Table Hosts

A table host is the supporter who takes a table at your event and fills it with their own people. Table hosting gives that person a page of their own for one event, where they can see the seats they have to fill, invite guests to fill them, and watch RSVPs and tickets come in. You send them the link from the table board, and everything they do flows straight back onto your seating.

Who counts as a table host

A host is the captain of a table, and every table on the board has a captain field. What is in that field decides what you can do next:

A linked contact. You picked the person from your contact list, so they have an email address or a mobile number on file and can be invited. This is the only state that produces a host page.
A typed-in name. The captain field holds text but no contact record, so there is nobody to send to. You can create a contact for them without leaving the invite panel (see below).
Empty. No captain, nothing to invite.

Hosting is tracked per person, per event, not per table. Someone captaining tables 4, 9 and 12 is one host with one page and one link, and gets a single invitation listing all three. Their page then shows all three tables side by side.

Teams work exactly the same way. A team captain gets the same page with the wording changed: spots instead of seats, and whatever your event calls its teams.

Picking a host

Hosts are assigned on the table board, on the front of each card:

Open your event and go to Manage Tables (or Manage Teams).
Start typing a name in the captain field at the bottom of the table card.
Pick a person from the list to link their contact record. If you type a name without choosing from the list, it is saved as plain text, which is fine as a placeholder but cannot be invited.
To change a captain, hover the name and use the small x to clear it, then type the new one.

Nothing about the host is copied or frozen. The page reads live from the board, so the moment you move a table to a different captain, that table appears on the new host's page and disappears from the old one. The same is true of capacity, table names, table numbers and seating: change them on the board and the host's page reflects the change on their next visit.

Capacity is a goal, not a limit. If a table has a capacity, the host sees a number to chase and a count of open seats. If a table has no capacity set, the host sees no target at all, just a guest count and an invitation to keep going. Set capacities before you invite hosts if you want them working toward a number.

Sending hosts their page link

A host's page does not exist until you invite them. The invitation is what creates their private link, which is why the View as host action stays disabled until the first send.

Three ways to start

One table: the gear menu on the table card, then Invite host to their page.
A selection: tick the cards you want, then Actions, Table hosts, Invite Hosts of Selected Tables.
Everyone: Actions, Table hosts, Invite All Table Hosts, which covers every table on the event.

All three open the same panel, and all three group by person before anything is sent. Selecting five tables run by two people produces two emails, not five.

Who is in, and who is left out

The panel lists the hosts it can reach, each with the tables they run, their progress so far (seats filled against their goal), and when they were last invited. Everyone is ticked by default; untick anyone you want to leave for later.

Below that, the panel accounts for every table that will not produce an invitation, because a silent omission reads as "everyone was invited":

Tables with no captain are counted so the numbers add up.
Contacts with no email address and no mobile number are named. Add contact details to their record, then reopen the panel.
Typed-in captains are listed with a Create contact button. The first and last name are split out of what you typed and can be corrected, and you add an email address or mobile number. If a contact with that email address already exists, it is reused rather than duplicated. The new contact is attached to the table, and the host moves up into the main list ready to invite.

Writing the invitation

Choose Email, Text/SMS, or both. The subject and email body come pre-written and are fully editable in a rich text editor; the text message has its own shorter body. Click any merge field to insert it at your cursor:

Merge field	Becomes
	The host's name
	Their private page link
	The tables they are hosting, listed by name
	How many seats they have to fill, phrased for their tables
	Your event name
	Your organization name
	Your organization's email address

The green Open my page button in the default body already carries . If you rewrite the body and drop that field, the send is blocked rather than delivering an email with no way in.

Host invitations go out from your organization's sending domain with your name in the banner, the same as any other guest-facing message, because this is you asking a supporter for a favor.

One more thing to expect: a host is skipped when they cannot be reached by the method you chose. Pick text only, and a host with an email address but no mobile number is skipped, is not recorded as invited, and is reported in the confirmation ("2 invitations sent. Skipped 1 host with no mobile number on file.").

What the host sees

The link opens a public page with no login. The host lands on a summary of their own event:

Their progress

A headline count of seats filled against the goal, with a bar broken into three parts and labeled underneath: guests holding a ticket, guests who have RSVP'd, and invitations still awaiting a reply. Alongside it are counters for seats to fill, still open, filled, invites sent, and awaiting reply.

The goal is the total capacity of their tables. If some of their tables have no capacity, those are excluded from the goal and called out separately, so the number is never misleading. If none of their tables has a capacity, there is no goal at all: the page shows how many guests are confirmed and says "No limit, keep inviting".

The host's filled count and your board badge count different things, on purpose. Your board counts seats allocated, which is what you need when you are managing a room. The host page counts people actually coming: an unnamed seat is a seat still to fill, and a guest marked as not attending is not a filled seat.

Their tables

One card per table, in table number order, showing the fill badge and every seat in turn. Named guests show their status; remaining seats show as open seats up to capacity, so the host can see at a glance how many are left. A small marker sits next to the guests the host invited personally.

Status on a seat	What it means
Ticketed	The guest holds a ticket for the event
RSVP'd	The guest accepted an invitation and is holding a seat
Invited	Added to the seating but not yet confirmed
Checked in / Checked out	Recorded at the door on event day
Can't make it	The guest is not attending

People they have invited

Every guest they invited, with the date, the status (Invited, RSVP'd, or Can't make it), and any message that guest left, quoted in place. Invitations still waiting for a reply get a Send again button; guests who have already replied get a Message link that opens the host's own mail client.

