Event microsites that disappear after the event (2026)

The wedding microsite went up in February. Date, venue, dress code, registry link, the RSVP form. The wedding happened in May. It's September; the site is still online, the RSVP form still accepts submissions for an event five months in the past, the Squarespace subscription auto-renewed.

Or: the company launched a new product in March with a small event landing — countdown timer, video, the launch-day demo embed. The launch happened. It's now October. The countdown shows negative days. The "Join us live" CTA links to a dead Zoom URL.

The site did its job; the host doesn't know that and keeps serving it.

What event microsites actually want from hosting

Three properties that the typical event needs:

1. Live during the window. Before the event, during registration, on the day. The page renders correctly, the form accepts inputs, the embedded video plays.
2. Retires cleanly after. Once the window closes — the wedding ends, the conference wraps, the launch goes generally available — the page should stop being public. Either a clean "this event has ended" stub or a redirect to the relevant follow-up (the product page, the conference archive, the couple's thank-you note).
3. No ongoing maintenance. The organizer should not have to remember to log into the CMS six months later to take the page down. The retirement should happen without an action.

Most hosting options handle the first; many handle the third by accident (the page stays up forever); few handle the second deliberately.

What each hosting shape does

WordPress / Squarespace / Wix — designed for ongoing websites. Strong CMS, lots of templates, recurring monthly fee. The site stays up as long as the subscription is paid; cancellation requires logging back in months later, which is the part organizers forget.

Notion public page — fast to set up, free to keep up. The page stays public indefinitely; Notion has no concept of "retire this page on a specific date". Stale RSVP forms and outdated "join us next month" headlines collect over time.

Custom deploy on Vercel / Netlify — full control, great for technical organizers, free for small projects. Same retirement problem as Notion — the project sits in the dashboard forever until someone deletes it, and the URL stays live.

Eventbrite / similar event platforms — built specifically for events with registration. Strong for ticketing, attendee management, the registration workflow. Less natural when the event is a wedding or a small launch that doesn't need ticketing infrastructure.

Static HTML at a private-link host with expiry — designed for files with an end date. Drop the HTML, set the expiry to the event date plus a grace window, share the URL. After the expiry, the link goes to a clean "expired" page; the organizer doesn't have to remember to take it down.

The expiry shape is what makes this fit the event use case specifically. The retirement is part of the setup, not a future to-do.

The expiry-as-feature pattern

For most events, the right expiry maps to:

• Wedding / personal event — event date + 30-60 days (covers the thank-you note window and out-of-town guests catching up)
• Conference / professional event — event end date + 14 days (covers post-event follow-ups and last-minute registrations)
• Product launch — launch date + 7 days (after which the marketing should be on the permanent product page, not the launch microsite)
• Limited-time campaign / activation — campaign end date + 3 days (no overlap with the next campaign)

The grace window matters. Set the expiry exactly to the event date and you'll regret it the morning after when someone needs to look up the venue address for a thank-you note.

The build

Most event microsites have the same five sections: hero (event name + date), key info (venue, time, dress code, registry / agenda), RSVP or registration, FAQ, contact. Half a dozen tools produce this in under an hour:

• AI builders (v0, Lovable, Cursor, Claude) — generate the page from a one-paragraph brief; the cross-tool prompt patterns cover how to ask for self-contained HTML so the file is portable.
• Static site generators (Astro, Eleventy, Next.js with static export) — for organizers who already know one of these.
• Hand-rolled HTML — for events with simple-enough requirements that a single HTML file is enough.

For the RSVP collection part, the simplest path is to embed a third-party form (Tally, Formspree, Google Forms) and let it handle the submissions — the microsite just hosts the page. RSVPs go to the form's backend; the microsite has zero state of its own. When the microsite expires, the RSVP data stays in the form tool.

Custom URL for branded events

For weddings, conferences, or launches where the URL is part of the brand:

• weddingcouple.com (apex domain) → ALIAS / CNAME to the link host → wedding microsite lives at the couple's domain.
• rsvp.companyname.com → CNAME to the link host → conference RSVP page reads as a subdomain of the company's main site.
• launch.productname.com → CNAME → launch event microsite at a memorable URL.

The setup is the same DNS pattern as the custom-domain walkthrough for client deliverables — a single CNAME, SSL provisions automatically, the URL bar shows the event's own brand. When the microsite expires, the URL can be re-pointed or left to 404 cleanly.

What "retired cleanly" actually looks like

When the link expires, the host's default expiry page renders. For a wedding link, that's this page has ended with a simple message; for a launch event, it's the same plus a one-line "the product is here →" link to the permanent product page.

Studio-tier plans on private-link hosts let the organizer customize the expiry page itself — set a custom redirect URL (the product page after launch, the conference's annual archive), set custom expiry copy (the couple's thank-you note, the company's "we'll see you next year"). The retirement becomes its own deliberate experience instead of a generic 404.

When the event isn't really an event

Some sites are described as "events" but are actually ongoing brands — a recurring monthly meetup that adds dates, a perpetual product launch that keeps relaunching, a brand campaign that turns into a permanent marketing surface. For these, the right shape is an ongoing site, not a time-bound microsite — Vercel / Webflow / WordPress / whatever the team already uses for the main brand.

The litmus test: does this page need to exist 12 months from now?

• No — event microsite shape fits; expiry handles the retirement.
• Yes — ongoing site shape fits; the hosting platform should be picked for the long-term needs.

Most weddings, conferences, launches, and time-bound campaigns fall cleanly into the first bucket. Picking the right shape upfront saves the awkward "should we take this down?" conversation six months later.