The organizer’s guide

Essentials

The short version

€29.99 per Secret Santa, paid once, before you receive the setup link. Everything is included: sign-ups, the wheel, reminders, the automatic draw, and the Vivory event for the party on the Premium plan (unlimited photos and videos, keepsake film).

You do four things: book (two minutes), create the event (three minutes), send two emails to your colleagues (the texts are ready for you), and enjoy the party. Vivory takes care of the rest: sign-ups, the draw, the emails to anyone who left an address, and the automatic draw for anyone who runs late. Reminders stay in your hands (one click), and on the day, the Vivory app makes the film.

What your colleagues see: a link, a first and last name to type, a wheel to spin, a name to keep secret. No account, nothing to install for the draw.

Before you start

What you’ll need

• a card for the payment (on Stripe’s secure page) and, if you want it on the invoice, your company’s EU VAT number;
• three quiet minutes, and your internal mailing list (or the team’s Slack or Teams channel) to send the two emails;
• your dates: when sign-ups close, the deadline to spin the wheel, the day of the party;
• a gift theme and budget, if you set them (the budget is set in your team’s currency: euro, pound, dollar, Swiss franc, krona…);
• for the day itself: the Vivory app and a Vivory account (free), to create the party event (§7).

Step 1

1Book (two minutes)

From the demo or the home page, the “Book our Secret Santa · €29.99” button leads to santa.vivory.fr/reserver?lang=en (in French: santa.vivory.fr/reserver). The “Book your team’s Secret Santa” form asks for:

The “Continue to payment · €29.99” button opens Stripe’s payment page. Vivory never sees your card. If you come back without paying, nothing is charged and the form is still filled in.

As soon as the payment is confirmed:

• the “Thank you, Name, it’s booked!” page shows the “Set up our Secret Santa now” button;
• the “Your Secret Santa is booked” email brings you the same link;
• the invoice, issued by Stripe on Vivory’s behalf, goes to the address you gave.

This setup link is personal and single-use: it creates one Secret Santa, with your company and name already filled in. No time right now? Keep the email; the link will wait for you. If a colleague is organizing instead of you, forward the email to her or him only. If your bank is slow to confirm, the page says “Payment being processed” and the link is emailed as soon as it is. If nothing arrives, write to contact@vivory.fr: we’ll resend it, or refund you.

A second Secret Santa (another team, another office) is booked separately. Until the Secret Santa has been created, it is refunded on request (terms of sale, article 9).

Step 2

2Create the event (three minutes)

The link opens “Set up your team’s Secret Santa”, with a line confirming your booking and that the link creates one Secret Santa, once. Fill in:

The dates are filled in for you (§3), in your computer’s time zone. The preview next to the form shows the card and the note as your colleagues will see them. When you click “Create the event”, the “It’s ready, Name!” page shows two links:

• “Your admin link · secret” (/a/…): your dashboard. Anyone holding it can see and do everything: keep it to yourself, like a password. It’s also sent to your email.
• “The public link · for the team” (/e/…): the one you send to the team. All it lets people do is sign up.

Then “Open my dashboard”. The setup link has now been used: it won’t create a second event.

You can change the note, the theme, the budget and its currency, the venue, the language, the second chance, the Vivory link for the party and the dates later, from the dashboard (“Edit”): the closing date while sign-ups are open, the automatic draw until it has happened.

Calendar

3Suggested calendar for 2026

These are the dates the form fills in for you (moved to the nearest weekday), and the ones in the demo:

What works: five days to sign up (the form’s own advice: close the list five days after email 1), three to six days to spin, and at least a week between the draw and the party to find a gift. A small, responsive team can fit the whole thing into ten days. If you create the event less than two days before December 7, the form starts from today instead: the list closes in five days, the automatic draw three days later, the party a week after that.

Emails

4The emails: what you send, what Vivory sends

You send the emails to the team yourself, from your own mailbox: your colleagues recognize your address, and the link is taken seriously. The texts are ready in your dashboard, “Emails” tab, in the event language, with your dates, theme and budget already filled in: “View” opens a text, “Copy the email” copies it, “It’s sent” checks it off (the check mark is only kept in this browser).

A sentence to add to your email 1, so your colleagues know what happens to their data (it’s the company’s job to tell them; the sign-up page says it too): “The draw runs on Vivory: it only records your first name, last name, gift hint and, if you give it, your email, only for this Secret Santa, and everything is deleted 60 days after the party. Questions? Ask me, or write to contact@vivory.fr.”

What Vivory sends on its side, from no-reply@vivory.fr, with nothing for you to do:

• to you: “Your Secret Santa is booked” (the setup link), then on creation the admin link, a summary when the list closes, a report after the automatic draw, and a note if closing had to be postponed three times for lack of three people;
• to colleagues who left an address: a sign-up confirmation (with the link to their page), the list-closed announcement (“spin the wheel”), the reminder when you send reminders, and the automatic-draw announcement if Vivory drew for them.

Dashboard

5Following along in the dashboard

Your admin link opens the dashboard: the timeline (Sign-ups, Draw, Auto draw, Big day), the countdown, four numbers (signed up, have drawn, with email, on phone), the public link to copy, and “Team page” to see what your colleagues see. Four tabs:

• “Participants”: the list, with where everyone stands in the draw (those who haven’t drawn are at the top). During sign-ups, the “Add a colleague” field signs someone up by hand (a colleague without a computer), and the cross at the end of a row (“Remove …”) removes someone, after you confirm. If you take part, a “Draw my name” button appears on your row once the list is closed. At the bottom of this tab, the “Activity log”: who signed up, who drew, what you did, with the time.
• “Pairs”: hidden. You see who has drawn and who hasn’t, not who gives to whom. “Show the pairs” exists for the cases where you really need it; it’s a deliberate, confirmed action, noted in the activity log (and if you take part, you’d see who is giving you a gift). Our advice: don’t, the secret is half the fun.
• “Emails”: the ready-to-copy texts (§4).
• “Big day”: the Vivory event link (§7), the poster with the QR code to print or show on screen, the date to add to your “Calendar”, and the keepsake film.

