Over the years, I've tried basically every wishlist site out there for our massive family exchange. My 82-year-old grandmother struggled hard with Elfster too, just too much clutter. We switched to a site called Things to Get Me a couple of years ago and it has been a game changer for the older folks. It is super barebones in the best way possible. You just create your list and share the link. The killer feature for tech-phobic grandparents is that they don't even need to make an account to claim stuff. They just click reserve, type their name, and it's done. No passwords for them to forget. Definitely worth a look.

I ran into this exact issue last year when trying to set up a registry for my family. Unfortunately, the main site we tried was not as good as expected and it was a total headache for the older folks. The interface had way too many scripts running, which basically crashed my grandmas old iPad. Heres what I learned from that disaster:

• Avoid sites that force users to create an account just to view a list. My grandparents immediately got locked out because of password resets.
• Watch out for heavy ad trackers. The site we used was free, but the ads made the page jump around, causing tons of misclicks.
• My current setup is just a shared online spreadsheet. Its not fancy, but it has zero load issues, it is completely free, and actually works.

Just saw this thread and wanted to chime in. If you want something free, be careful with sites that force everyone to create accounts. That always trips up older folks. I would suggest checking out a simple shareable Google Doc instead, or at least make sure whatever site you choose doesn't spam them with ads. Some of these free list makers get pretty spammy.