Alternatives to Facebook events?

June 28, 2017 9:39 AM

What are the best alternatives to Facebook for providing on-line events listings with RSVP, the ability to send out updates, etc.?

An ideal solution would integrate with Facebook so that Facebook users could RSVP on the event and non-Facebook users could RSVP on the other service and the event creator would be able to see all RSVPs in one place. But I assume that Facebook, being evil, has made this impossible, so I'd be happy with anything that gets close to feature parity with Facebook events.

posted by enn to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Best answer: I use Evite. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. There's a single sign-on option with Facebook so that's low-friction. You can just post the event link on Facebook. This is how my book club keeps track of events and RSVPs.
posted by radioamy at 9:42 AM on June 28, 2017

Best answer: Based on your description, I assume that you're looking more for something for public-ish events and less for friendly gatherings. For that, Eventbrite works well. There are a bunch of paid features, but the free version is pretty robust by itself.
posted by roll truck roll at 9:53 AM on June 28, 2017 [3 favorites]

Best answer: We use EventBrite at the Vermont Library Association and we especially like its ability to email segments of respondents, the ability to do ticketing and the general UX of the whole thing.
posted by jessamyn at 10:12 AM on June 28, 2017

Best answer: Nthing Eventbrite.
posted by Lexica at 10:40 AM on June 28, 2017

Best answer: At my work, we use Eventbrite.

For political groups I'm in, we use Action Network.

In both cases, you can post the links to Facebook, but all RSVPing happens on Eventbrite or Action Network, not Facebook.
posted by soren_lorensen at 11:46 AM on June 28, 2017

Best answer: To nth the above, I'm not an organizer, but as someone who looks for local events for a variety of reasons, including both entertainment and political, I'm finding more and more events/groups are using Eventbrite (which also means it is becoming more and more useful as a primary source for looking for events, instead of just something I see linked when browsing FB or local event aggregator sites). Not sure if this is relevant for your purposes, but I know when the Women's March in my city used it, by offering both $0 and paid tickets, they had a way to both track expected attendance and allow participants an easy way to donate as part of the process of registering.
posted by solotoro at 12:01 PM on June 28, 2017 [1 favorite]