Bringalong vs Elfster, feature by feature

These two products answer the same question in different sizes. Elfster builds a place your group joins, with profiles, wishlists, a feed and messages between a giver and the person they drew. Bringalong does the draw and hands you links. If you want the second thing, the first is more than you need. If you want the first, the second will leave you short.

Elfster does more, and that is worth saying before anything else. It has anonymous messaging, wishlists with three privacy levels and a browser button for adding items, an activity feed, a sign-up deadline that locks out late joiners, an integrated gift shop, and iOS and Android apps. Bringalong has none of those. What it has instead is a draw that runs from names alone, with no account for anybody.

The table is drawn only from Elfster's published help center and privacy policy. Everything after it is the part a table cannot carry: how exclusions constrain a draw, how to run one when half the group is remote, and what to do when somebody drops out in the second week of December.

What each one is built around

Elfster's help center states the requirement in one line: "Everyone needs to have their own Elfster account." To find out who you drew, you have to be signed in with the email address you were invited with. That is a fair trade, because an account is what makes anonymous messaging and a wishlist you still own next year possible at all.

Bringalong does the draw and hands you links. A participant does nothing except open the one you sent them, and the link is the whole credential. That removes the sign-up step and takes with it every feature that needs to know who somebody is.

A grandparent with no email address, a teenager, a warehouse crew with no company accounts and a contractor who will not register anything on a work laptop are all in the draw by default, because being in it means receiving a message with a link. Nothing is collected: a name can be whatever the person answers to, and the draw is deleted ninety days after the event date. The full pairing is not shown anywhere, including to you, so nobody can suggest the organizer steered it.

Where Elfster does more

Anonymous messaging is the one people miss. Elfster's help center says messages to the person you drew are marked to send anonymously by default, and that messages are private, so other participants cannot read them or the answers. That solves a real problem: you have drawn somebody whose wishlist says a jumper and you need the size without revealing who is asking.

Wishlists are the second. Elfster creates your first one with the account, offers public, limited and private visibility, and provides a "Wish It!" browser button for adding items as you find them. There is an integrated shop and gift guides, so a giver can act on a list where they read it. A Bringalong wishlist is plain text typed on a private link.

Two more are administrative. All participants can post to an Activity Feed, which gives the group one place to argue about the limit. And organizers can prevent participants from RSVPing after the sign-up deadline, with anyone who has not RSVP'd by draw time left out.

• Anonymous messages between a giver and their recipient, anonymous by default.
• Wishlists with public, limited and private levels, plus a browser button.
• An integrated gift shop and gift guides attached to the wishlist.
• A sign-up deadline the organizer can lock, shutting out late joiners.
• iOS and Android apps.

Draw Restrictions and exclusions are not the same shape

This is a design difference you can use. Elfster's exclusions are called Draw Restrictions, and the help center describes checking the boxes next to any name you do not want that person to draw. They run in one direction only. Its own example is unambiguous: "if you don't want Rudolph to draw Blitzen, or Blitzen to draw Rudolph, both will need a restriction." Only organizers and assistants can see them.

Bringalong's exclusions are symmetrical. One setting names two people and blocks both directions, because the draw treats an excluded pair as a pair rather than an arrow.

Work it through with eight people: Dana, Omar, Priya, Theo, Rosa, Ben, Clara and Luis. Dana and Omar are married, Priya and Theo are married, and Rosa and Ben are siblings who agreed years ago to stop buying for each other. Three pairs, which is three settings here. In one-directional terms it is six restrictions.

The failure is quiet. You enter three restrictions instead of six, because a pair feels like one fact, and the draw runs without an error — three restrictions is a valid instruction, only not the one you meant. Then Omar opens his link and sees Dana. Write your pairs on paper first and tick off two lines per pair.

• Dana must not draw Omar.
• Omar must not draw Dana.
• Priya must not draw Theo.
• Theo must not draw Priya.
• Rosa must not draw Ben.
• Ben must not draw Rosa.

