Paste the spreadsheet.
Count the people.
Your guest list comes across from the sheet you already keep, stays yours to export, and turns into a door page on the night that counts heads rather than ticks — with an undo on every action, because the mistake at a door is always the row above.
Included in the Event Pass · $39 once · Export to CSV any time
The guest list for one event, part-way through the evening — eighteen invitations, twenty-four people expected, twelve of them already inside. The first four rows are shown.
- 1
People expected is not Invited. It is the sum of the party sizes your guests confirmed, not the number of invitations you sent. Eighteen cards, twenty-four dinners. It is the only tile that is a total rather than a filter — the other four filter the list when you click them.
- 2
The arrived line appears once someone actually arrives. Twelve people, from five of the twelve parties who said yes. Clicking it filters the list down to everyone who is already in the room.
- 3
One row, three numbers that disagree on purpose. Priya was invited for four, three said they were coming, two walked in. Those are three separate fields, and collapsing them into a single tick is what makes a headcount quietly wrong all night.
- 4
Export and Open the door appear once the list exists. The copy icon on a row puts that one guest's private invitation link on your clipboard. Export downloads the whole list as a CSV with every link in it.
From a spreadsheet to a door, in four steps
Every screen below is the real one, drawn label for label. This is the whole feature: there is nothing else to set up.
Bring your list across
The panel starts as two buttons and a sentence. No import wizard, no column mapping screen, no template to download first — because what a host actually has is a spreadsheet and a clipboard.
Paste a list: a textarea, a helper line and an Import button. There is no wizard and no column mapping step.
- 1
Copy the cells, paste them. Comma, tab or semicolon separated, quoted fields handled, columns in any order. A header row is recognised if there is one; without one the first column is the name and the column with an @ in it is the email.
- 2
The notice counts every row, including the ones it skipped. Rows with no name are skipped and reported rather than silently dropped, and a guest whose email is already on the list is updated in place instead of added twice.
- 3
Over 2,000 rows in one paste, nothing is imported. The whole paste is refused with the row count, because a partial import that reports success is how a host loses the back half of their list and finds out at the door.
- 4
Or add one guest at a time. Name, an optional email, and the number they are invited for — anywhere from 1 to 50. There is no tag field here: a side or group column only arrives with a paste.
Every guest gets their own invitation link
Adding someone creates their link straight away. Copy one from its row, or email the whole list from the Messages section beside the guest list, where each person’s email carries their own link. This is the only part of the feature a guest ever sees.
The same invitation, two answers. Left: Priya says yes and the follow-up questions open. Right: Dan declines, adds a line and is done.
- 1
Their own link, their own name. Each guest gets /i/ plus a 24-byte random token. It is the only credential — there is no account, no password and no code to remember, and one guest's link never reaches another guest's reply.
- 2
Yes opens the questions, no closes them. How many are coming, the names of the plus-ones, your own questions and the note only appear after Yes. A decline is two taps, and a required question never binds someone who is not coming.
- 3
The party size is capped by the server, not the form. A guest invited for four cannot confirm five, whatever is posted. The dropdown is the convenience; the cap is the rule.
- 4
Invitations are never indexed. The page is marked no-index, no-follow, and the guest's name is deliberately kept out of the link preview — an indexed invitation would publish your guest list.
Read the headcount
Replies land on the list itself. Four of the five headline counts are also filters — click Waiting to see only the people who have not answered. The fifth, People expected, is the one a venue asks for: the confirmed party sizes added up, which is almost never the same as the number of invitations you sent.
Invited for
4
What you offered when you wrote the card.
Coming
3
What the guest confirmed when they replied. It rolls up into People expected.
Arrived
2
What the person on the door counted. Three separate fields, allowed to disagree, because on the night they always do.
Work the door
On the night, Open the door puts a dark, one-job page on a phone: a counter, a search field, and one big button per guest. It is the same list, so nothing has to be exported, synced or printed first.
The door page on a phone. Twelve people in, twenty-four expected, and the top of the list: everyone still outside sits above everyone who has already arrived.
- 1
The counter counts heads. Twelve arrived of twenty-four expected — people, not ticks. The denominator is the same confirmed-heads total the guest list shows, so the door and the caterer never disagree.
- 2
One tap checks in the whole party. Tapping Arrived on Tom's row records both of them at once, because that is the common case. The search field takes focus the moment the page opens.
- 3
People who said no are still on the list. So are the ones who never replied. Plans change and they turn up anyway, so every guest stays searchable and checkable rather than being hidden by their reply.
- 4
Minus, count, plus, undo. Priya's invitation was for four, three confirmed, two walked in — so her row was corrected down to two after the tap. Undo clears the arrival completely, including the time it was recorded.
A guest list that behaves like your spreadsheet
Copy the cells and paste them. Paste them again next week when the list has changed.
