How to create a gift exchange with a shared link

With a shared link you set the exchange up in a few minutes and everyone signs themselves in, with their own name and their own email address. You never have to chase anybody for their details.

It is the recommended route when you do not yet know exactly who is joining, or when the group lives in a WhatsApp thread and you would rather paste one link and forget about it.

What you need before you start

You do not need an account. Just your name and an email address where you want the organizer link to arrive.

It does help to have decided:

• What the exchange is called
• The date and place of the celebration
• The suggested budget per gift

The five steps of the wizard

The creation wizard has five steps and will not let you move on until the current one is complete.

1. Name

What the exchange is called. It is the first thing people see when they open your link, so a recognisable name saves you questions later.

2. Group type

Family, friends, work, school, community or other. This choice also changes the example you will see in the location field further on.

3. Gift category

The kind of gift this exchange is about. It is not decorative: it is what GiftGuru later uses to propose ideas when somebody leaves their wishlist empty.

4. Celebration details

Date, location, currency and suggested budget. The calendar will not let you pick a day that has already passed.

To move past this step you need all three: date, location and a budget greater than zero.

5. Final setup

Your name and email as the organizer, a welcome message, and how you want to invite people.

The welcome message takes up to 500 characters and appears when somebody opens your link, before they sign up. It is a good place to write the house rules.

Under "How do you want to invite participants?" choose Generate invitation link.

What happens when you finish

Pressing the final button does four things:

• The exchange is created with its join link active.
• You are placed inside as the first participant and as the organizer.
• You get a confirmation email containing the link to share.
• You land on a confirmation screen with that same link ready to copy.

Once inside the exchange, the Invite button brings the link back up whenever you need it, with options to copy it, use your device's share menu, or send it straight to WhatsApp.

What the person receiving the link sees

Before handing over any details, they see the name of the exchange, who is organising it, how many people have joined already, your welcome message, the location, the date, the gift category and the suggested budget.

To join they only type their name and email, or use Continue with Google. No account is created and no password is asked for.

If somebody tries to join twice with the same address, nothing is duplicated: the system recognises them and takes them back to their existing place in the exchange. Capitalisation and stray spaces do not count, so "Ana@Mail.com" and "ana@mail.com" are the same person.

Every time somebody joins, you get a notification.

The draw does not happen by itself

This is the single biggest source of confusion, so it is worth being blunt: a link exchange is never drawn automatically. It waits for you to run it.

When the group is complete, open the exchange and press Draw. You need at least three participants.

The moment the draw runs, the link stops accepting new people. Anyone opening it afterwards is told the exchange is already closed. That is why it pays to draw only when you are genuinely not waiting for anyone else.

Worth knowing

• The country prefix of the link you share decides the exchange's local experience, including which Amazon store products are searched in. Share the link exactly as we give it to you.
• The currency is suggested from that same country, but you can change it in step 4.
• If you arrived with an already verified email address, your organizer details come pre-filled and locked: they are your identity, not a text field.
• The Invite and Draw buttons disappear once the draw is done. That is the signal that the exchange has moved into its second phase.