Whether you’re planning a wedding, a shower, or any other major party for a major event, you’ll probably have people who want to congratulate you—which means you’ll need a registry. This week, we’re looking at five of the best registry services for events of all types and sizes.
Earlier in the week, we asked you to nominate your favorite gift or wedding registry sites. You came through with some solid nominees, from the expected to the specialized. Let’s take a look at your five favorites, in no particular order.
CheckedTwice
CheckedTwice is a bit of a cross between a service like Pinterest and a simple retailer wishlist, but it brings the best of both services together. You can sign up with an email address, and then build a visual list of items for a wedding, a graduation, a shower, or any other event that needs a registry—even simpler events like birthdays. You can add items from retailers all over the web, or even offline retailers by filling out a little information about the item you’re looking for. Then you share it with everyone you need to see it, and let CheckedTwice handle the rest—your family and friends will be able to claim items in the background, see what others have claimed, and all the while you’ll have no idea who’s purchased what. They actually have features geared towards birthdays and holiday gifts for the family, and the service is available via the web and on your mobile device.
Those of you who nominated CheckedTwice pointed out that it’s great because each member of your family gets an individual wish list, and it’s easier to manage than something like an Amazon wishlist. You don’t have to have separate accounts or passwords. The site started out of a need for a comprehensive family gift list—one that would guarantee that no one would get duplicate gifts, and no one would know what gifts they’ve been given until they’re opened. Some of you also noted that CheckedTwice is super-easy to use, which is great for less tech-savvy members of the family. Read more in its nomination thread here.
Zola
Zola offers a wealth of options when it comes to crafting and organizing the perfect gift list. You can get started using some of their starter collections or inspiration boards, do group funds or boards that multiple people can add to and then share with others, and of course, it works like a regular old wishlist—one you can add items from anywhere on the web. If you’re looking for specific brands or types of items, you can find them and add them to your registry quickly, or you can use Zola to fund experiences instead of stuff—trips, honeymoon funds, and more. You can even just build a cash fund and call it a day. Zola has a bit of a focus on household and kitchen goods, but that doesn’t mean you can’t expand beyond it by adding your own items. Plus, Zola’s barcode scanner lets you add things to your registry quickly from your smartphone—useful if you see things out and about that you’d like to add.
Those of you who nominated Zola pointed out that the registries, while a little same-y across the site, are easy to set up and easy to browse, and that the service makes it super-easy to build your registry, share it with others, and eliminates confusion by showing you how many of each item is needed and removing it when it’s been purchased. One of you pointed out that you have the option to hold gifts for a later date, so you can buy now and save your gift for, for example, after the event, when a couple gets back from a honeymoon, or for a birthday or holiday. You can read more in its nomination thread here.
Knack
Like some of the other services on the list, Knack allows you to build a registry of items from all over the web, from large and small retailers. Knack positions itself opposite huge retail registries and lists, and points out that not only can you add things from small web retailers and artisan, crafty shops online, you can also add items only available offline at brick-and-mortar stores or small shops in your neighborhood. You can, of course, use their sample items and collections to get your registry off to a good start. You can also fund events, like a honeymoon trip, or the things you’ll need for that trip. Plus, Knack makes it easy for the people you’ve shared your registry to get a hold of those items you’ve listed, whether they’re available online or off.
Those of you who nominated Knack (okay, I nominated Knack) highlighted the fact that it blends the “big retailer wishlist” experience with the option to support local shops and artisans all in the same tool—something that’s sorely lacking when you start looking at the registry tools available on massive store websites. Read more in its nomination thread here.
Thankful
Thankful positions itself as the anti-stuff registry. Sure, you can build a list of just items if you want, but the service challenges you to tell your loved ones what you’re interested in as opposed to a big list of stuff from major retailers that you want people to buy for you. The service lets you crowdfund experiences as well, like honeymoons and special events, as opposed to just weddings and showers. In a lot of ways, Thankful is one of the most attractive registry sites we’ve seen, complete with beautiful cover photos and descriptions that tell your event’s specific story. Like other entries here, you can add items from all over the web, from any retailer, large or small. You can even include things like charity donations and cash on your Thankful Registry. The service also has a browser bookmarklet that makes the process easy.
It’s worth highlighting that Thankful is a premium service though—you can try it for free, but after that it’s $30 for 12 months. Part of the reason there is that unlike most other services, Thankful doesn’t take a percentage of your transactions as commission or anything. You can read more about that in their FAQ. Those of you who nominated Thankful highlighted this as well, and pointed out that the service makes finding inspiration and creating a registry easy, and presents you with a uniquely beautiful catalog to share with family or friends, but it’s not pushy about trying to sell you things. You can read more in its nomination thread here.
All My Gifts
All My Gifts is actually a mobile app for Android and iOS that keeps track of all of your registries, and the things that have been purchased from them, so you can be sure there are no duplicates on any of them, and no one buys you duplicates of any specific item. Ideally, the app allows you to always see who purchased what for whom, so you can track your gifts and packages, remember to give your thanks to everyone who bought you something, and simplify the entire process of building and keeping registries up to date. The apps integrate with Facebook, so if you have an Facebook event for your special day, it’ll plug right in and populate the guest list automatically. It also features barcode scanning so you can keep track of what you’ve received and what you want.
Those of you who nominated All My Gifts highlighted it as a way to manage all of those disparate registries and gift lists, since odds are you’ll have to create profiles on multiple sites no matter what. You also noted that it’s helpful to see who goes off-registry and gets you something else instead as well. You can read more in its nomination thread here.
Now that you’ve seen the top five, it’s time to put them to an all out vote to determine the overall winner.
This week’s honorable mention is the simple Amazon.com Wishlist, which can be used with virtually every shopping website, is easy to organize, add comments to, and share with others. It’s a nice, all-around, default tool, but it’s lacking some of the features of many of the ones above, which is why we made the decision to bump it down to honorable mention. That said, we understand – Amazon is the store that “sells everything,” so it makes sense to register or make a wishlist there and send that around to people – it can be the easiest solution.
Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn’t included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread earlier in the week. Don’t just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.
The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it didn’t get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it’s a bit of a popularity contest. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!
Title photo by Shannon Badiee.