Organize and Share your Family’s Holiday Online Wish Lists and Gift Registries with Giftster

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post on behalf of Giftster.com. Regardless, I only promote products and services I like and feel will benefit you, my readers.

Every year my siblings and I do a gift exchange for Christmas.  With 10 of us it is just easier and less expensive than trying to buy gifts for everyone.  The dilemma comes when trying to pick out a gift for our gift buddy.  Nowadays families are spread out across the country, sometimes even across the world.  It can be challenging to find the perfect gift for friends and family with whom you don’t interact with on a close and personal basis.  Not to imply that families who don’t live in close proximity aren’t close, but you know how it is.

This year I was approached by a wonderful gift wish list service and asked to review their website.  I can’t tell you how happy I am to have found out about Giftster!  It is just what my family and I need to organize our wish lists and share them with each other for the holidays.

Giftster is a free universal family online wish list sharing service.  At Giftster you can create groups (family or otherwise) with whom you want to share your wish lists.  Wish lists can also be made public and searchable by other Giftster users–this feature is great for wedding registries and baby registries, teachers’ classroom needs, etc.

Creating my family group and inviting my family members was really simple. First, create your account.  I recommend manually creating your account as opposed to creating it with the Facebook button.  If you create your account using the Facebook button you will not be assigned a password which you’ll need to use some of the Giftster features.  You can always request a password, but it isn’t a very straightforward process.  Creating your account manually will save you a little time and that extra step.

After I created my own account I clicked the My Groups icon at the top of the page and then clicked the “add a new group” link on the left.  I sent an invite to all my family members by entering their name and email address into the field provided.  When they join they’ll automatically be a part of the family group I created.  If your family members are already on Giftster you can easily search for them on the Giftster site.

Once you have your group set up you’ll want to start adding items to your wish list.  The process is so simple with the “Add to Giftster” button available for your browser toolbar. You can download the button from the Giftster home page.  When adding your wish list items you can rank your most wanted items using a 5 star ranking system.

When you’re ready to shop for others from their Giftster wish list you can mark their items reserved or purchased (you can mark items reserved or purchased on several different lists and for different people in your group). –As a side note I don’t think you can see when people have bought or reserved things off your list, thus maintaining the surprise.–  Giftster automatically collects all your reserved and purchased items in one place, called my shopping list. Press the “print my shopping list” and you get a summary list of each gift you reserved, no matter which list it was on.  Then have fun shopping!

Giftster can be used via your home computer, mobile phone, or tablet.