What Joy does well
Joy is a wedding website first, and Joy says it is free to use. You build the site with the date, the schedule, the venue with a map for each part of the day, and what guests should know, then share it with your guests. Replies come in online, plus-ones and meal choices included, and Joy's help pages say guests can view the site and reply in the browser without creating an account. Several editors can work on the same wedding, and digital invitations are made in the same place.
The registry is the other half of Joy. Couples add gifts from any store, share the whole list with one link and set up cash funds, all next to the website the guests already visit. Hosts manage the website, the guest list, the replies, the invitations and the registry from apps for iPhone and Android as well as on the web. Photos in Joy's shared album can be shown as a real-time slideshow during the reception.
What costs extra is named on Joy's own pages: a seating chart is a one-time purchase per event, and text messages to guests are another paid extra. EventAssets has no gift registry. If the website, the invitations and the registry are what you need most, Joy covers them in one place.
What EventAssets offers
EventAssets covers the page before the day as well. The event page shows the schedule, the location on a map, cover photos and an about text, and lets guests add the date to their calendar. Guests find their name, answer for their whole party, plus-ones and children included, and fill in your own questions before your deadline; the statistics update as the answers come in, and the guest list exports as a CSV file. From that list you build the seating chart, with tables on a canvas and parties seated together, and guests look up their table on the event page. Beside it, budgets hold the line items of the day with planned and actual amounts, due and paid dates. All of this is part of the free plan.
Around the day itself, EventAssets puts the gallery and the guestbook on the same page. Guests open the same link or scan a QR code and upload photos and videos in the browser, in original quality, without an app or an account. You sort them into albums, approve uploads before others see them if you wish, and download everything as a ZIP. A full-screen slideshow picks up new uploads while it runs, so it works on a screen at the venue. The guestbook takes written messages and voice recordings made in the browser, signed with a name from the guest list or left anonymous, and you can review entries before they appear. Hosts run all of it from the web or from the apps for iPhone and Android.
A website with a registry, or a page for the whole event
The core difference is what each one is built around. Joy is built around the wedding website and the registry: the page guests visit before the day and the gifts they choose there. EventAssets is built around the event page and what guests bring to it: the replies and the seating before the day, and the photos, videos and messages during and after it.
If a registry with cash funds is central for you, Joy covers it, and EventAssets does not. If you want the seating chart and a budget included, and the gallery and the guestbook on the event page itself, compare the rows for planning, photos and the guestbook in the table above. Where Joy's own pages state nothing on a point, the table says so instead of guessing.
What to check before you decide
List what the wedding needs: a website for the invitation, replies with meal choices, a registry, a seating chart, a place for the photos and videos, and a guestbook. Then see which of these each one includes and which are paid extras, and compare what each one offers for the photos and videos your guests take. With EventAssets, the event page, the guest list, the seating chart, the budget and the guestbook are yours to set up before you pay anything; one payment per event lifts the caps on photos, videos, storage and voice recordings.
