Sending shower invitations to everyone at once
Choose a plan, name the shower, and write the invitation. One dollar covers 25 guests, five dollars covers 100, and it is a single payment with no account and no monthly fee.
You get a sign-up link and a QR code back. Send the link to the people on the guest list and they add their own number. This is what keeps everything permission-based, and it also means you never have to ask three different relatives to forward you phone numbers.
On the day you picked, at 12pm Eastern, every guest receives the same message separately. It arrives as an ordinary text, not a group thread.
When you are hosting for someone else
Most showers are thrown by a friend, a sister or a mother-in-law rather than by the mom-to-be, which creates a specific problem: the host rarely has the full guest list in her phone.
The usual fix is to get the list of names from the mom-to-be, then share the sign-up link through the people who already have those contacts. Her sister posts it in the family chat, a colleague posts it in the work chat, and everyone lands in the same list without you handling a single number.
If she wants to approve the guest list first, do that before you share the link anywhere. Once the link is out it is difficult to un-invite someone gracefully.
Keeping a surprise shower a surprise
Private one-to-one messages are the reason text works well here. There is no group thread sitting on a shared iPad, and no notification popping up on a phone she might glance at.
Two practical precautions. Keep the event name neutral, because the name you choose appears in the message itself. And be careful who you share the sign-up link with, since a link forwarded once too often is how most surprises unravel.
If someone does let it slip, send a second message to the whole list. That is a separate send at the same plan price. Better to tell everyone the plan has changed than to have half the guests working from old information.
Registry links, dietary counts and the practical details
You have roughly 160 characters, so the invitation should carry the essentials: whose shower, the date, the time and the location. A working example: BABY SHOWER FOR MAYA: Sun April 12, 1pm, 44 Oakfield Road. Lunch provided, RSVP by April 5.
The registry link is better as a second message a few days later. Putting it in the invitation makes the invitation feel like a request for gifts, and it eats the characters you need for the actual details.
If you need a food count, ask people to reply to you directly. The broadcast is one-way on purpose, which is what stops thirty replies from turning into a group conversation nobody can mute.
Sprinkles, co-ed showers and the ones held far away
Not every shower is a first-baby afternoon tea. A sprinkle for a second child is usually smaller and more casual, which suits a text invitation well. A co-ed shower has a wider guest list and often a group who are less likely to check email, which suits it even better.
For relatives who live too far to attend, a short message with a video call link on the day is a kind touch, and is a separate send.
If you want to see how the cost works out at different guest counts before committing, the per-guest math across party sizes lays it out. For a formal first shower where the invitation is a keepsake, paper still has a real argument.