This isn't really an either/or decision for most people anymore — it's about what each format is actually good at, and a lot of hosts end up using both for different parts of their guest list.

Where digital wins

• Cost — free to send to 500 people or 5, versus printing and postage that scales with every guest added
• Speed — sent the moment it's ready, not dependent on a print run or mail delivery
• RSVP tracking — responses land in one place automatically instead of phone calls and texts you have to tally yourself
• Easy updates — a venue change reaches everyone instantly; a printed card is final the moment it's mailed
• Built-in extras — a map link, a gift registry, a photo gallery, and a guestbook can all live on the same page as the invite itself

Where paper still makes sense

For a subset of guests — grandparents who don't check a phone often, or a save-the-date meant to be displayed on a fridge — a physical card still carries a kind of weight a link doesn't. Plenty of hosts send a small run of paper invites to that group and a digital invite with the same design and wording to everyone else, rather than choosing one format for the entire guest list.

The actual decision point

If keeping track of hundreds of individual RSVPs, dietary preferences, and plus-ones by hand sounds exhausting, that's the strongest signal to go digital — it's the same information either way, but one format tallies it for you automatically and the other doesn't.