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In the span of a year and a half, I had two weddings (one was a Covid-lockdown elopement, the other a post-lockdown reception) and a baby shower. I made multiple online registries in that time, because in true product reviewer fashion, I wanted to try every single popular one before choosing my favorite.
A good wedding registry or baby registry is easy for you to create, and for your loved ones to shop on your behalf without worrying whether you already have an air fryer or high-quality bed sheets. The best registries are easy to navigate and buy from because, let's be honest: You're not getting as many gifts if it's a pain in the rear to shop for you. Not all registries are equal, and there are a ton of options to navigate. Here's what you should keep in mind as you choose an online registry and which ones we like best—based on my own research and testing plus feedback from other WIRED reviewers.
Updated May 2024: We've added notes on Joy's baby registry.
- How Online Registries Work
- Do You Need a Registry?
- What About Cash Funds (and Fees)?
- Best Wedding Registries
- Best Baby Registries
- Why We Don't Recommend Store-Specific Registries
How Online Registries Work
Online registries are designed so you can put together a wish list on a webpage shared over various forms of electronic communication and are even searchable by you and your partner's names. They're either a universal registry, which means you're able to add gifts from any stores you'd like, or brand- and store-affiliated registries, which let you register only for goods at that specific store (think Crate & Barrel or Anthropologie).
Both styles want you and your gift-givers to stay onsite and purchase gifts through them since that's how they make money, generating a cut from the product purchased by the gift-giver. Universal registries let you add other sites, but there are benefits to sticking with products available from a specific registry—it's easier to track who bought you what, you can control when everything ships and it's convenient for your guests to check out without leaving the site and not have to worry about anything else.
Do You Need a Registry?
Need is a strong word, but when you're getting married or having a kid, everyone asks for a link to your registry. A good registry makes it more convenient for people to buy you a gift without having to spend much time looking around or worrying about what to get you, where to ship it, and whether you'll use it.
It's always best to keep low expectations for what you'll receive, and I was sure to have a range of price points to fit everyone's budget. In my experience, folks who couldn't come to the wedding loved buying nice things like plate sets, while those who took on the cost of travel bought us more affordable items like candle sticks and sateen sheets.
What About Cash Funds (and Fees)?
Universal registries have an option for cash funds and let you theme them around milestones such as a honeymoon or a future home. Most of these sites charge you a processing fee of 2.5 percent when you cash out (and can charge fees based on the volume of the gift to your gift giver), but not every site does. Both of our top recommendations for wedding registries either don't charge a fee or have a fee-free option. Store-specific registries, however, such as Amazon, only let you give cash in the form of a store gift card.
Best Wedding Registries
When I think of wedding registries, I think of the scene from 27 Dresses where Katherine Heigl's character is going around scanning an insane variety of things for the bride's registry, some of which she added just to annoy said bride. I'd do the same thing if I had to deal with anyone else's registry—I barely wanted to work on my own, and it took an annoyingly long time to go through pages and pages of gift options and types with my soon-to-be-husband.
Wedding registries were originally designed to help couples get everything they need for their first home together. If you're anything like my husband and me, you might already have the basics, but a registry is a nice opportunity to invest in things you can use for years to come (and finally get rid of your crappy Ikea plates).
The universal registry Joy has been popular among my fellow married friends for their weddings for one very important reason: no fees for cash gifts. While most other registries will charge a processing fee for handling the money, Joy's registry has no such fee. You're able to theme your funds as you see fit, and Joy also lets you register for regular gifts both on its site and off of it.
Joy also has a website maker, but it's not as eye-catching as designs from Zola or the Knot. You can set up a registry there without using the website, and you can link to it on your wedding website of choice if you go with a different site maker. The website has tools to send out save the dates and invites, and it makes managing a guest list and RSVPs simple. Joy also has a baby registry, too, so you can have one account for both now and later (and fee-free funds for diapers!).
Also consider: MyRegistry is another good universal registry, but it charges fees that can go as high as almost 7 percent, depending on the size of the cash gift.
I distinctly remember making websites on both Zola and the Knot on the same day to see which I wanted to use, and I very quickly went with Zola. It has a better library of website designs, while the Knot was a little too focused on helping me plan the wedding and generating insanely long to-do lists. All I wanted was one place for everything, with an on-theme website that wasn't hideous, and Zola easily pulled ahead.
The registry tool is easy to use. It organizes gifts into types and has a fairly sizable library of well-regarded (and often pricier) brands. Zola is also a universal registry—I was able to add gifts from outside stores (you can choose to get cash for these or direct the gift giver to the external site), and my friends and family were able to mark those outside gifts as purchased on Zola. There are also options for cash gifts, though Zola does have fees.
I particularly loved that I could decide when I would get my gifts if they were purchased through Zola—my husband and I moved not long after getting married, and I was able to wait until I was settled in the new place before hitting the ship button.
