Inviting people in bulk

Under Participants → Invitations, Import & invite takes a guest list from a spreadsheet — or from your existing contacts — and turns it into invitations. It handles a few hundred people as comfortably as a few dozen.

Where your list comes from

• Upload a file — drop in a .csv or .xlsx. Up to 1000 people per import; split a longer list into several files.
• Use existing contacts — pick one or more tags and pull everyone in your address book who carries them. No file needed.

Choose the invitation type

The second step decides which data can be mapped and what happens after import:

• RSVP link gives each person a branded Yes/No page. It is available for free events without required participant questions, priced options, or limited-capacity options. Optional questions may be prefilled from your file.
• Registration invite sends people through the normal signup flow, including payment when needed. Because they complete that form themselves, signup-form questions are not mapped during this import.
• Just add creates the participant immediately. There is no response step; any ticket confirmation email follows the event's email settings.

Choosing this before mapping keeps the target list honest: you only see fields that the selected invitation type can actually use.

Mapping your columns

FireVue reads your header row and guesses what each column means, in both English and German — an "E-Mail" column and an "Email" column are both recognized. Anything it matched is marked Auto, and you can change any of it.

You can map a column to:

• Email — required, and the only mapping you must set. It's how people are matched and invited.
• First name, Last name, Tags, Note, and Guest count.
• Any question on your signup form — so a "Meal preference" column in your spreadsheet becomes that person's answer.

Columns you don't want are set to Don't import. Nothing is imported silently: if a column isn't mapped, it's visibly unmapped.

Two things are deliberately not offered: file upload questions, which an import can't fill, and priced questions when you're using RSVP links — RSVP links only work on free events, so a pre-filled paid option would leave the guest with a bill they can't settle.

Resolving values that don't match

Your spreadsheet holds labels ("Vegetarian"), while the form stores options. FireVue matches them for you, ignoring case, spacing, accents, and the language — "Vegetarisch" finds the same option as "Vegetarian".

When something genuinely doesn't match — a typo, or an answer that was never an option — you get a Resolve values step. Each unmatched value is shown once, with how many rows contain it, and you decide what it means: pick the right option, keep it as typed (where the question allows custom answers), or leave that answer empty. You can't move past this step while something is undecided, because a silently dropped answer is worse than a moment of work.

Reviewing before anything happens

The Review step shows what will happen: how many people, how many are new, how many are already on your list, how many have already been invited, and which rows will be skipped and why. Rows without a usable email address, or duplicates of an earlier row, are listed with their line number so you can fix the file if you want to.

By default, imported people are also saved to your organization's contacts. You can turn this off for a one-off list; existing contacts remain linked either way.

Choose contact and delivery settings

The last step controls contact storage and delivery:

• Guest count — how many extra people each invitee may bring. A "Guest count" column in your file overrides this per person.
• Save everyone to contacts — on by default, and safe to turn off for a temporary list.
• Contact tags — your chosen tags are applied to every imported contact. FireVue does not add an event-name tag automatically.
• Preview the email — see exactly what recipients will receive before you send it.

Importing and sending are separate decisions

This is the part worth understanding. Importing never emails anyone by itself. You choose:

• Send invitations now — emails go out as soon as the import finishes.
• Just add them to the list — everyone is added at Not sent, and you send later from the invitations table whenever you're ready.

And if some of the people in your file have already been invited, they are not emailed again by default. There's a checkbox to include them if you genuinely want to re-send. This means re-uploading a corrected file updates everyone's details without mailing your whole guest list a second time.

If something goes wrong

Invitations are created first, and emails sent second. So if a run is interrupted — a closed tab, a temporary sending error — nothing is lost: those people are on the list at Not sent. Select them in the invitations table and use Resend to finish the job.

Importing the same file twice is safe. Each person keeps a single invitation, their details are updated, and anyone who already answered keeps their answer.

Bounced addresses and unsubscribes

Every invitation email has an unsubscribe link. If someone uses it, they won't get any more invitations from your organization. Tickets and confirmations for events they do register for still reach them.

Addresses that no longer exist (a "hard bounce") are blocked automatically, because repeatedly mailing a dead address hurts delivery for everyone.

Both kinds of address show up as skipped in the import result, not as failed. Resending won't reach them, and that's intentional.

When invitations are paused

If too many of your organization's invitations bounce or get reported as spam in a short time, our email provider pauses your organization's invitations. This usually happens after importing an old or purchased list. A notice appears above the invitations table.

Tickets, confirmations and account emails keep working while invitations are paused. Contact support and we'll review it with you. The best prevention is to import only people who expect to hear from you, and to remove addresses you know are out of date.

Imported answers are defaults

Answers you import are starting values, not the final word. For an RSVP link or immediate add, they are validated again when the participant record is created. If a question changed in the meantime — an option was removed, for instance — the outdated value is dropped rather than written. Registration invites do not offer signup-form question mappings because the invitee completes the normal form themselves.