Partiful: To better holiday parties and beyond

Our proud tradition of gathering the year’s Best Of Play continues, and this year it’s all about connection – bridging the gap between what’s in our phones and the world we connect with.

This year’s Best App winner does exactly that, making the art of gathering easier and more fun than ever. Partiful reimagines what it means to plan a get-together, whether it’s to celebrate, collaborate, or simply unwind. Hear the story behind the scenes of the trusty event planning sidekick, straight from the developers, plus get tips just in time for your holiday party planning.

Partiful: We started Partiful because we believe that social events are the best way to meet new people and make friends. Partiful makes it way easier to plan those events and keep track of the people you’re meeting IRL.

Before Partiful, there wasn’t an easy, intuitive, and modern way to plan events that wasn’t tethered to legacy social media platforms. Making plans was a pain, with tons of communication across texts, DMs, group chats, and more. Partiful centralizes all planning and communication into one easy interface, taking the stress and guesswork out of planning events.

The feature that best represents Partiful is our event page. Unlike legacy invite platforms, Partiful event pages feel fun and modern, and are incredibly easy to use for both hosts and guests. Instead of a complex back-and-forth process to coordinate with a group of people, on Partiful you can make plans in just a few taps, keeping track of your guest list in one place.

Need to update the entire group? You can send a Text Blast that goes out to everyone individually, avoiding a noisy group chat. Partiful takes away the stress and overhead of planning, letting you focus on having fun and making memories.

You can use Partiful’s guest questionnaire feature to help set up a potluck Friendsgiving, or organize a Secret Santa exchange! For a glam holiday party, use Partiful’s built-in Photo Album to allow everyone to share photos.

Want to make memories with the friend group? For a New Year’s Eve party, have everyone comment on the Partiful page with their New Year’s Resolutions (and hold them to it when you clone the event for next year!).

What probably won’t surprise you: the people, the music. What you might not have heard before: the different spaces you create for gathering. Have a space for a large group to gather for a single conversation, but also include breakout areas where people can sit down and/or talk 1:1.

Spaces like kitchens can be repurposed for a DIY bar or snack station, giving guests something to do other than talk. These different spaces allow guests to take breaks from the crowd, or catch up with others in a more intimate setting, while still feeling part of the overall event.

Partiful: We’re seeing that many users are taking the idea of theme parties and applying them to even small group gatherings. A standard “girls' night” can become a pampering spa night (bring your own nail polish for at-home manicures), a poker night can become a full-on casino night (wear a tux just because). You can elevate a gathering without throwing a huge party, just to make a night memorable.

This year’s Best App shows us that our digital and IRL worlds don’t just coexist – they enrich each other in meaningful ways that only make our connections stronger. With each fun invite that gives us something to look forward to and each event page that holds snaps of our fondest memories, Partiful sets the standard for apps that bring more joy to our human experience. To that, we raise a glass.