If you want to keep it super easy, Amazon is certainly a convenient choice. It's easy to navigate for both you and your attendees; you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn't know how Amazon works, and it means your guests can just use their existing Amazon account to click “purchase” and call it a day. You'll be limited to Amazon’s offerings, but the retailer has a wide range of products that this might not be as bothersome as other store-specific registries. The biggest downside, however, is that any cash gifts are only available as Amazon gift cards.
Target and Walmart also have similar registries, but Amazon tends to have more options and is easier to navigate. Target's registry in particular is frustrating to navigate online.
Best Baby Registries
As much as I love to shop, putting together my baby registry was the last thing I wanted to do during my pregnancy. It took being quarantined with Covid at the start of my third trimester to finally sit down, try a handful of websites, and select all the things I wanted for a little person I hadn't met yet. I've had more fun helping friends with their registries now that I've had a kid and know what I like using and what I recommend buying, but it's so overwhelming when you're new to the whole parenting shindig.
Baby registries often have a completion discount—if there are gifts left on the registry after a baby shower, the new parents can purchase the remaining items at a discount. There's a big likelihood people will gravitate toward buying all the cute outfits and skipping things like a snot sucker and extra burp cloths, so this is a nice feature because, trust me, you want the snot sucker.
Babylist is a popular baby-only universal registry. It has a huge inventory on its site and lets you add whatever you'd like from other stores too. It's also a solid place to shop for baby gear in general, even if you aren't putting together a registry. Babylist does a great job of letting you see pricing for an item across multiple stores, so it's easy to find it at the best price at the right retailer, whether or not it's Babylist. It's also rolling out a feature called Simple Shipping, which bundles your gifts into fewer boxes every two weeks, with more options in the future.
Babylist has a completion discount, allowing you to nab 15 percent off a single purchase starting two months before your due date (though you need a Babylist account set up for more than a month) and up to six months after your expected due date. The return policy lets you return products up to nine months after receiving them.
Plus, there's longevity to Babylist thanks to its new birthday and holiday wish lists. These wish lists have you fill out a questionnaire with your baby's current sizes and favorite things or colors, so friends and family can get a little easy guidance on what to shop for, or pick something straight from the wish list itself. It can make it easy for your family members to check what size kiddo is these days, and what kind of things they like–my near-2-year-old is in 3T everything these days and is obsessed with trucks.
However, many reviewers talk about how frustrating the checkout process is on Babylist. This is what ended up making me switch to Amazon, but if you're confident in your family's tech savviness, it's a great all-around choice with plenty of flexibility.
Also consider: Joy has a fairly new baby registry that is universal and just as easy to use as Babylist, and it’s great for cash funds since it's fee-free. But the shopping options on the site itself are much more limited than what you'll find on Babylist, though that could change as the site grows beyond its early days. It's a good option if you already have a Joy account or mostly want cash as a gift.
I ended up choosing Amazon for my baby registry because I knew it would be easy for anyone I knew, from random aunties to my college friends, to buy something without it being a hassle. When you're pregnant and exhausted, convenience is king, and I didn't want my baby shower gifts to feel like an ordeal for myself or my friends and family.
The 15-percent completion discount on Amazon was useful. It's only one-time use, but it's available starting 60 days before your due date (which you plug into the registry) and up to 90 days after—a nice amount of time, though not as nice as Babylist offers. There are limits to using it for items within your registry, though, and while Amazon has a lot of products to choose from, you can't just add anything from all of Amazon.com. The company determines what you can or cannot add to your baby registry.
Once again, Target and Walmart also have baby registries, but Amazon has a wider number of products on offer. Some folks like using these brick-and-mortar stores to return items in person though.
Zola is known for weddings, but it recently launched a baby registry service. I was a little surprised to see it's only available as an app. Annoyingly, it's only available on iOS, not Android. However, the app is easy to navigate and well-organized. Looking back, I would have loved to lie on the couch and just set up my registry on my phone without having to reach for my laptop around my ever-growing belly. You're still able to add from other retailers, and the app has quick buttons for a handful of popular retailers (including Amazon, Etsy, Baby Gap, and Pottery Barn Kids) or lets you just search the web within the app or paste in a link.
While you only make the registry on your phone, your guests will be able to access it via browser on any device, so they won't need the app to shop for your little one on the way. If you don't want to sit at the computer and are always shopping on your phone, Zola's a great choice for you.
Why We Don't Recommend Store-Specific Registries
We don't recommend any store-specific registries, like Williams Sonoma or Anthropologie, because they're limited in their offerings to what they sell. Most guests don’t want to look around multiple registries, so it's much easier to make a single universal registry with everything you want rather than be locked into a certain brand or hope everyone finds your multiple registries.
