Secret Santa on WhatsApp when half the family never reads email

The family group chat has fourteen people in it, and maybe six of them read email. Gran has an address someone set up for her years ago and has never opened it. Your nephew is fifteen and checks email only when school makes him, and the cousin in Melbourne answers everything with a thumbs-up, eventually.

An online draw that needs an address for every person leaves out exactly these three. A Secret Santa on WhatsApp works with names alone: whoever has an address gets their link by email, and everyone else gets theirs from you in a private chat.

Only the names are required

Set up the draw on the website with a title, a budget if you want one, and at least three people. Every person gets a name field and an email field marked optional. Fill in an address only when you know the person reads it. An address nobody opens is worse than none, because the link then waits in an inbox while everyone else is already shopping.

Two people cannot share a name when one of them has no email address, so the two Toms become Tom B and Tom K. Add the exclusions while you are there. Partners who already buy for each other should not draw each other.

You need a free account as the organiser. Nobody else does, not even to add wishes.

Send each link in a private chat

Right after the draw you land on the settings page, with a card at the top that says "Send these people their link". It has a row for every person without an email address and two buttons on each row. The WhatsApp button opens the app with a short message ready to go: hello and their name, a line saying the names have been drawn, a note that no account is needed, and their link. You pick the chat and press send. Copy link puts the same link on your clipboard, for iMessage, Signal, a plain text message or any other chat app the cousin prefers.

Never paste the links into the family group. Each link opens on the name its owner drew, so anyone who taps someone else's link sees their match, and in a group of fourteen somebody will tap.

One private chat per person takes ten minutes longer, and it is the only way the draw stays a surprise.

What Gran sees when she opens her link

The link opens in any phone browser. There is no app to install and no password to remember. She sees her own match and nothing else:

• the name of the person she drew
• the title, the budget and the description of the draw
• that person's wishes, or the wishlist they linked

Below that she adds her own wishes, each with a gift name, a shop link if she has one and a price if she likes. She can change or remove them later through the same link, and whoever drew her sees the update on theirs. A line like "the blue Le Creuset mug, not the red one" takes a minute to type and spares someone a wrong guess.

If a grandchild helps her with the typing, that grandchild sees her match too. Pick a helper who is not in the draw.

The same page has a field for an email address. That suits the cousin in Melbourne, who will lose a WhatsApp message under three hundred holiday photos but does read his work email. Once he adds an address, the link arrives in his inbox as well and he can find it again in December.

Next year starts from this year's names

A finished draw cannot be redone. Check the names and the exclusions before you confirm, because if your sister's new partner joins the family after the draw, you start a new one. On the settings page, "Draw again" opens a fresh draw with the same names, email addresses, budget and exclusions filled in. You change what is different this year, and nothing goes out until you confirm.

Copy the names out of the group chat this week and draw names for the family before the end of November, then send the links one chat at a time.