If you're a college basketball fan, then this is an exciting time for you right now — March Madness is here! This means several weeks of intense NCAA matchups, and it's also a great time to get together with your other NCAA friends and watch the games together. But how do you go about setting up those meetups? Don't worry, here are some great apps to help you plan everything out!
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Facebook, as much as we love or hate it, is one of the easiest ways to plan events with your Facebook friends. Anyone with a Facebook account can create an Event easily in just a few steps, and these events can be either Private or Public.
When you create an event, you can choose a theme, upload photos or videos relating to the event, give details like location and description, date and time, and even add co-hosts. You can invite people as you see fit for their RSVPs, and the event page can be where people post questions or leave comments about the event in question. You can even make it so that people can contact you directly if they have questions.
If you create a private event, it won't be able to be changed to public later in order to protect the privacy of the invited guests. The same goes for public events — these aren't able to be changed to private later, so choose wisely!
Evite
Evite is a versatile app that can be used for your March Madness gatherings, as well as other significant events like birthdays, weddings, baby showers, special occasions, and more. With Evite, it's easy to create digital invitations with various themes and styles. Just give these invitations an event title, time, location, and a host message in only a few taps. You can even personalize them with your own images too!
With Evite, you can send these digital invitations by text or email, and invitees can respond in just a few taps too. And they don't need to create an account to respond to the invite, leave a message on the event page, or even upload photos from the event after.
While you can simply stick with the free version of Evite, there is a Pro subscription for more special designs, full customization, no ads, and more, which starts at $80 for three months or $250 a year. You can also do a one-time purchase in different guest tiers starting from $13.
Doodle: Easy Scheduling
Getting people together to meet up can be a bit difficult, with everyone having different schedules. Fortunately, Doodle makes scheduling a breeze.
With Doodle, you're able to suggest several different meeting times to the people you want to invite. The participants can then select the dates and times that work best for them, and you can pick a time that works best for everyone that you want to be involved. If there are any conflicts, you can also see them right in the app! And the best part is that everyone participating don't even need to create an account to use Doodle — it even integrates directly into iMessage, making the process even more streamlined.
Meetup
If you're looking for other like-minded individuals to meet up with for March Madness, then give Meetup a try. With this app, you're able to join events put together by other people in an effort to bring individuals with a common interest together, including sports.
With Meetup, you're able to search for and join over thousands of different groups. It's a great way to meet people that you would not have been able to meet otherwise (probably). If you want to use Meetup to put together your own event for March Madness, you can do that too, but you will need a subscription, which starts at $15 a month.
Discord
When you want to get everyone together to make plans for a gathering, it's best if you have everyone chatting with one another in one place. Discord is a great app for getting groups to communicate.
While Discord is marketed towards gamers, it's also great for communities in general. People can create "servers," which are rooms, and invite the people they want in it. You'll have one username, but it works across multiple servers, and you can easily switch between servers with just a few clicks or taps. Discord supports text chat (with a ton of emoji options), and it's great for voice and video calls too.
It's a great option if you want everyone to be in one place to talk about all things March Madness, or whatever else.
iMessage
The last option is the one that's built-in on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac: iMessage. It's probably the easiest way to communicate with others if you don't want to download a third-party app too.
With iMessage, you could simply create a group chat with everyone that you want to get together for March Madness games. Some apps, like Doodle, integrate directly with iMessage, so you can even use other apps without ever leaving iMessage itself. If everyone in the group chat is also using iMessage, they should be able to freely leave the group chat if they don't want to be a part of it anymore either (unfortunately, this does not work if someone is using SMS).
It's a pretty basic app that comes with your phone, so you're already using it, but it's definitely a tried-and-true method of communication, so it's great for March Madness planning.
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Are you excited for March Madness?
Whether you're into the NCAA or not, March Madness can be a great time to just hang out with friends and family. These apps will help you plan out your gatherings throughout the event. What do you use for event planning? Let us know in the comments.
