GuestlistOnline Free See the comparison

Free up to 50 guests

Free plan: no credit card

Free events: no fees

Short answer

Joy gives couples a genuinely free wedding website, registry and RSVP flow, with the sharpest conditional RSVP logic in this category and cash gifts that cost nothing through Venmo, PayPal or Cash App — card gifts carry a 3.5% Stripe fee the guest pays, and each bank transfer costs $1.70. It has no check-in, no QR passes and no ticketing, SMS reaches US and Canadian numbers only, a custom domain forwards rather than replaces withjoy.com, there are six interface languages but no Dutch, and the privacy policy says Joy sells and shares identifiers with advertising partners. GuestlistOnline adds QR check-in with an offline scanner, seven languages, EU hosting and iDEAL — and our gift fund is 5% + 0.25 in the ticket currency, dearer than Joy on card gifts, but it does not need a US bank account.

Side by side

Feature comparison

An honest look at how the two platforms compare.

GuestlistOnline vs Joy: feature comparison
Feature	GuestlistOnline	Joy
Costs & payouts
Free plan	Free: 1 event, 50 guests, guest list, RSVP page and manual check-in, no credit card	Free forever: wedding website, registry, unlimited guests, online RSVP, hundreds of digital invitations and multiple editors
What it costs	€0 free, €19.99 for one event, €29/month or €249/year on Pro	Core product $0. Custom domain about $19.99 a year, print from $1.39 a card; Messaging Plus SMS and premium card bundles are sold at prices Joy does not publish
Cash or gift fund fees	Gift fund through your own Stripe account at 5% + 0.25 in the ticket currency, payment processing included — dearer than Joy on card gifts, but it needs no US bank account	Venmo, PayPal and Cash App are zero-fee; card contributions carry a 3.5% Stripe fee the guest pays, and every bank transfer costs $1.70
Selling tickets	Built in: no fees on free events; paid tickets 5% + €0.25 per ticket, payment processing included	Not available — Joy sells no tickets
Payments and payouts	Stripe Connect in your own name, iDEAL included — payouts on your own Stripe schedule	Card contributions from the US, UK, Canada and the eurozone, in USD, CAD, GBP or EUR, paid out to a bank account at $1.70 a transfer
Guest list & RSVP
Guest import	CSV import with names, email addresses and mapped columns	CSV import and export covering names, envelope names, email, phone, address, party and tags, plus duplicate merging and a Contact Collector link
Plus-ones and households	Plus-ones with names and your own wording on the registration page	Households and parties, plus-ones per guest, and a self-service plus-one on the RSVP form
RSVP questions	13 registration field types with dietary requirements built in; meal choice as a custom dropdown question, both filterable and exportable	Multiple choice, text and suggestion questions with conditional follow-ups and per-tag questions; meals and dietary needs are RSVP questions
Reminders and deadlines	Email invitations, reminders and templates you schedule yourself	Automatic email reminders six, three and one month out, an RSVP deadline with a grace period and a custom message, and a unified RSVP across several events
Capacity and approval	Capacity limit that closes registration when full, plus guest approval	Not published — Joy documents an RSVP deadline, a password and a guest-list-only page, but no capacity limit or guest approval
Seating chart	Not offered — tags group guests by table, but there is no floorplan and no auto-seating	Not published
Check-in & door
QR check-in	QR code per guest, scanned in the browser or the PWA scanner, on every paid plan	Not available — Joy has no check-in and no QR passes; the QR codes it prints are on cards
Offline mode	Full offline scanning — the list syncs before the doors open, scans run locally, results sync back	Not available — there is nothing to scan
Several devices at once	Multiple scanner devices on the same guest list, synced live, with door-staff access tokens	Not available — the Joy app shows an attendee list, live photos and a guest book, but no door tools
Branding & communication
Wedding website	Not offered — you get a branded registration page, not a wedding website	A free wedding website with hundreds of designs, unlimited guests and multiple editors
Registry	Not offered — the gift fund collects money, but there is no gift registry	A universal registry with cash funds, which is how Joy earns its money
Custom domain	Custom branding from Per Event, full white-label on Enterprise	A custom domain costs about $19.99 a year and forwards only — withjoy.com stays in the address bar
Text messages	Email invitations, reminders and templates — no SMS blasts	SMS through Messaging Plus, a one-time purchase at an unpublished price, to US and Canadian numbers only
Printed cards	Not offered — digital invitations only	Hundreds of free digital cards and printing from $1.39 a card, shipped in the US, internationally through Paperlust
Platform
Languages	7 languages across the dashboard and the guest pages, Dutch included	Six interface languages — English (US, UK, AU), German, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese — with no Dutch and no auto-translation
Data location	Hosted in the EU, with no advertising business attached to your guest list	A US company under US law and hosting, with GDPR bases, the Data Privacy Framework and SCCs but no EU representative; the privacy policy of 28 August 2026 says Joy sells and shares identifiers for advertising with partners such as Meta, Google and Criteo
Team access	6 roles, up to 5 team members on Per Event and 50 on Pro	Unlimited collaborators, but all with the same single role; wedding coordinators get multi-event accounts
API & export	CSV export of guests, RSVPs, answers and check-in status; REST API and webhooks on Enterprise	CSV export of everything or a selection, RSVP answers included; no API and no Zapier
Best for	Private events, clubs, weddings and anything with a door	US and Canadian couples who want a free website, registry and cash fund in one place, with strong RSVP logic and no door

Facts verified on 2026-09-17. Sources are listed at the bottom of this page.

