About Us

WishSimply is a simple and easy-to-use Wishlist service. WishSimply looks great, it is ad-free and it respects users' privacy. It is also fully free to use. It was created by a small group of experts: a designer, coders and a business manager. Originally built for personal use, it was made public after years of development so that friends of friends could also enjoy it.

Ad-free and privacy-respecting (to the end if need be)

WishSimply does not sell ads, show banners, send spam or sell your user data to 3rd parties. Not now, and not in the future. This is not an empty promise, but one that we will hold with Finnish stubbornness. If the only option were to close the service, then we would close it rather than betray our promise.

We also think that ads are intrusive and distracting. They take your focus off the task that you should be doing, and they occupy big parts of the best spots in web pages, reducing dramatically the useful screen area. When we leave ads out, we can offer you a better service by letting you focus on what you are doing and by allowing us to utilize the whole page area for the purpose of the service. Should you miss the ads, we are sure you will easily find them elsewhere.

Almost all other wishlist services or social networks are run by advertisers. You are encouraged to provide your data so that the service provider can sell it. In some cases, even your friends are exploited to help the service provider get more complete data on you. Data you didn't want to disclose yourself.

We think that collecting your data and your social connections and then selling them is unethical and far from respecting your privacy. Many services are doing this in order to offer you a nominally "free" service but are making you pay dearly by eroding your fundamental rights. We believe there is a better way.

Learn more about our no ad policy by reading 'WishSimply don't have ads' chapter

A better way

Technological advances have made computers cheap and given rise to many cloud computing systems that offer services for a low price. We have been tuning this service for quite a long time and it does not need much resources to operate. We can run it with low costs.

Still, there is a cost to running this service, to the maintenance and to further development, that needs to be covered. For that reason, we are introducing a model by which companies can integrate this service in their own web shops for a small fee, which we will then use to cover the costs and to keep the service free for individual users.

Integration will happen via a very simple and limited API that makes things work but does not compromise users' privacy in any way.

Learn more about our offering for companies by reading 'How can WishSimply provide this service free without ads?'

You login to the service and follow a wizard that teaches you how to use the service in three simple steps. 1) You add wishes for your list, 2) you fill in event and list details, and 3) you share your list with your friends. Sharing can be done by email or by social account messages. Your choice. Event and list details include an image, date, name, type, free text field and so on, but almost all of them are voluntary. Same for the wishes. You can add them very flexibly, and only a minimal amount of information is required to enable the service to keep track of the items and to allow your friends make informed selections.

Your friends will see your list almost the very same way as you do. The only difference is that they can't change anything but mark wishes fulfilled, and they only see the list that is shared with them.

The people you invite to the service will receive your personal message (if you have typed one) and a unique link to the service. By clicking the link the users are directed directly to your list and presented with a brief introduction to the service. Then they are guided to use the service with two simple steps involving two clicks. One on an image and one on a button. And that's all! You can't make it simpler. The service is easy to use for all, from children to seniors.

The web service works best on a desktop/laptop computer, and scales fine to 10" tablets, but not so well to smaller screens. For small screen devices, there are mobile apps coming out with optimized views and processes.

We are developing WishSimply continuosly

This means that we are still bringing in quite much features, at the same time when we are growing. Ocassionally there might be some bugs or short maintenace breaks, but in generally we have managed to keep our uptime very high (over 99% in the last two years). All the basic features have been already in the place for more than a year, and one Christmas and numerious other parties have been carried away succesfully.

There is separate page that will list the main features. That page is also tracking feature usage and encouraging users to try out those fetures by showing users knowledge percent in the top of the site. In many cases applications or services have more features than users will know. We want to help our user every way to use full potential of the service. Below here are listed the most visible features and some future plans.

Existing Features

• Make and delete lists
• Add and delete wishes (with names, images, value, amount and description)
• Mark wishes purchased and undo the purchase marking
• Login to the service with facebook and google+ account
• Share lists with email or make then public
• Notification management (get notified instantly/daily or not at all, of any action happening on your lists)
• Discuss over list/event or wishes
• Card view and table view
• Lists printing
• Mobile apps for iPhone and Android
• Wish button for shops
• Bookmarklet
• Surprice me
• Co-admin for the list
• Wish button for browsers

Coming soon

• Improved invitation messages
• Wish button plugins for shops
• Site improved for mobile users

Planned features

• New mobile app for new platform
• Gift ideas (no ads, own shop or affiliates, but ideas)

WishSimply does not sell ads, show banners, send spam or sell your user data to 3rd parties.Not now, and not in the future. This is not an empty promise, but one that we will hold with Finnish stubbornness. If the only option were to close the service, then we would close it rather than betray our promise.