The page also carries buttons to buy tickets and donate, and your organization's contact details at the bottom for anything they need to ask you.

What the host can do

Invite guests

The Invite guests button opens a drawer with rows for first name, last name, email address and mobile number. A guest needs an email address or a mobile number, and rows left blank are ignored. The host chooses email, text, or both, and can add a personal note in their own words, which appears at the top of the invitation above the event details.

Preview the invitation shows the message exactly as a guest will receive it, built from the same template the send uses, with the personal note appearing as it is typed. Every guest gets their own link, so the preview shows an example one.

Share one link with a group

Under Share your invite link there is a second link the host can paste into a group chat, a text message or an email. It opens a short join form asking for a name and one way to reach them. That creates an invitation attributed to the host, and the visitor continues on their own invitation page exactly as if the host had typed them in, so word-of-mouth guests land in the same list as everyone else.

The share link never exposes the host's page. A visitor sees the join form only, not the guest list or the invite tools. If the same person follows the link twice, they get their original invitation back rather than a second one.

What the host cannot do

Move guests between tables, or reseat anyone.
Change capacity, table names, table numbers, or lock state.
See internal notes on a table. Those are staff only and never appear on the host page.
See anyone else's tables, guests or invitations. The page covers only the tables that person captains on that one event.

What a guest sees

Each invited guest gets their own link to a page that names the host, the event, and the table they are being asked to join. From there they can:

Accept and RSVP, which takes a seat at the host's table.
Get my ticket, which goes straight to your ticket page. For a table host invitation this sits alongside the RSVP button, because a ticket is usually the point.
Say they can't make it, which frees their seat again if they had claimed one.
Send a message, which always goes to the host who invited them, with the guest's own address as the reply-to.

If the host's tables happen to be full, the guest is told so and encouraged to RSVP anyway, so the host knows they want to come.

How seats actually get filled

When a guest RSVPs

The RSVP claims the first unnamed seat across the host's tables, working in table number order and skipping any table you have locked. The guest's name and details go onto that seat, a contact record is matched or created, and the guest is emailed their ticket link. This is the ordinary gala case: the host was given a table of ten and has nine blanks to fill.

If there is no unnamed seat anywhere, the RSVP is still recorded. The host page shows a line saying how many guests have said they are coming but do not have a seat yet, and those guests are pointed at a ticket. Refusing the RSVP would throw away the one fact the host most needs.

A guest who later declines frees the seat back to empty, and the guest link they were sent stops working.

When a guest buys a ticket

When a purchase completes, it is matched by email address against the invitations hosts have sent for that event. On a match, the whole party on that purchase is seated at the host's tables automatically:

Tables are used in number order, and locked tables are skipped.
Tables with a capacity are filled first, so the goals you set are the ones being chased. A table with no limit is used only once every capped table is full.
Room is rechecked for each guest, since seating one may have filled the table.
Guests who already have a table keep it. Automatic seating never overrides seating you or a gift definition already applied.

The host gets an email either way. If everyone was seated, it says how many seats were filled. If their tables were already full, it says so plainly: the guest keeps their ticket and is coming, and your team will place them. Leaving that unsaid would read as success and get discovered at the door.

If two hosts invited the same person, the earliest invitation wins the seat, which is the least surprising rule to explain to either of them.

Emails and texts, and where they come from

What happens	Who hears about it	Sent as
You invite a host to their page	The host	Your organization
A host invites a guest	The guest	Your organization, in the host's name
A guest RSVPs or declines	The host	BetterUnite
A guest leaves a message	The host, with the guest as reply-to	BetterUnite
An invited guest buys a ticket	The host	BetterUnite

Every one of these carries a link back to the host page, which is where a host can act on the news.

The Notify checkbox next to a captain's name on the board is a separate, older feature: it emails that captain a read-only snapshot of their table whenever the seating changes. It still works and is unaffected by any of the above. The host page is the interactive version of the same idea.

Keeping track from the board

Once hosts have been invited, each table card shows where that host stands:

Not invited, which is also a shortcut: click it to open the invite panel for that table.
Invited with the date. Hover for the full date and how many times the link has been sent.
Viewed page once the host has opened their link, with the date on hover.

The gear menu on each card also has View as host, which opens the host's real page in a new tab so you can see exactly what they see. Bear in mind that this counts as a visit, so the card will read as viewed afterwards.

The invite panel is a good place to review progress across the whole event: it lists every host with their seats filled against their goal, when they were last invited, and whether they have opened their page.

Tables, teams and your own wording

Everything above applies to teams as well as tables. The page follows your event's own vocabulary throughout: if your event calls its tables Pods, the host reads about their Pod. Team captains read "spots" where table hosts read "seats", and the menus, buttons and emails all change with them.

Things worth knowing

The link is the credential. There is no login. Anyone holding a host's link can act as that host, so it should be treated like a password. Each link only ever opens that one host's tables on that one event.
Invite the host again whenever you like. The link does not change, the send count goes up, and the board shows the most recent date.
Reassigning a table takes effect immediately on both hosts' pages, with nothing to re-send.
A host with no tables (for example after every table is reassigned) still has a working link, and their page tells them to get in touch with you.
Locked tables are left alone. Automatic seating skips them, so locking is a reliable way to reserve a table for guests you will place yourself.
Text messages need a mobile number on the contact record, for hosts and for their guests. Guests without one simply receive the email.