Pricing

What each one costs

GuestlistOnline

Free — €0
1 event, 50 guests, guest list, RSVP page, manual check-in
Per Event — €19.99 one-off
Unlimited guests for one event, QR check-in, templates, branding, gift fund, 5 team members
Pro — €29/month or €249/year
Unlimited events and guests, analytics, organisation settings, 50 team members, 7-day trial
Enterprise — Custom
White-label, API and webhooks, dedicated support and SLA

Free events: no fees. Paid tickets: 5% + 0.25 per ticket in the ticket currency, payment processing included.

Joy

Core — $0 forever
Wedding website, registry, unlimited guests, online RSVP, hundreds of digital invitations, multiple editors
Custom domain — about $19.99/year
Forwarding only — withjoy.com still shows in the address bar
Messaging Plus (SMS) — Not published
One-time purchase; SMS to US and Canadian numbers only
Premium cards & print — Not published / from $1.39 a card
Premium digital card bundles at an unpublished price; printing from $1.39, US shipping, international via Paperlust

From withjoy.com/pricing and the Joy help centre, 17 September 2026. Joy sells no tickets, so there is nothing to compare on ticket fees. Cash gifts: Venmo, PayPal and Cash App are zero-fee, card contributions carry a 3.5% Stripe fee paid by the guest, and bank transfers cost $1.70 each. Scheduled sends, SMS, the custom domain, premium designs and print are the only paid parts.

Key differences

What sets them apart

The details that matter when choosing between the two.

A door, or no door

Joy stops when the RSVP arrives. There is no check-in, no QR pass and no scanner — the QR codes Joy prints go on cards, and the app gives you an attendee list, live photos and a guest book rather than a door. GuestlistOnline issues a QR code to every guest and scans it in the browser or in a PWA scanner you install on any iOS or Android phone without an app store: it caches the list before the doors open, validates locally with no signal at all, and syncs every scan back when the connection returns. Several devices can work the same list at once, each with its own door-staff token.

What a cash gift actually costs

Be honest about this one: on card gifts Joy is cheaper. A card contribution to a Joy cash fund carries a 3.5% Stripe fee that the guest pays, and Venmo, PayPal and Cash App cost nothing at all, with $1.70 per bank transfer. The GuestlistOnline gift fund is 5% + 0.25 in the currency of the event, with payment processing already inside that rate. What you get for the difference is reach: our gift fund runs through your own Stripe Connect account with iDEAL, cards, Apple Pay and Google Pay, and it needs no US bank account and no US, UK or eurozone card rail to work.

Seven languages, Dutch included, and EU hosting

Joy speaks six interface languages — English in US, UK and Australian variants, German, Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese — with no Dutch and no automatic translation, so a Dutch or Belgian guest list means duplicating pages by hand. It is also a US company under US law and hosting, without an EU representative, and its privacy policy of 28 August 2026 states that it sells and shares identifiers for advertising with partners including Meta, Google and Criteo. GuestlistOnline runs in seven languages including Dutch, is hosted in the EU, and runs no advertising business at all.

Where Joy wins: a free wedding website and the RSVP logic

Joy gives away what most of this category charges for: a wedding website with hundreds of designs, a universal registry, unlimited guests, unlimited collaborators, hundreds of digital invitations and online RSVPs, for nothing. The RSVP engine is the best in the category — conditional follow-up questions, questions targeted at a tag, a deadline with a grace period, name lookup, guests who can edit their own answer, a unified RSVP across the rehearsal dinner and the wedding, and automatic reminders six, three and one month out. Add zero-fee cash gifts through Venmo and PayPal and native iOS and Android apps, and for a US or Canadian couple that is a complete free stack.

Fair is fair

When Joy is the better choice

If the wedding is in the US or Canada and the job is a website, a registry and RSVPs, Joy does it for nothing and does it well.

You want a wedding website, a registry and a cash fund from one free account
Cash gifts arrive through Venmo, PayPal or Cash App, where Joy charges nothing
The RSVP is the complicated part: conditional questions, several events, reminders
Nobody scans anything at the door, and English, German, Spanish, French, Italian or Japanese covers your guests

Migration

Switching from Joy

Joy exports the guest list as a CSV, all of it or a selection, with RSVP answers included — names, envelope names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, parties and tags. Import that file with the guest import and map the columns you want to keep. There is no API and no Zapier, so the CSV is the route.

What carries over

Guest names, email addresses, phone numbers and postal addresses
Parties, households and tags, mapped onto our tags
RSVP status and answers, including meal and dietary responses, if you map the columns on import

What doesn't

The Joy wedding website, its design and the registry itself
Cash fund balances and contributions already made
Digital and printed card designs, and the scheduled sends behind them

FAQ

Common questions

Frequently asked questions about GuestlistOnline vs Joy.

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Sources

Verified on 2026-09-17. Spotted something out of date? Email go@guestlistonline.com and we will correct it.

GuestlistOnlinevs Joy