Colara vs Folio

Colara is a shared wedding workspace for planners, photographers, vendors, and couples, organized around a live timeline. Its planner workspace brings together timelines, vendors, contracts, couples, and floor plans. A free CRM includes a lead and client pipeline, proposals, e-signature contracts, invoices, payment reminders, scheduling, questionnaires, an inbox, email templates, finances, a calendar, and a task board. The free CRM allows unlimited clients, leads, jobs, proposals, contracts, and invoices, but vendors do not receive an owned wedding workspace. Free-plan online payments carry a 1% platform fee on cards or 1.5% total on bank payments, capped at $30 per payment including Stripe’s fee; manual payments have no platform or Stripe fee. Colara offers an AI timeline builder and assistant, and connects with QuickBooks Online, Google Calendar, Zapier, Make, and webhooks. Its free iPhone and iPad app is available on the App Store. Paid plans start at $29 a month.

Folio is a web-based wedding planning app for couples organizing an event with a partner. Its planning tools cover guest management, budgeting and payment tracking, tasks, a wedding-day timeline, seating arrangements, a wedding website, and a gift registry. Guests receive personal RSVP links and can respond without creating an account or downloading an app. Vendor records can follow each supplier from inquiry through final payment, with contacts, notes, status, and linked expenses. CSV imports support lists prepared in Excel or Google Sheets; dietary reports export as CSV, while browser timelines can be printed or saved as PDF. Folio says it shows no ads, does not sell data, and stores information on Hetzner Cloud servers in Germany. Couples retain access until three months after the wedding, then can export their data. The product is still in development. The Couples plan costs 79.00 EUR once, including VAT; a view-only Demo is free.