An Elfster alternative where nobody has to sign up

You have fourteen names and three weeks. Eleven people do what they are asked. The other three open the invitation, reach the part where they have to create an account, and put the phone down to deal with it later. Later turns out to be December 14.

That is the shape of the problem on any site where taking part means registering. Elfster's help center is direct about it: "Everyone needs to have their own Elfster account." To see who you drew, you have to be signed in with the email address you were invited with. Organizing an exchange there is free, and the software around the draw does things this site does not do at all. The cost falls on the three people who were never going to finish a sign-up form.

Bringalong takes a different trade. You type the names, run the draw, and get one private link per person, each showing a single name. No email addresses are collected and nobody creates an account. There is a real price for that, and it gets its own section near the bottom rather than a footnote.

Where the sign-up requirement actually costs you

The three people who stall are not the three who said no. They said yes in the group chat, which is why you counted them. They are missing because a registration step sat between the invitation and the list, and a registration step is the easiest thing in the world to postpone.

Elfster's help center documents what happens to a late finisher: "Anyone who has not RSVP'd by the time names are drawn will not be included in the draw." Draw on December 1 and the three who register on the 4th are outside a draw that has already run. You can leave them out, which is what you were trying to avoid, or run the draw again and change the match of everybody who has started shopping.

• A parent whose phone is full and who will not register anything new in December.
• A teenager with no email address of their own.
• A colleague who will not make a personal account on a work laptop, reasonably enough.
• A relative abroad who reads one chat app and nothing else.

The two routes Elfster's help center documents around it

Elfster has thought about the person with no email address, and its help center describes two ways through. Both work. Both move the cost onto you rather than removing it.

The first is a linked account under a Family Manager, and the help center is explicit about whose address it uses: "Your email address will be used as the email address for the new linked account." The account exists and you are holding it, so anything that would have reached that person reaches you.

The second is a Draw Now exchange, where in Elfster's own words "the organizer will handle everything, including managing the draws." Participants there have no account, which solves the sign-up problem outright. What they also have is no wishlist and no way to look up their own draw, so the secret runs through you: you tell each person the name they got, and you know all of them. In a family of fourteen that is fourteen conversations to keep straight, and you are no longer a surprised participant in your own exchange.

What a draw looks like when a link is the whole thing

Type the names, set a spending limit and the date you are opening gifts, mark any exclusion pairs, and run it. Back comes a list of private links, one per name. Each opens in any browser and shows one name, that person's wishlist, the limit and the date.

The full pairing is not shown anywhere, including to you, which takes away the suspicion that the organizer steered the draw. Nobody is assigned to themselves and no two people draw each other.

Handing the links out is your job, and it is the fiddly part. Open a person's one-to-one chat first, copy their link, then send it with their name in the message, so a link in the wrong thread gives itself away before anyone taps. Save your list of names and links before you send the first one, because that is the only way to resend a lost link. The draw and its replies are deleted ninety days after the event date.

Exclusions, and the point where a draw stops being possible

Exclusions stop two people drawing each other. They are also how a draw quietly becomes impossible, and the arithmetic is worth knowing before you add the fifth one.

Eight people: Dana, Omar, Priya, Theo, Rosa, Ben, Clara and Luis. Dana and Omar are married, and so are Priya and Theo. Two exclusion pairs. Dana may draw six of the other seven, and so may everybody else in a couple. Thousands of valid arrangements, found on the first attempt.

Now make five of the same eight one household, all excluded from each other: Dana, Omar, Priya, Theo and Rosa, with Clara, Ben and Luis outside it. Those five can only draw from three names. Five givers, three allowed recipients, so no arrangement exists and no reshuffle will find one. That is the check you can run in your head: count the heavily excluded people, then count the recipients they are collectively allowed to draw.

What it feels like is the part nobody warns you about. You press the button at half past eleven at night, nothing valid comes back, and no single restriction is to blame — the set of them together rules out every arrangement. Keep everybody at three or more allowed recipients. If you cannot, split the group: the five-person household draws among themselves and the other three join a second draw.

Small groups are tight for the same reason. Four people in two couples has exactly two valid arrangements once self-matches, partners and mutual pairs are ruled out, so a repeat of last year is a coin toss. Elfster's help center notes the same effect from its Draw Restrictions: they "limit the number of options that each Participant can draw, which may result in someone drawing the same name two Exchanges in a row."

A couple in a group of eight

The default call is to exclude them from each other, which here is one setting for the pair: Dana cannot draw Omar and Omar cannot draw Dana from the same instruction.

Ask the couple first, though. Some of them would rather be in the hat together.

The quieter problem in a group of eight is money. If Dana and Omar share an account, a limit of 25 means their household spends 50 and receives two gifts, the same as any other two people. That is fair, and it still surprises anyone who read the limit as per household. Write 25 per person into the announcement and the question does not arrive.

Then the practical one. Two people who share a phone cannot each open a private link without the other seeing it. Send the two links as separate messages, each labeled with its owner's name, and ask each to open only theirs and delete it afterwards. One link for the pair to share is the mistake: two people on one link means one of them is buying for nobody.

Running it when half the group is somewhere else

A draw with six people in the office and six at home is two exchanges wearing one hat. 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 three days earlier, on the 5th, so whoever is shipping has something to work from. Publish all four dates in one message, because a post-by date read on its own becomes the shopping date.

Do not hold the addresses yourself. Ask each remote person to put a delivery address or a pickup point in their own wishlist, where only the person buying for them can read it.

1. Fix the opening time first, with the time zone if the group spans two.
2. Count back seven days for delivery, two for buying, three for wishlists.
3. Tell a giver early if their recipient is in another country, so they can order locally.
4. Call the opening order out loud before the first gift is unwrapped.

When somebody drops out after the draw

Only one link in the chain is broken, and seeing that saves you a redraw. If Rosa drops out, whoever drew Rosa has nobody to give to, and whoever Rosa drew has nobody giving to them. The rest of the group is untouched.

So patch it. Post one line asking whoever drew Rosa to message you privately. Ask Rosa for the name she drew and pass it to that person, who buys for them instead. You learn one pairing, two people have a short private conversation, and nothing else moves.

Redraw only if nobody has bought anything yet. Then say in the group that matches have changed, so nobody shops from a name that is no longer live. Do not set up a second draw with the same names to pull one link out of it: that person's new match is already being shopped for, and the result is one person with two gifts and one with none. If Rosa has already bought her gift, ask her to leave it with you.

What you give up by having no accounts

Elfster does several things Bringalong does not do at all, and some of them follow from having accounts in the first place. A page that concedes nothing is not worth reading, so here is the list.

No email and no text messages go out from here, of any kind. Every link travels from you, in whatever app your group uses, which means fourteen private messages in order without crossing two of them. There are no reminders and no notifications; the calendar file carries a day-before alert and that is all.

The one that bites is recovery. With no account, a lost organizer link cannot be restored by us, and a lost participant link can only be resent from the list you saved. Nothing can be mailed to anybody, because we hold no addresses. Save the list before you send the first message and that failure mode disappears.

• No mobile app. Elfster's help center describes iOS and Android apps.
• No anonymous messaging between a giver and their recipient, and no group feed.
• No wishlist privacy levels, no browser button for adding items, no shop.
• No account recovery. A lost link comes back from your saved list or not at all.