Elfster: The Secret Santa App

Me and my fam love love it!! Elfster is so great at doing the drawing names randomly for the Secret Santa thing so no one knows except the person setting it up! We use it for Christmas every year. This way you can get something you picked out that you love and not something from an older relative that they find adorable and you SO don’t! Vice versa you get to see the things your family and friends actually want, especially the person who has everything. You can add all your family and friends so you guys can see what each other are wanting discreetly. You can even mark it as purchased so if anyone else sees it they won’t get the same gift and the person who wished for it has no idea. It helps for birthday gifts too and to remember important events/dates! You can also add your kids lists or make them an account to make things easy on family and friends so they don’t need to text and ask all the questions. It’s pretty simple my grandma and grandpa use it. You just type in the search bar what store or item you want and it will bring up multiple choices, you click the one you want, write the size, color, details and bam it’s on your list! It makes things quick, convenient, and you get to see a happy excited person opening up a gift they want still with the element of surprise! 😊

This app was recommended as a way to manage family wish lists for Christmas, birthdays, etc. What I love is you can compile gifts from anywhere. It’s great. It’s like the BabyList for after they are born and for the next 18+ years. However, this app is also very limited. If you create your child’s list under your account, you have zero visibility into what gifts were already purchased. They just disappear from the count. It’s a terrible design flaw because if you don’t remember if you added a gift, you now risk getting a duplicate one if you add it again. The other limitation is that you cannot connect accounts and even if you do, you don’t have options to add multiple managers. For example, by husband wanted to be added and also have manager access go our child’s list to add/adjust gifts. He not only cannot be added as a co manager, but we found that the app cannot merge his account without having HIS PASSWORD. Really? Your own app and you cannot merge an account into another? Not to mention due to the first design flaw, even if he was added, he could end up adding gifts in duplicate or even triplicate. This app has a lot of potential, but they really need to fix a lot of the design flaws that limits its use.

I’ve been using this app for over five years, and it all started as a cute idea for a small group of girlfriends. As the years went on, it became a tradition for my entire family. Some of our older family members need a little extra help with technology, but once we get them set up, everything runs smoothly. One of my favorite features is being able to create wishlists for my kids. It makes sharing gift ideas with relatives so simple, and it helps ensure the kids get things they truly want. It’s been amazing every single year—I honestly can’t imagine Christmas without it now. Before this app, the adults in our family didn’t exchange gifts; we only bought for the kids. This app changed that for us. Instead of feeling pressured to buy for everyone, we each make sure that every person receives something special. It brought the magic of Christmas back for all of us to enjoy. Highly recommend! 🎄✨