Creating New Events is Disabled

For the latest news, skip to Update #2.

UPDATE: I’ve heard from multiple people who think that Anyvite was “hacked”. Anyvite was not hacked and no personal information was compromised or stolen. There was simply a large group of spammers who were creating events faster than we could block them, which required us to disable the free side of Anyvite.

First, let me appologize for the inconvenience. As many of our regular users have seen over the last few days, the site has been slow and emails are taking a while to send. Unfortunately, this is because a group of spammers has found that they can use Anyvite to send spam emails and while we’ve tried to put some roadblocks in their way, the spammers are persistent. If anyone has received these spam emails, I greatly appologize.

For now, the only option we have is to disable creating new events on the free Anyvite.com site. Premium sites are not currently affected. You should be able to continue with any existing events you already have until they’re concluded. At this time, no new events are being accepted.

Anyvite hasn’t been anyone’s full time job for quite some time, but we’ve tried to keep it running because a lot of people still find it useful. Unfortunately, this means that I’m not sure if or when we’ll be able to make the necessary changes that would prevent the spammers from continuing to abuse the system.

I’m sorry if this is disappointing to some of you who enjoy using Anyvite. If you’d like to try a new invitation service, you can download your Anyvite Address Book here: http://anyvite.com/address_book/export. That will include all of your contacts but doesn’t include Groups unfortunately.

We’ll post any updates here if things change. We appreciate your understanding.

UPDATE #1 (3/16/2015)
I want to make it clear that it is not our goal to try to get people to migrate to our premium sites service. I understand that many people who use Anyvite can not afford our premium sites and don’t need the extra features that it provides. We disabled creating new events solely to deal with a spam problem that was affecting the free Anyvite service and that’s why premium sites are not currently affected.

We’re looking into options to both enable the free site again and to create a lower priced premium site option, but we do not have a timeline on either option at this point.



UPDATE #2 (3/16/2015)
We’ve heard from a number of people who are asking for an inexpensive premium option so they can continue using Anyvite but without the higher price tag of the other premium sites. For those people, we created the Simple Plan which includes 10 simultaneous events and up to 250 guests per event for $5 per month ($60 per year, as requested in a number of the comments). If you’re interested, you can sign up here: http://anyvite.com/premium_sites/signup/choose_plan/SimplePlan. This should help people who rely on Anyvite continue to use it while we figure out where to go from here. Thanks to everyone for their feedback and support.

  • The truth bringer

    going in through my paid premium account and still cant get a new invite to work. errrr

  • The truth bringer

    i signed up also for the paid. How did you create a new invite???

  • jerry

    Click on Invitations, then click on Create Invitation, and Choose/customize your design. Just follow the remaining steps and you will have a new invite.

  • jerry

    I haven’t done this but I think you could put your Excel file in the same format as the manually entered contacts, then just copy/paste the list of contacts into the manual entry dialog box.

  • The truth bringer

    I dont see ‘ customize design’

  • Melissa

    Just signed up for simple plan, but when I go to click “Create Invitation” I still get a notice that the create invite is disabled.

  • Melissa

    Okay, I got into the premium site, but when I click “Invitations” it just says, “It doesn’t look like you have any invitations.” WHich I don’t, but I want to create one. There doesn’t seem to be anything to click on to create one, however.

  • Melissa

    Me either!

  • The truth bringer

    I emailed Dan earlier today.. he is MIA today.
    I just use an existing invite and redo the details and change the date. and then cancel out the guest list and then resend. worked last time and worked again today. temporary fix for now

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    You misspelled the domain when setting up your site. I emailed you the correct link.

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    Hi Melissa,

    When you signed up, the system didn’t properly assign your subscription to your premium site which is why you couldn’t create an event. I appologize for the inconvenience. Please check the site again and you should now see the option to create an event.

  • Kevin

    I appear to have the same problem as Melissa. Signed for the simple plan, went to my premium site, but no option to create invitation

  • ChiMommie

    When do you expect the free service to be up and running? I am on a fixed income with very high medical bills and a subscription fee just would not fit into my budget at this time.

  • joshvp

    I must be missing something obvious, but how do I access my new Premium Simple plan? Somehow I only see one way to log in, and that leads to my original account, with no option to create an invitation.

  • Rahul

    There seems to be a glitch in the system. If a person adds “+1″ as a guest to their RSVP, and someone else accesses Anyvite using the Mobile version, the “+1″ does not count towards the max count and allows others to RSVP “Yes”. This causes problem for me as I am frequently oversold on my invites.

  • shawna

    So my concern is I have to pay before I can even start to create an invite vs paying when I am ready to send the invite.
    This is a concern for me because I want to make sure the size of my invite 600×1490 px is compatible with the site and will not get shrunk or cropped since all my even info is in the Image before I pay for a service that might not be applicable to what I need.

  • ChiMommie

    Still waiting for a reply from Anyvite.

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    We do not anticipate having the free site available again in the near future. The blog post explains why we just don’t have the time or resources to continue supporting the free site.

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    An image that large will likely be resized. The premium sites come with a 15 day free trial.

