🎄 Secret Santa

Azure-powered gift exchange application (Open Source)

Secret Santa is a multilingual gift exchange web application that helps you organize Secret Santa games for your team, friends, or family — with a modern, cloud-native architecture running on Azure.

• 🌐 Live app: https://secretsanta.dsanchezcr.com
• 💻 Source code: https://github.com/dsanchezcr/secretsanta

Why I built it

Every year I see people fighting with spreadsheets and group chats to organize Secret Santa. I wanted something:

• Simple enough for non-technical users
• Privacy-conscious and transparent about data retention
• Interesting enough technically to serve as a real-world reference for:
  • Modern frontend patterns
  • Azure serverless + data services
  • DevOps and GitHub best practices
  • AI-assisted development with GitHub Copilot

Secret Santa is the result.

Try it for your next gift exchange

You don't need an account to use the app.

What you can do as an organizer:

• Create a game in a few seconds with:
  • Event date
  • Budget
  • Optional description or rules
• Add participants and let the app handle random assignments with a fair circular shuffle
• Protect games with participant tokens if you want an extra privacy layer
• Use the organizer panel to:
  • View or resend assignments
  • Handle reassignment requests
  • Delete games at any time

What participants get:

• A simple flow to join the game and discover who they're buying for
• Optional email notifications with their assignment
• The ability to request a new assignment (when the organizer allows it)

Built-in safeguards:

• Games can only be created for today or future dates
• Data is automatically deleted 3 days after the event date
• Clear in-app Privacy Policy describing how data is handled