Fresh off a rebranding, Punchbowl, a start to finish party planning site, is unveiling its Digital Invitation Studio to the public today. The new platform helps you create online invites that look and feel like you created customized stationery from a store, complete with
invitations, envelopes, liners, rubber stamps, and postage. The Digital Invitation Studio includes “Plus” designs which can be unlocked with a paid membership. Punchbowl is giving away free memberships to 500 TechCrunch readers (worth $79) here using the code “PBTECHCRUNCH.”

Punchbowl’s Digital Invitation Studio offers hundreds of stylish and modern invitations and save the dates, each with companion customizable envelopes in a variety of shapes, sizes, and colors. You can add envelope liners, customized postage stamps, and personal photos. The result is a sleek custom online invitation with a matching envelope that replicates the act of opening a traditional paper invitation.

Invitations can be emailed and guests can RSVP directly from the online invite. The studio also includes a number of compelling new features including suggestions for wording your invitation and the ability to upload and re-size multiple photos to your invitation. Powered by Flash, the technology is easy to use and intuitive.

Competitors to Punchbowl include Socializr, Pingg, Someecards, Cocodot, and MySpace, Facebook and Evite. While the online invitation space is competitive, developing easy-to-use platform that doesn’t sacrifice the quality of the invitation could help Punchbowl continue to grow beyond its one million users.

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• PUNCHBOWL

Company: Punchbowl

Website: punchbowl.com

Launch Date: January 15, 2007

Funding: $2.68M

Massachusetts based Punchbowl Software is behind Punchbowl.com, the one-stop site that helps smart moms and savvy professionals plan a party from start to finish. The site guides a host through all of the steps of planing a party and solves common problems along the way. Party planning features include customizable digital invitations, potluck organization, gift registries, local vendor search, RSVP management, party supplies, photo/video sharing and much more. Punchbowl includes Digital Invitation Studio, which offers hundreds of...

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