'They make gifting simple!' - 7 of the best apps to organize your Christmas list and help you budget this season

Getting your Christmas list sorted, be it your own or your gifts for family a friends is always a big task. You'll want to avoid buying twice, be able to track any deliveries, and have enough wrapping paper to go around, but, with so many things that you want to buy and budgets to think about, it can all turn into a very stressful experience. 

Stress is exactly not what the festive season is about, but luckily technology has come to our rescue. The almighty gift app promises to make your Christmas gifting experience as seamless as possible. Making lists for you, keeping track of your spending, drawing your Secret Santa names, and storing all your tracking and delivery updates, all in one place - it sounds like a digital version of Santa's army of elves (excluding the added task of Christmas decorating). 

Ready to restore some order and organization into your life this festive season? When it comes to gifting apps, there are numerous options out there to choose from, but I’ve done some research to find the very best seven out there that will make gifting simple this holiday.

1. Christmas Gift List 

The Christmas Gift List app is a quick and easy way to keep track of all the gifts you need to purchase and put under your Christmas tree between now and the 25th. You can have separate lists for individual people, allocate a budget to each, and add images, personalized links, and notes. You can mark the gifts as purchased, and wrapped once you’ve done so. On 1st January of every year, your list will automatically be archived and saved, and a new list created with the same people carried over so you get an easy fresh start when gift time comes again. 

2. Christmas Gift List Tracker 

In addition to creating lists for different people, and adding a budget, the Christmas Gift List Tracker app also helps you track your spending with various graphs organized by name, showing how much you’ve spent of your total budget on each person. You can automatically sync the data to your iPad, and track your progress with your Apple watch. If you’re splitting the task of buying gifts, you can share your list and collaborate with other users too. 

3. The Christmas list

Everyone seems to be very excited about this app, and it’s got great reviews from its users. With the Christmas List app, you can link to products straight from the lists you create, you can share lists with family members, and avoid getting the same gift multiple times - your friends and family can claim which gift they would like to purchase, which means no duplicates, and no time wasted on returns. Your 

4. Gift planner 

You can use the Gift Planner app for any kind of gifting throughout the year, not just for Christmas. The added advantage is you can add order and tracking numbers for your deliveries. This way you’ll be on top of the whole gifting journey, from list to doorstep. The app allows you to send gifts directly from your desktop or mobile web browser to your app through a unique Safari bookmarklet, and straight away get them imported as gifts on your list. 

5. Santa’s bag 

This app is super organized but fun and easy to use. With Santa's bag, you can manage your gift recipient list, add total and individual budgets, track how much you’re spending, and the status of your gifts whether they are yet to be purchased, on route, or to be wrapped. If you have a favorite shop you go back to time and time again you can select it as your favorite merchant, all to make it super easy for you to get gifting done fast.  

6. Giftster 

Giftster is one of the most popular gift list apps, and not just because it’s been around for quite a few good years now. You can use it all year round for any gifting occasion, and for Christmas, it has the added feature of drawing out Secret Santa names. To keep things organized, some of the ways you can sort your wish lists are by ‘newest’, ‘availability’, and ‘price’. And if you’re sharing lists with family members, the list maker can’t see the status of items on their own lists, so no surprises are ruined.  

7. Gifted 

Another app that can be used all year round, Gifted is all about the ease of use of the digital gift card. You can purchase, send, store, and redeem digital gift cards through the app, from a large range of brands varying from products to experiences. Once you purchase a gift card you can send it straight away via text to the recipient, customized with a personal message. You can store all your gift cards in one place on the app, and access gift card deals whenever you make a purchase.  

Gifting has never been so easy with the help of these apps. Now you just have to get the physical task of organizing the Christmas living room out of the way before the big day arrives!

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