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Giftin home screen
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Giftin logo
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Never miss the date
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Never guess the gift
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Start with who they are
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Ideas that feel like them
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Knows what not to get
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More than birthdays
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Reminded in time
We are pretty bad at birthdays
Not because we do not care about people.
There are just too many dates, preferences, past gifts, little hints and “they mentioned this six months ago” details to keep in your head.
Trying to remember all of it manually feels a bit like logging into every app without Face ID, saved passwords or autofill.
Technically possible. Just weird that we still expect ourselves to do it.
And remembering the date is only half the problem.
You can know someone's birthday is in two weeks and still have absolutely no idea what to get them.
A calendar can remind you that the date is coming up. It does not remember that they recently got into cooking, hate candles, mentioned needing new headphones six months ago, or that you already bought them perfume last year.
That is the gap Giftin is built for.
Giftin is a birthday reminder and gift planner that remembers more than the date.
More than a birthday calendar
You add the people you care about once.
Giftin keeps birthdays, anniversaries and other important dates together with the details that are useful later: interests, preferences, budget, location, notes, saved ideas, past gifts and things to avoid.
You choose when you want to be reminded, so a birthday does not suddenly become today's problem.
Relationships can also bring in relevant dates automatically. Add your mother and Mother's Day can be tracked too. Add a partner and occasions such as Valentine's Day can become part of the same system.
The goal is to keep the things people normally scatter between a calendar, Notes, messages and their own memory in one place.
Thoughtful AI gift ideas
When you are stuck on the gift, Giftin uses what you already know about that person to suggest ideas based on their interests, preferences, budget, location, occasion and how much time is left.
We did not want another gift generator where you enter “32-year-old woman” and get the same list of candles, mugs and gift cards.
The better Giftin knows the person, the more useful the suggestions can become.
Each idea explains why it might fit. You can save the promising ones, skip the misses and keep track of what you eventually gave.
So next year, you are not back at zero.
The part users do not see
Giftin looks intentionally simple, but building it stopped being simple pretty quickly.
Dates, recurring events and notification timing all have edge cases. Then there is local and cloud data, account restoration, subscription state across platforms, usage limits, unreliable connections and interrupted gift generations.
There was also a less technical problem: figuring out how much information Giftin should ask for.
Too little context and AI gift ideas become generic. Too much and adding someone starts feeling like filling out a form.
A lot of the work has been finding the point where Giftin knows enough to be useful without making the user do unnecessary work.
RevenueCat and the business model
RevenueCat powers Giftin's subscriptions and entitlement handling.
The first release leaned too heavily on the subscription before users had enough time to understand the value.
So on September 28, Giftin v1.1 introduced a redesigned onboarding flow and a free forever tier.
People, dates, reminders, notes, saved gifts and recipient information can all be kept for free.
Personalized AI gift ideas are the optional paid layer.
That feels like a much better split.
AI should make Giftin better when you are stuck, not be the reason the rest of the app exists.
Shipping and growing Giftin
Giftin shipped on both iOS and Android during Shipaton instead of waiting until the product felt finished.
The launch also taught me that distribution can break before the product does.
For much of the first month, Giftin had an App Store search and indexing problem in some countries. Since then, I have refreshed the metadata, rebuilt the App Store creatives and shipped the v1.1 onboarding and free-tier update.
The numbers are still humble.
On iOS, Giftin has had 24 first-time downloads, with two trial starts and no paid conversions yet.
On Android, the latest 28-day view shows 514 store impressions and 6 device acquisitions.
So far, I have spent $0 on paid acquisition.
One educational carousel with a Giftin CTA passed 30,000 views.
The next experiment starts October 4: creator-style UGC and the first paid ads, to see whether the content that works organically can also bring in users predictably.
What I've learned
The initial plan was just a gift idea generator.
Pretty quickly, that started to feel like an empty product.
So I added birthdays, reminders, recipient profiles, gift history, saved ideas, events and notes.
Somewhere along the way, the “simple gift app” became a much bigger thing than I expected.
The bigger lesson was that generating one gift idea is not the interesting part.
The useful part is remembering everything around that person over time.
AI should help when you are stuck. The rest of the product should still be useful without it.
I still have a stupid amount I want to add, and I also want users helping decide what comes next. A public feedback board where people can suggest and vote on features is on the list.
What's next
The long-term goal is simple:
Make Giftin the best birthday app out there.
Not just somewhere you add a birthday and wait for a reminder, but somewhere that helps you remember the person properly.
Next on the list are better local and last-minute gift suggestions, easier ways to save gift clues throughout the year, smarter handling of important dates and a lot more learning from real users.
Oh, and apparently a manlier version of the app has also been requested haha.
But the core loop is already there:
- Remember early.
- Remember the person.
- Know what to get.
- Do not start from zero next year.
Shipaton awards
RevenueCat Design Award · HAMM Award · Grand Prize
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