Giftwhale: The Easy Way to Create Wish Lists

*This is a paid post

Do you ever make wish lists? I have gift lists for the children, for my husband and for myself but, they are all over the place. I have Amazon wish lists, boards that I pin things to on Pinterest plus photos and notes saved in my phone of things the kids have told me they would like. But life would be much easier if I could have everything that everyone would like in one place. And that’s where Giftwhale comes in.

What is Giftwhale?

Giftwhale is a free, online wish list service. Giftwhale’s aim is to make the gifting experience fun, as easy as possible and without the problems you usually find with traditional gift lists.

I’m sure at some point you have had to give multiple people gift ideas, either for yourself, your other half or your children. Phone calls, texts and emails pinging back and forth, trying to remember who is getting what and simply trying to think of enough ideas so that the recipient doesn’t end up with three of the same thing – or something they’ll never use.

Giftwhale takes away all of that stress so that you can send friends and family a link and sit back whilst they reserve and buy gifts that you know will be loved and appreciated.

How do you use Giftwhale?

Giftwhale could not be easier to use. You simply create a profile on the Giftwhale website which also allows you to add children or anyone else that you’d like to make wish lists for. Then you’re ready to start creating your first wish list. It literally takes no more than a minute or two.

As Little Man’s birthday is coming up I decided to make my first wish list for him. I added a photo for the wish list and then started adding things I knew he would like. Giftwhale prompts you to add a link to the gift, the name of it, the price and a picture if you want to. You can also add a priority level – how badly that gift is wanted – and a description of why they want to gift or things like the size or colour they would like.

The gifts are then put together into a wish list that can be sorted by priority, price or when they were added to the list so that people looking to buy a gift can choose something they know the recipient really wants, something within their budget or something they’ve asked for recently.

When your wish list is ready you can start to share it with friends and family – and they can start buying gifts. You can share the list through email, Twitter, Facebook or with a direct link. Once you’ve shared the link you can keep adding items to the wish list too and you have the option of adding your address so that people can send gifts directly to you.

People can buy gifts, or reserve them with the intention of buying them at a later date, and it stops other people from being able to buy that same gift – meaning you’ll no longer receive duplicates!

What’s great about Giftwhale?

I love so much about Giftwhale. It’s super simple to add gift ideas from any website. You could even add gift experiences, holidays or days out to it for a gift that’s a little different. Plus, you can add gifts to fit all different budgets and anything from really fun to educational or practical gifts so that people have a wide variety to choose from. It means people can still buy the kind of gift they love to give whilst picking something they know you’ll love or need.

Giftwhale also have a gift exchange feature so if you’re doing Secret Santa or similar you can use Giftwhale to make the whole process that much easier.

Giftwhale lets you import existing wish lists from Amazon, saving you time if you already have a list that you’d like to keep working on through Giftwhale. Plus, Giftwhale also has a Chrome extension so you can click a button to add items to your list whilst you browse the internet – much like you would for Pinterest. This is a fantastic feature!

If you’re not using Chrome, Giftwhale also has a bookmarklet feature to help make adding items as simple as possible – and Giftwhale is also a Progressive Web App meaning that you can save Giftwhale as an app on your mobile phone that uses your mobile browser. Once installed to your home screen, Giftwhale will function just like any other app on your device, giving you so many ways to add gifts to your wish lists.

I really love that Giftwhale also has a thank you function. Once you’ve received gifts you can go onto your wish list, mark gifts as received and send the recipient a personalised thank you. This is easy to do and makes Giftwhale that much more thoughtful than simply using Amazon.

But the best thing about Giftwhale? It’s completely free to use. There are no hidden costs or upgrade fees that will suddenly pop up once you’ve started using the service. It’s completely free and you can have as many wish lists and items on each wish list as you like.

How else can you use Giftwhale?

Although my main focus for Giftwhale has been on my own immediate family’s birthdays – Little Man’s 11th birthday coming up and my 40th in October, you can create wish lists for literally any occasion. Is Great Aunt June celebrating her 90th birthday this year? Is someone retiring at your workplace? Are you organising a baby shower? Are you getting married and want a really versatile wedding gift registry option? Giftwhale can literally be used for any occasion that you need gift ideas for.

Plus, you could have ongoing lists. Create a list of things that you would love, for any occasion, and just keep it updated. Your friends and family can then check out the list at any time, using it to buy birthday gifts, anniversary gifts or gifts just because. Giftwhale has so many uses and fits seamlessly into your life, saving you so much life admin in the process!

Giftwhale can also be used by charities, to create wish lists of things they’d like donated. It could be cat food for a stray animal charity, warm clothing or blankets for a homeless shelter or a business asking for toys for their annual charity Christmas toy appeal.

The Giftwhale motto is Create wonderful wish lists, Receive better gifts and thanks to Giftwhale you really can make wonderful wish lists that are fun to create, easy to manage and simple to share. I’ve loved creating our wish lists with Giftwhale, why not start creating yours today?

Find out more about Giftwhale, and create a wish list, over on their website.