We also think that ads are intrusive and distracting. They take your focus off the task that you should be doing, and they occupy big parts of the best spots in web pages, reducing dramatically the useful screen area. When we leave ads out, we can offer you a better service by letting you focus on what you are doing and by allowing us to utilize the whole page area for the purpose of the service. We don't like ads either, and that was one of the reasons we built this service in the first place. Should you miss the ads, we are sure you will easily find them elsewhere.

Almost all other wishlist services or social networks are run by advertisers. You are encouraged to provide your data so that the service provider can sell it. In some cases, even your friends are exploited to help the service provider get more complete data on you. Data you didn't want to disclose yourself.

We think that collecting your data and your social connections and then selling them is unethical and far from respecting your privacy. Many services are doing this in order to offer you a nominally "free" service but are making you pay dearly by eroding your fundamental rights. We believe there is a better way.

The service will be developed further, and some things will change in the future, but this is one of the fundamental ideas behind this service that will not change. We know that many currently popular services have also started as ad-free services, and later changed that. However, we are different, and we are making this promise here. The service will remain ad-free and your data will never be sold.

Read more about our solid business plan to keep the service up and running.

We are providing this service free for individuals as the operation costs are planned to be covered by the payments from companies.

We are very open about this as we understand that there are no free lunches, and in order to convince people that we are able to provide this service for free for individuals, we need to have a sustainable business model that will allow us to do so. We have it. Please read on to find out.

Why companies will love this

First of all, all shops like to have a wishlist functionality, since it is a very powerful tool to help them sell their products. If somebody adds an item to his or her wishlist, it will have a conversion rate above 50%. So there is a big incentive for shops to include wishlist buttons in their service. They will get sales and potentially also new customers from outside of their normal focus groups.

In some web shops, there are wish buttons even though the wishlist functionality is severely lacking. This just shows that there is lot of demand for them, as poor implementations are popping up.

-> Shops have a demand for wishlists.

Second, users will love this service. It won't bury them under ads. It offers a nice and clean user interface and smooth processes. It is not bound to any particular shop and does not restrict users' wishes to specific selections, but is open to the whole world. It grows with the user from childhood to seniority. It respects users' privacy like no other, by not sharing their data with anyone. Communication to the service is also SSL protected so that nobody can monitor it from the outside. So, it is quite safe to use.

With these features, this service is unique in its offering. (Who wouldn't prefer a Facebook that didn't show ads and didn't own and share your data as it likes?) This service will give users exactly what they want, without any strings attached.

-> Users will love this service.

Third, as users will love this service because it has a clean offering and no strings attached, it is also easy for companies to associate with it. WishSimply is an independent service not affiliated with any other actors in the market. There is no need for any legal agreements or anxiety over what WishSimply will do with the data of their customers. We won't do anything, nada. So it is safe to proceed.

-> Shops don't have problems associating with us

Fourth, we are running this service as a cloud service so cheaply that no shop can match it with a service of their own at the same cost that would be even close the features and the scope that we can offer.

-> The service is very affordable for shops

Fifth, we don't have a shop of our own inside the wishlist service, nor do we have targeted ads, and we are not going to do it in the future, either. This way, we do not threaten the business of the shops that are using us. We understand that this is one of the corner stones of this service, and again one of the things that differentiate us from other services in a fundamental and unique way. Think about it yourself - how many shops would want to direct their customers to another service that would be competing with them? None, and that is why we are not doing it, and we commit to not doing it in the future, either. We have a clear and viable plan for monetizing this service that is laid out here. We follow that plan, staying as a utility for users and shops. We are concentrating on making one thing well - a wishlist service.

-> we don't threat shops like other actors do

With all of these features, we have a unique killer service that is going to sell well as soon as we get bit steam on it.

It was created by a small group of experts: a designer, coders and a business manager. Altogether, 11 persons have contributed to it over the past few years. Originally built for personal use, it was made public after years of development so that friends of friends could also enjoy it.

Contact

The main driver behind this project has been Juha-Pekka Laesvuori, and if you would like to contact someone at WishSimply, please email us at [email protected] or call +358442025450 (GMT 08:00-20:00). We are very busy building WishSimply, so the email approach would be very much appreciated. We might not be able to respond to every email, but all will be read.

If you decide to give us a call, we might be busy or unable to answer. In that case, send us an sms message or an email.

For any press inquiries about WishSimply.com, please send an email to [email protected]

Thanks Ello!

When we wrote our About Us section we were inspired by ello.co that had put many things in it exacly like we thought, but taking them up better than what we could have done. We had our no-ads and do-not-sell-users policies place already in february, but many things were still untold. Now they are also in place, so thanks ello!