If you are like me, you find the following frustrating:
- Receiving gifts that were bought for the sake of buying a gift
- Buying gifts for the sake of buying gifts
- Receiving a gift you know for certain you could have bought for cheaper
- Being asked what you want as a gift at the last minute
- Group messages set up for an individual's birthday or Christmas presents; full of speculation as to what he/she would like
This year I have implemented a gift registry with my family(s). I searched around and all the big sites were full of ads or affiliate links, spam and social media crap. Then I found www.familygiftregistry.net
My name is Chris and I started the Family Gift Registry in 2005 when it was clear that the people in my family loved giving each other gifts for Christmas but sometimes had no clue what to give (or gifts were duplicated). It started as a personal side project and has remained that way as it has grown.
I don't make money on this site. As detailed above, there is no revenue stream. People ask if this site will ever have ads or cost money to sign up, but the answer is always no.
I signed up and created a Family, sent out invites (some went to spam btw) and then the rest of my family members signed up. It was very easy to use, has all the features you would need, including price guides and a comment area. I use these to tell people about sales and the best price you could get the item.
It has a Secret Santa function built in. Only my side of the family does SS so I just selected my side, pressed allocate and emails were sent out.
I highly recommend it. I plan to encourage my family members to continue to use it during the year so that when it's their birthday, we just visit their wishlist and know what to buy. During the year, you just add non-urgent items to your wishlist so you don't have any stress when it's your birthday or Christmas, you know you are going to get something you actually want!
*cough* SPAM!! *cough*
It just reads like a really bad infomercial or like a paid "testimonial".