https://rsvpify.com/wedding-guests-rsvp-timeline-calculator/
That calculator may not be the most accurate, but the stats are compiled from their database. Hope that helps!
I know every crowd is different but its a guide!
Another vote for RSVPify, we paid the upgrade so that we could embed it on our website. You can get a coupon here.
Super easy to use and very customizable. No one has had trouble with it. I have a coworker using it for her son's Bar Mitzvah in May too and her guests have liked it also.
My FH was very interested in online RSVP and he likes this system too.
I have it set up so each guest's invite will have their code word on it, which they use to access their reservation which has all of the invited guests listed for them - they say yes or no. No mystery plus ones or children being added by guests on a card, no one RSVPing who doesn't have an invite... it's perfect :)
I don't think it's necessarily the safest thing in the world, but a lot of people do hedge their bets with the guest list. There are averages out there saying that you can expect X% of your guests to come (the bigger your wedding, the lower the %) and a lot of people use those estimates as a guide. We're inviting 160, but about 70 of those are distant, out-of-state relatives that we're guessing won't show. I'd be SHOCKED if everyone came, so we're planning for about 120. If by some miracle everyone did show up, we'd have space for them, and we could handle it, but we'd definitely have to do some budget rearranging if that happened. Those fifty guests that probably won't attend add up to like $2,000, which is money we're tentatively planning to use for other things.
I've also heard of people inviting more people than their venue can hold, which seems like a high-stress proposition to me, but people do it all the time!
I am planning on embedding RSVPify to my Squarespace website. I have a bilingual site so Zola, Minted, WeddingChicks, were not options (if you only need English highly recommend any of the former).
Anyway, RSVPify as I understand will have the forms or options directly on your website as opposed to having a link that will lead you to a spreadsheet, etc.
My fiance used Wix to build our website for free. It isn't quite complete, but I think it looks great, and it allows you to tweak everything without having to know code. Here is our site if you'd like an idea of what you can do.
We are using a website called RSVP-ify to receive our RSVPs. You get a custom URL for your guests, and if you pay for the premiere upgrade, you can embed the RSVP form into your website, and use their seating chart tool. The upgrade was $25, and personally I think it was worth it just for being able to embed the form on the website. RSVP-ify will not allow people to RSVP that are not on your guest list (unless you want it to).
RSVPify has been easy to use. You get 1 event for free with up to 100 responses. You can't control the guest list with the free version (any one can fill out RSVP) but I paid the $25 so I could input all the parties (and the members included in that household) and password protect it. Nice clean design and user friendly.