How many exclusions make a draw impossible

The arithmetic is a counting check, and either tool can be handed an instruction that no arrangement satisfies. Twelve relatives at a family Christmas: if seven of them are one household who are all excluded from each other, those seven can only draw from the five people outside. Seven givers, five allowed recipients, so two of the seven have nobody left and no reshuffle fixes it. The obstacle is the counting, and the draw will refuse every time you press the button.

What that feels like is the problem. No single restriction is at fault, so nothing can be pointed at, and you end up deleting exclusions one at a time to find which one unsticks it. Keep every person at three or more allowed recipients, and if you cannot, split the group so the seven-person household draws among themselves.

Tight draws also repeat. Elfster documents the effect from its own feature: Draw Restrictions "limit the number of options that each Participant can draw, which may result in someone drawing the same name two Exchanges in a row." Neither tool remembers last year, so if repeats bother your group, keep a note of who had whom and add last year's pairs as exclusions.

A couple in a group of eight

Three answers work here, and the one you pick changes the draw rather than one pair. Exclude them from each other and leave both in: eight givers, eight gifts, and Dana and Omar each buy for somebody outside the household. This is the usual call. Ask them anyway, because a couple who have agreed not to exchange gifts sometimes prefer to be in the hat together.

Or enter the couple as one name. Now there are seven entries, they give one gift between them and receive one, which costs less and gives the group one fewer present to think about. The trap is that they open a single parcel while everybody else opens their own, and whoever drew them has to find something two people will both use.

Or split the households into two draws, which is the move when a group of eight is four couples. Four exclusion pairs still leaves everybody six allowed recipients, so that draw runs. What goes wrong is the money: each household spends twice the limit and receives two gifts, and somebody will have read the limit as per household. Write 25 per person into the announcement.

Running the draw when half the group is remote

A split group turns one date into four, and the invitation shows the one that matters least. Work backwards from the opening.

Gifts open on a video call at 3pm on Friday December 19. Allow a week for delivery rather than the two days a checkout promises, which puts the post-by date on the 10th. Buying and wrapping needs the two days before that, so the 8th. Wishlists close on the 5th, so anybody shipping has something to work from.

This is where Elfster's sign-up deadline earns its place. A hard cut-off means the list you draw from is the list you announced. Without one, the draw is whoever has replied when you press the button, and you make the call about the two people who have not answered. Make it early.

1. Publish all four dates in one pinned message.
2. Ask remote people to put a delivery address or pickup point in their own wishlist.
3. Tell a giver early if their recipient is overseas, so they can order locally.
4. Give the opening order out loud on the call before anything is unwrapped.
5. Open one gift at a time, with the giver quiet until the paper is off.

When somebody drops out after the draw

A draw is a loop, and a dropout breaks it in one place. If Rosa leaves, whoever drew Rosa has nobody to give to and whoever Rosa drew has nobody giving to them. Everybody else is untouched, which is why a patch beats a redraw.

The patch is two messages. Ask whoever drew Rosa to contact you privately, get the name Rosa drew from Rosa, and pass it on, so that person buys for them instead. One pairing becomes known to you and nothing else moves.

Redraw only while nobody has bought anything, and then say in the group that the matches have changed. Do not run a second draw with the same names to pull one replacement link out of it, because that person's new match is already being shopped for. And do not ask in the group whether anybody drew Rosa: the answer is public and the draw stops being secret for everyone reading.

If a whole household drops out, count before you patch. Three people leaving a group of nine takes it to six, and your exclusions are now a larger share of a smaller draw.

Which one to pick

Pick Elfster if your group will register, if wishlists matter to you, and if you want givers to be able to ask their recipient a question without going through you. Those are the strongest things on the comparison and neither has an equivalent here. Pick it too if an app is what your group expects to open.

Pick Bringalong if the draw is the only part you need, if two or three people have no email address they read, or if you want nobody, including yourself, to be able to see the full pairing.

If you are undecided, write down the names of the three people in your group least likely to finish a sign-up form. If you cannot think of three, Elfster's extra features cost you nothing. If you can name all three without pausing, those three decide it.