Vows vs Joy
A free wedding website and guest list builder, with a one-off fee for the extras. Vows writes a wedding website from a sentence about your day, for one payment. Here is what separates them, and who should choose which.
Side by side
| What | Joy | Vows |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free. About $39 once for a custom domain and the premium features | $99 once, or $49 for a year |
| How it is paid | Free, with a one-off upgrade | One payment, when you publish |
| What pays for it | The upgrade, and the registries it links to | The payment. Nothing else is sold on or through the site |
| Advertising on your site | None of note | None, and nothing tracks your guests |
| How the site is made | You choose a template and fill it in yourself | Written from a sentence about your day, in a minute |
| Changing it afterwards | You edit it yourself in the builder | Ask in a sentence and it changes |
| Languages | Whatever you type. No translation of its own | Any language. One whole-site translation included |
| Replies and guests | The most capable reply form of the free platforms: custom questions, per-household logic | Reply form, guest list, your own questions, export |
| Address | A Joy address, or a custom domain with the upgrade | Your own vows.day address |
Prices and features as published on 15 September 2026. If anything here is out of date, write to hello@vows.day and it will be corrected.
What Joy is good at
- The reply form and guest list are the best of the free platforms, with unlimited custom questions and per-household answers.
- It does not run a registry of its own, so it pushes nothing at your guests.
- The one-off upgrade is cheap and honest: pay once for a domain and the extras, never a subscription.
What Vows does differently
- You describe the day in a sentence and the whole site is written for you: your story, the schedule, travel, the gallery and the reply form. Nothing to fill in.
- Building and reading it cost nothing. The one payment is when you publish: $99 and it stays online, or $49 for a year.
- Nobody is selling anything to your guests. No registry, no vendor advertising, no tracking.
- Change anything by asking, in a sentence, for as long as the site is up.
- Any language. One whole-site translation is included, reply form and all.
Choose Joy if
Choose Joy if what you want is a free, well-made form with a page in front of it and you are happy to build the page yourself. It is the free platform closest in spirit to Vows.
Choose Vows if
You want a designed site written for your wedding rather than a template you fill in, at an address of your own, for one payment, with nothing sold to your guests. And if your wedding is the kind the template builders handle badly: two languages, guests flying in, a weekend rather than a day.
Looking for a Joy alternative?
People looking for a Joy alternative usually want the site to look like a designed thing rather than a filled-in template, to be written for them rather than by them, and to work in a language other than English. Vows writes the whole site from a sentence, changes it when asked, and restates it in any language, for one payment.
Try it before deciding: describe your day, read the whole site, and pay only if you want it online. Start with a sentence, or look at the designs first.