  • Bob Scott

    Just a thought, but you might consider updating your home page to remove the “it’s free” commentary on the “Try it” button, and the “Free” from the site title (“Free Online Invitations…” portion of the title). Not to mention the word “free” used in your meta search tags…

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    Thanks Bob, that’s a good point. Hopefully at some point we’ll have a chance to update the home page to better reflect the current state of the site.

  • Christopher Ross

    I send out and receive Anyvites. Now because people are using Simple Plans, my invitations are on different web pages. Is there an easy way that all invitations could be seen together on the same page again? Thanks!

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    Unfortunately no. If you’re using this for a group of some sort, then the group could sign up for one site rather that everyone having individual sites and then that one site would have all of the invitations.

  • Les

    I’m considering signing up for the Simple Plans but have a couple of things that someone can confirm or reply to. If I use Simple Plan to create and send invitations, do all the recipients also have to sign up to respond? I hope not cuz that won’t work for me — one of the key features of Anyvite was the fact that recipients didn’t even need to sign up or register at Anyvite — I hope this is still the case.

    Secondly, Dan said below that “…group of some sort, then the group could sign up for one site rather that everyone having individual sites…”. Could you clarify what this means? I have a group of people (some minor changes to it from time to time) that I send invitations to for regular weekly events. Sometimes there are a handful of us that take turns creating and sending out the invitations — it would be nice to have all invitations for our group (the invitees) showing all on one page. Is this possible?

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    The premium sites work the same as Anyvite, guests do not have to sign in to RSVP.

    If you have a group and multiple group members need to make invitations, then only one group member should sign up and add the other members as contributors to the site so they can all create invitations without paying for multiple sites.

  • MCartwright

    Would there be any chance you would consider increasing the number of invitees on the Simple Plan? My household has one annual blow-out party. We’re willing to use the Simple Plan, even though it means paying $60 for what amounts to one or two parties a year, but our party list is more like 400 than 250. It’s just a house party, it’s just we invite more people than we expect to show up. The 250 seems really low to us, but the next tier higher is too much for one party per year. Any chance?

    thanks!

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    You only need to keep the subscription for as long as you want the invitation to be available. So using a larger plan for two months would cost about the same or less than the smaller plan for the whole year. We do not plan to increase the guest list limit for the simple plan.

  • tedphoto

    I am a premium member and am having problems sending an invitation. Just wondering how I can get some tech support

  • Chewie TheChewmonster

    Just tried to copy an invitation from last year and after entering all the info got a message that I “cannot currently create an invitation.” This is most frustrating! In addition to the time spent having entered hundreds of names in your database I have been paying $5 per month for over a year. I now discover I cannot even use the site for its intended purpose. Please contact me regarding (1) getting the site to work as it used to or (2) getting a refund.

  • http://williampietri.com/ William Pietri

    I’m in the same situation as MCartwright. I do one big party a year, a brunch on New Year’s Day, and it’s over 250 people. I don’t care about any of your commercial features, and as a forgetful person I’m pretty reluctant to sign up for recurring charges. I’d love to see a plan that’s, say, $10 flat fee for one large event. I’ll probably just pay the $25 this time, as I’m late as it is and I like Anyvite’s style. But for next year, I’d love a plan that better fits my needs.

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    Hi William,

    I completely understand, however if an effort to keep things simple, we have no plans at this time to add different payment/upgrade options. If you sign up for a premium place, I recommend creating a calendar reminder to cancel the plan after the party so you don’t get charged extra. Sorry for the inconvenience.

  • Gretchen Grunzke

    I emailed Anyvite on 1/10 to ask if we could increase our Anyvite subscription to accommodate more than 50 events. Dan Morin emailed back on 1/12 and said we could upgrade to a Simple75 plan. I have emailed back 3 times asking him to please upgrade and as of today, 1/25, no response. I also tweeted. PLEASE upgrade. Our charity organization uses this service to schedule free comedy shows and workshops for those in need and we are missing events because I cannot post them. Thank you.

  • iquack

    Seems that the free ANYVITE is now a permanently dead issue.

  • Spirit Chrysalis

    I’m having the same trouble as tedphoto. Any fix to this?

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    Email support@anyvite.com with your questions.

  • Rahul J

    Is anyone having issues receiving Anyvite e-mails (such as invitations, RSVPs etc.)? I stopped receiving Anyvite e-mails this past Sunday and cannot figure out why. I added a secondary e-mail and I can get e-mails there but not to my original e-mail. E-mailed the support mail box but to no avail.
    Rahul J

  • http://anyvite.com Dan Morin

    The person had marked an email as spam previously which disables all future emails. Please don’t mark our emails as spam and you shouldn’t have any delivery issues.

  • Boise101

    Is anyone else having trouble with Anyvite for the last few days? We have a free account, and now on our event we can’t see any of the tabs to manage or contact guests. Help!

  • Boise101

    I did e-mail customer service a couple days ago but have not hard back from them and our event is tomorrow! If I switch to a premium account, will it transfer my current events over?

  • Lindsey Middleton

    Maybe you could add a Captcha or some other roadblock for sending free invites? I’ve never used your site, but had been hoping to for a work event – the features seem perfect for what we were looking for, dang it :)