Paste it straight from the spreadsheet
Select the cells, copy, paste. Comma-separated or tab-separated, columns in any order, header row optional — because the real input is "someone copied part of a sheet". Up to 2,000 rows in one paste, and over that the whole paste is refused rather than half-imported.
Re-import a corrected sheet without duplicating anyone
Fixed three addresses and want to paste the whole thing again? People are matched on their email and updated in place rather than added twice — and their existing invitation link is written back unchanged, so a link you already sent keeps working. Guests with no email have nothing to match on, so those are always added.
A side, group or tags column comes across with the paste
A column headed side, group or tags becomes tags on those guests — bride, work, cousins, whatever you already write in your own sheet. Up to 12 per guest. They are searchable and they feed the seating plan; there is no tag editor and a tag is never printed on a row.
Search the list, and click the counts to filter it
Find anyone by name, email or tag. Four of the five headline counts double as filters — invited, coming, waiting, can't come. People expected is a total rather than a filter, and everyone who has arrived becomes a filter the moment somebody actually has.
Export to CSV, invitation links included
One button gives you the whole list back in ten columns: name, email, phone, the number they were invited for, their reply, the number they confirmed, who they are bringing, how many arrived, their note, and each guest's own invitation link.
Two lists, deliberately kept apart
The guest list is who you invited. The uploaders list is who sent a photo. Picsui never merges them, because most events have people in one and not the other.
At the door, on the night
One hand, a dark room, and a queue behind the person in front of you. That is the whole design brief for this page.
It counts people, not invitations
The Patels are one invitation and four chairs. If three of them walk in, the door records three. Every tool that collapses a party into a single tick gives the caterer a number that is wrong all evening and nobody notices until the food runs out.
One large button per guest
The main action on a row checks in that guest's whole confirmed party in a single tap. Plus and minus appear afterwards for the ones who came short or brought an extra, so the common case stays one tap.
Undo on every action
The mistake at a door is always the row above the one you meant. Every check-in has a visible undo that clears it completely — the count and the time it was recorded — so a misfire costs a second rather than an argument.
Built for one hand in a dark room
Search takes focus the moment the page opens. People who have not arrived sort to the top, because that is who is standing in front of you. Everyone stays searchable, including the guests who said they could not come, because some of them turn up anyway.
The numbers, so you can plan around them
Every figure here is the limit the code enforces, read from the same constants the app uses. Nothing on this page is a marketing round-up.
- 2,000rows in one paste
- Past that the paste is refused whole, with the row count, and nothing is imported.
- 1–50people per invitation
- A guest can confirm fewer than they were invited for. They can never confirm more — the server caps it, not the form.
- 12tags per guest
- Lowercased on the way in, searchable, and used by the seating plan to keep a group together.
- 24random bytes per invitation link
- Not a slug, not a sequence, not built from a name or an email — so one leaked link never enumerates the rest.
- 20questions on an invitation
- Each one text or a list of up to 8 options, and each one optionally required.
- 2,000characters in your message
- With a live counter as you write it. Where and dress code get 200 characters each.
Yours to read, whatever happens to the pass
Editing the guest list — adding someone, pasting a sheet, removing a row, checking a guest in — is part of the Event Pass. Reading it never is. If a pass lapses between the invitations going out and the day itself, the list, the replies, the notes and the CSV export all stay open to you; the app simply stops accepting changes until the pass is back. Everything you have already collected stays exactly where it is. What the Event Pass includes.
What this deliberately does not do
Worth knowing before the day rather than on it. If one of these is a dealbreaker, it is better that you find out here.
No QR code at the door
Nothing to print, nothing for a guest to hold up. The door is a search field and a tap, because at a real door you are looking at a face and typing three letters of a name faster than a phone can find a camera.
No staff or collaborator accounts
The door runs on your signed-in session. That means it opens on any phone logged in as you, and it also means handing the door to a friend means handing over your login. There is no shared-device mode and no PIN.
No tag editor
Tags only arrive inside a pasted column headed tags, group or side. You cannot add one from the guest row, and the row never displays them.
No bulk edit, no in-place edit
Guests are removed one at a time, behind a confirmation that tells you their invitation link will stop working. To correct a name or a party size, re-paste that row — it matches on the email and updates in place.
Who was invited is not who sent a photo
Picsui keeps two lists and refuses to merge them. The guest list answers “who is coming”: the people you invited, the number each was invited for, their reply and whether they walked in. The uploaders list answers “who was actually here”: everyone who scanned the code and sent something, which at a normal event includes plus-ones, suppliers and people nobody put on a list. Most events have people in one and not the other, so a single merged list would be wrong about both questions. How the photo side works.
Questions hosts ask
What format does my guest list need to be in?
