Most online invitation tools are free until the moment they aren't. The design is free, the builder is free, and then a guest limit, a premium template, or a per-guest charge appears somewhere between writing the invitation and sending it. This page compares on one thing only: what you pay.
Evite Pro is sold as a subscription at $249.99 per year. That is a yearly commitment, which suits someone sending invitations continuously — but it is a real cost to carry if what you actually have is one birthday, one shower, and a dinner in October.
Paperless Post uses a virtual currency called Coins, and premium designs are priced per guest. The consequence is that your cost scales with the size of your guest list: the same invitation costs more to send to eighty people than to twenty, so growing the list means paying more.
Nothing. There is no subscription, no per-guest charge, and no credit card. Adding your eightieth guest costs exactly what adding your first one did. You can browse every design, send by email and text, and track every RSVP without paying, and without creating an account first. The site is supported by advertising, which is what keeps sending free.
Free doesn't mean stripped down. You get 50 designs, delivery by email and optional SMS, a per-event invitation page where guests answer going, maybe, or can't make it with an optional plus-one and a note, and a live dashboard showing responses as they arrive along with who hasn't replied yet.
If you send invitations constantly and need the extra features a subscription buys, a paid tier may well be worth it. If you are hosting a handful of events a year and mainly need a good-looking invitation that reaches people and reports back who is coming, paying per guest or per year is money spent on a problem you don't have.