The brief
Anyone who has hosted a real event knows where the information actually lives: a spreadsheet of names, a group chat of maybe-replies, a note about who can't eat shellfish, and a paper list at the door that instantly goes out of date. None of it talks to the rest, and the host spends the week before the event reconciling it by hand.
SqDine collapses that into one platform — but the hard constraint sits on the guest side. Guests are not customers of the software and will not create an account to attend a dinner. Every response, from RSVP to dietary note, had to arrive from someone who never signs up, while the host still gets a guest list clean enough to seat a room from.
What we built
- The event core
- Create, publish and track events from a single dashboard — capacity limits, details and dates, live in minutes. Workspaces keep separate hosts and organisations apart inside one account.
- RSVPs without an account
- Guests open an invite link and respond immediately, with no signup and no login. Responses land in the host's dashboard as they happen, which is what replaces the spreadsheet.
- Seating and dining, by drag and drop
- An interactive plan for tables and seats, with dietary requirements and special requests tracked against each guest — the part of hosting most tools leave on paper.
- Invitations and the door
- Email invitations with open-rate tracking so the host knows who has actually seen it, and QR check-in that scans guests in and updates their status without a clipboard.
The stack
Where it landed
SqDine is live at sqdine.com as a commercial product — a free tier for small gatherings and a paid plan for unlimited events, dining plans and invitations. A build where the guest-facing flow had to be effortless for people who never log in, and the host-facing side had to be complete enough to run the day on.