Whatever your spreadsheet already produces. Comma-separated, tab-separated or semicolon-separated text, pasted straight in, with quoted fields handled. Columns can be in any order and a header row is understood if there is one; without a header the first column is treated as the name and the column with an @ in it as the email.
How many guests can I paste in one go?
Up to 2,000 rows at a time. A bigger paste is refused entirely — you are told roughly how many rows it had and that nothing was imported, so you can split it and paste the rest. That refusal is deliberate: a partial import that reports success is how a host loses the back half of their guest list and only finds out at the door.
What happens if I import a corrected spreadsheet twice?
Nobody is duplicated. Guests are matched on their email address and updated in place, so re-pasting a list where you fixed three addresses updates those three rather than adding everyone again. Their invitation link is deliberately kept the same, so any link you have already sent still works. Guests with no email address have nothing to match on, so those rows are always added as new people.
How do my guests get their invitation link?
Two ways. The copy button on a guest's row puts that one person's link on your clipboard, for pasting into a message. Or use the Messages section beside the guest list to email the whole list at once — each recipient's email carries their own link, not a shared one.
Could a guest guess somebody else's invitation link?
No. Each link carries 24 bytes of cryptographically random data, so there is nothing to count up from and nothing derived from a name or an email to guess at. Invitation pages are also marked no-index and no-follow, and the guest's name is kept out of the link preview, because an invitation that turned up in search results would publish your guest list.
How many people can one invitation be for?
Anywhere from 1 to 50. The guest can confirm fewer than that when they reply — an invitation for four coming back as three is the normal case — but they can never confirm more, because the limit is enforced on the server rather than by the dropdown.
Is the guest list the same as the list of people who uploaded photos?
No, and that is on purpose. The guest list is who you invited — including the ones who never come and the ones who never touch their phone. The uploaders list is whoever scanned the QR code and sent a photo, including plus-ones, staff and people who wandered in. They are shown as two separate lists because collapsing them loses both answers.
Why does check-in count heads instead of ticking off invitations?
Because the number anyone actually needs is people. An invitation for four that arrives as three is a difference of one meal, one chair and one place card. Picsui keeps three separate numbers on each invitation — the size you offered, the size the guest confirmed, and the number who actually walked in — and lets them disagree, because in real life they do.
Can I undo a check-in?
Yes, on every guest, at any time. Undo clears the arrival completely, including the time it was recorded, and the totals move back with it. There is also a plus and a minus on each checked-in row for the party that came short or brought an extra.
Can guests check themselves in?
No. The door page runs on your own signed-in account, so it opens on any phone that is logged in as you. It is deliberately not a link that can be forwarded — a shareable door link is a link a guest can use on themselves, and then the arrival numbers mean nothing.
Can I hand the door to a friend to run?
Only by handing them a phone that is already logged in as you. Picsui has no staff accounts, no collaborator invitations, no shared-device mode and no door PIN, so it is worth knowing that giving someone the door means giving them your session. Most hosts set the page up on a second phone or a tablet and leave it on the table.
Is there a QR code to scan at the door?
No. Check-in is search and tap: type a few letters of the name, tap Arrived, adjust the number if the party came short. There is nothing for guests to print, bring or find in their email on the night.
Can I edit a guest after I have added them?
Not in place. Removing a guest is one at a time, with a confirmation that warns you their invitation link will stop working. To fix a name, an email or a party size, paste that row again — it matches on the email address, updates the row and keeps the same invitation link.
Where do tags come from?
From your spreadsheet. A column headed tags, group or side is read as tags when you paste, up to 12 per guest. There is no tag control on the guest form and tags are not printed on the rows — they exist to be searched and to give the seating plan something to keep people together by.
Who can see my guest list?
You. Every read and every write is scoped to the account that owns the event, so the guest list is reachable by nobody else, and it is the one part of the product that no guest-facing link reaches. A guest holding their invitation link sees only their own invitation.
What happens to my guest list if my Event Pass runs out?
You keep all of it. Reading is never gated: the list, the replies, the notes and the CSV export stay open to you whether or not the event has a pass on it. Only editing — adding, pasting, removing and checking people in — needs the pass. Locking someone out of data they already collected is not a paywall.
Can I get my guest list back out of Picsui?
Yes, as a CSV, whenever you want it. Ten columns: name, email, phone, invited for, RSVP, confirmed, bringing, arrived, note, and each guest's invitation link — so you can mail-merge them from your own tools if you would rather send invitations that way.
What does the guest list cost?
It is part of an Event Pass at $39, paid once, with no subscription. The same pass covers invitations and RSVPs, the seating plan, the guest photo gallery and the digital guestbook for that event.
One list, from the invitation to the door
The same rows send the invitations, collect the replies, feed the seating plan and work the door — and the photos from the night land beside them. All of it in one Event Pass at $39, paid once.