Renkoo is another party planning site that aims to improve on the Evite model. Renkoo's main twist is the variety of party types that it allows you to create and some cool chat/SMS features. Creating an invite in Renkoo gives you a myriad of choices ranging from the vague email inviting friends to lunch this week, to the specific, “ I'm having a party on x date.”
Once your account is set up you can add friends to your guest list by importing a contact list. As with MyPunchBowl, Renkoo leverages Plaxo to import contact lists so you should be able to import almost any contact info you have whether it's through a popular online service or a custom .csv file.
Creating a new invite brings up a form that lets you add a title and description and then what sort of event you'd like to create. Options include, “drink,” “food,” “gathering” and more (see screenshot below).
The form also asks you to either pick a date or choose something nebulous like “this week.” or “tomorrow.” There's also a field for picking a location and deciding which friends to invite.
Once you have your invite set up you can send it out to your invite list and they will receive an email with links to RSVP. From there you can chat with your friends using Renkoo to sort out the details.
Renkoo also allows you to send messages via SMS which makes it easy to send out notices about last minute changes.
Renkoo seems less geared toward a planning intensive one-off party and more suitable for the casual get-together, and most of the site's tools reflect that emphasis.
Renkoo has strong promise, but it is still in beta and there are a number of known issues, the biggest of which is that your Safari using friends are going to be left out of the fun. Still, despite a few issues, Renkoo is easy to use and offers some great features.
