With Amazon closing its Amazon Assistant browser extension, the ability to add third-party sites your Amazon Wishlist will soon evaporate. So, what’s the best alternative to Amazon Wishlist for those want to share their shopping ideas or just keep a tab on their own?
In this article I’m going to review several alternatives. One of them will even automatically import your Amazon Wishlist straight onto its site!
Online wishlists: How we tested
All of the sites were tested in the same way. I tried adding the same products from an assortment of retailers, including Amazon. Among the things I was looking for was:
- How easy was it to add an item to the wishlist? This includes whether browser add-ons are available
- What is the UI like? Does it work well and look pleasing to the eye?
- How much information is automatically extracted from the web page?
- Can you add additional content to your item – priority, notes, etc? Also can you adjust the automatically extracted information, if that’s incorrect?
One of the frustrations with many of these solutions is the lack of browser extension, making it harder to add something to a list. Often they lack an option for Safari but, sometimes, any at all. A bookmarklet is one solution but this often lack certain features (e.g. automatically fetching images). When even a bookmarklet can provide an easy solution (and if one is available, I will mention it), it’s a frustrating omission.
Favolis review
A review is unlikely to go well if you’re struggling to even sign-up and that’s what happened with Favolis. I hadn’t completed all of the fields (it didn’t tell me that any were required, so I didn’t complete them all) and it just refused to continue, without an error message.
After I got past that, I had no such issues. The interface looks nice but it’s lacking several features that most have – there are no browser extensions or bookmarklets to add items, plus it won’t get product details from the retailer’s website – all details must be entered manually, including uploading images. Because of this, I really can’t recommend it – Favolis provides the bare minimum of options, with little in the way to make this stand out from the competition.
Giftful review
Giftful looks great but, scratch beneath the surface, and it quickly loses its gloss.
I tried to add an Amazon item and it fetched no information for it, but another retailer worked just fine. Worse, it shows all currency as US dollars with no apparent way to change this.
Giftful has a browser extension, but only for Chrome, and an iOS-only app (last updated four months ago).
Gift Hero review
Gift Hero looks modern and slick but restricts itself to essential features.
There are browser extensions available for Chrome and Firefox, and you can use a mobile app too. However, if you’re using any other browser you’re limited to adding the products manually.
I had problems with the automatic importing of product information. For an Amazon product it failed entirely. For another site, it fetched some of the information, such as name and price, but there was no image.
The company’s blog hasn’t seen action for five years and it has only tweeted once since 2020, which tells me that little time and effort is being put into the site right now. Consequently, I can’t recommend Gift Hero.
Giftster review
Giftster is a no-frills solutions to online wishlists. There is a browser extension for Chrome and a bookmarklet for everyone else. There’s also a standalone mobile app and items can be easily added from its site.
The interface is simple and pleasing to look at, but that’s it. It’s the Matt Baker of wishlists – nothing wrong with it but pretty bland.
On the upside, its social media is very much active, so you’d be investing your time in a thriving business.
Giftwhale review
Giftwhale is another site that gets the basics right. Everything you’d want is here, with only a few minor annoyances.
Rather than try and please everyone with a browser extension for every possibility, Giftwhale has stuck with a simple bookmarklet, which works with whatever browser you’re using. The automatic extraction of information from a retail site works but, once again, there’s no choice of which image to use. In all my tests it got it right, though.
A bit like Giftster, nothing particularly stands out – it just works and the interface is nice, if nothing special. The social media is active too, so there are no fears it’s been abandoned.
Things to Get Me review
Things to Get Me has a very pleasing interface and you can even change the look of it with different themes. As well as creating lists you can manage fundraisers too.
There are extensions for Firefox and Chrome, but nothing for Safari. The extension appears as an overlay on the window you’re viewing and clicking away from it closes it down, which is frustrating if you click to another tab to check details before saving. However, you can manually add products easily via the site. Unfortunately, I found that it would often fail to fetch images and, even when it did, they were often of low quality.
Another big plus is the import feature. I imported my Amazon wishlist and it found and added all of the items from it. The only thing missing was the priority, which I then had to set on each manually.
I reached out to the developer team and had a response from them within hours, which is heartening to see.
Wishbob review
What an odd name… Wishbob works on quite a different principle to the others. You create each wishlist separately, no account required. Instead you’re emailed a unique URL that you need to edit it. Lose that and you’ve lost access to the list.
There are browser extensions for Chrome and Safari, and a bookmarklet allows you to add to your list from any site using a simple browser bookmark. There’s a mobile app too.
Issues I experienced included the site’s documentation occasionally showing screenshots in German (it’s made by an Austrian company), as well as the automatic grabbing of images from pages – a single, low-resolution image is all you get. On top of that, when creating a list you have to choose a specific occasion, with an assigned date. There’s no concept of just creating an ongoing list of things you’d like.
Overall, it’s okay, but I wasn’t excited by the whole “disconnected lists with no need for an account” solution.
WishList review
MY EYES. WishList‘s interface is terrible. It looks horrible and trying to navigate around isn’t much better.
However, it does have extensions for all the major browsers (including Safari), as well as mobile apps. And this works well – it grabs all the information you need, and lets you choose from all of the images that it finds on the page.
One other thing I liked was the “Influencer Settings” options (terrible name, btw) which allows you to add affiliate suffixes to any links.
But, back to that interface. I kept getting lost between individual lists and my primary list of all items. One way to differentiate is by changing the header image and/or avatar. Sadly, some aggressive caching meant that whenever I changed my initial image it would keep flipping back to how it was. Even now, the day after, it’s still not changed.
No matter how good its features, WishList’s usability is so poor I can’t recommend it.
wishsite review
wishsite is very limited. Products details are not fetched from the source sites and the interface is scattergun. Some rogue German language popped up when I got an error screen, which was confusing.
It has, hidden away, a bookmarklet for adding products, but there are no browser extensions.
There isn’t much to say here. You can manually add products but not much else. The company’s blog hasn’t been updated for eight months and it doesn’t appear to be on social media.
Which is the best online wishlist?
I can’t separate Giftster, Things To Get Me and Giftwhale. If Things To Get Me implements a Safari extension (or bookmarklet), that would give it the slight edge, but they are all strong contenders. I’d recommend signing up to all 3 (they are free!) and seeing which works best for you.
Thank you! I have been googling about this issue for days and you are the first person I’ve found trying to address it. Twitter is failing and my Amazon wishlists only link to Amazon products, WAH 🙁
Thanks for this! I’ve now tried several of these, but have ended up using MOONSIFT which was recommended on the Chrome Web Store and I really cannot fault. It’s very nicely designed and works seamlessly on every store which are the things that matter to me.
I tried the recommended three but stuck with Giftwhale. I noticed it has a Web extension now too which seems to work well