Shared Album in Photos. No one I've invited gets the invite

Hi there community. Thanks for everyone who takes the time to read and help. I have just created a shared folder in Photos on my iPhone. Shared folders are enabled in the iCloud setting. I do not sync photos to the iCloud but that doesn't seem to an issue as I can separately activate the shared folder.

I have invited 4 people and non of them received the invite yet. Nor did anything pop up in their photos app. With one person I checked and notifications for photos and shared albums are activated. I don't seem to be able to tag people when placing a picture in that album. And even after restarting the one phone, of the person who's phone I cloud check, nothing changed at all. Meanwhile for me, I can place pictures till kingdom come it seems but nothing changes.

Does anyone have a solution for this? It's all iPhone users with iMessage enabled and beside the fact that I wont turn into a public website, fine by me - since I don't know where the photos land, I would love to get the shared folder to actually share with the people invited.