At the bottom, the action bar changes with each phase:

• during sign-ups: “Send the sign-up email” (the text of email 1, until you’ve checked it off as sent), then “Close the list now” (from three people, if you don’t want to wait for the date);
• during the draw: “Send the draw email” (email 2), “Remind the N latecomers” (Vivory writes to those who left an address, at most once every 20 hours, and prepares a note for you to send the others) and “Run the automatic draw now”; once everyone has drawn, “Big-day message”;
• after the automatic draw: “Let them know by email” (the text for anyone Vivory drew for who left no email) and “Big-day message”;
• on the day: “Invite the team to add their memories”.

Your colleagues

6What your colleagues experience

1. They open the public link, often on their office computer: your name and note, the date the wheel opens with its countdown, and the strip of people signed up (each person’s first name and last initial, visible to anyone who has the link: only share it with the team).
2. They sign up with a first and last name; an optional gift hint (“tea, crime novels, plants”, “no candles”); an optional email (“Your email for a reminder”), only to be kept posted; then “Count me in”. Under the button, a line tells them: “Your first and last name are only visible to the participants and the organizer. Everything is deleted 60 days after the party.”, with a link to the Privacy page.
3. They get a one-time code and a QR code to carry on on their phone (“Continue on your phone”), with no account. On the phone, a discreet line suggests adding the page to the home screen: optional.
4. Once the list is closed, they open their page and spin the wheel, which stops on a name (never their own). They keep it (“I’ll keep it, let’s go”), or spin again once if you allowed it and there are at least six of them (“Try my second chance · once only”; the second name is final). Then their mission: the name (hidden by default, for over-the-shoulder glances), the hint, the budget, the gift exchange.
5. On party day, from the time of the party, their page shows the Vivory event link and QR code to add their photos and videos (“Open the Vivory event”).

Nobody sees the pairs. Once the list is closed, everyone sees the first and last names of the people signed up on the wheel (it has to spin on something) and the name they drew. You see names and hints, never your colleagues’ email addresses.

Party day

7Party day with the Vivory app (Premium included)

The draw happens on the web; the memories, in the Vivory app, which turns what everyone adds into a film. Your Secret Santa includes the party’s Vivory event on the Premium plan: unlimited photos and videos, and the keepsake film. Before the party:

1. Install Vivory (App Store or Google Play), create your account (free) and an event: “The <your company> Secret Santa”, on the party date.
2. Get its invitation link (it looks like vivory.fr/i/…) and paste it into your dashboard, “Big day” tab, then “Save the link” (or in “Edit”, the “Vivory event link · big day” field). As soon as the link is saved, that event switches to Premium on its own: there’s nothing to buy in the app. If you change the link, Premium moves to the new event, and the old one goes back to what it had before.
3. Print or show the QR poster (“Big day” tab). Your colleagues see the link and QR code on their page from the time of the party.
4. During the party, everyone scans the QR code and adds their photos and videos from their phone, with no account. Remote colleagues too: what they add goes into the film.
5. After the party, the app makes the film, and you share it with the team through the same link.

Paste the link a few days before the party, so you can calmly check in the app that the event is on Premium. If you haven’t pasted a link, your colleagues’ page simply says it’s on its way; you can paste it later. Photos and videos follow the Vivory app’s rules: stored in the European Union, deleted 90 days after the Vivory event closes, and sooner on request.

Data

8Privacy and data

The details are at santa.vivory.fr/confidentialite?lang=en. The essentials:

What Vivory records, and nothing else:

• for the booking: the company, your first name, last name and work email, the country, the language, the VAT number if given, and the payment reference (your card is entered at Stripe: Vivory never sees it);
• for the event: the company name, your first name, last name, role and email, the note, the theme, the budget and its currency, the venue, the dates and time zone, the Vivory event link;
• for each participant: first name, last name, the gift hint if they give one, the email if they leave one (only to be kept posted), the language, and where they stand in the draw;
• a log of actions (sign-ups, removals, closing, draws, reminders, showing the pairs), for the dashboard, and the email delivery log (recipient, subject, date).

Where: the database is hosted in the European Union (Supabase, Ireland). The site is delivered by Netlify (a worldwide network, US company), emails go out from no-reply@vivory.fr through Resend (US company), payment and invoicing go through Stripe (Stripe Payments Europe, Ireland). Requests written to contact@vivory.fr land in a mailbox hosted by IONOS (France). If a Secret Santa email goes to the address of a Vivory app account on an iPhone, its subject line (the company name and a short phrase, never the name drawn) also shows up as a notification, through Apple’s service. Fonts and the QR code library are served by santa.vivory.fr itself: no calls to Google or any other site. There is no advertising, no tracking, no reselling: no cookies on the site (Stripe’s payment page has its own), no analytics, no pixels in emails, no account to create.

Who is responsible: your company decides to run this Secret Santa and who takes part; it is the data controller for the event’s data. Vivory processes that data on its behalf, only to run the Secret Santa: it is the company’s processor under the GDPR (art. 28), and its commitments are written in the data processing agreement attached to the terms of sale. For the booking and the invoice, Vivory is responsible for its own data.

Your colleagues are informed: the sign-up page tells them that their first and last name are only visible to the participants and to you, that everything is deleted 60 days after the party, and links to the Privacy page; the sentence in §4, added to your email 1, completes the picture.

How long: everything is deleted automatically 60 days after the party (the event, the list, the draws, the activity log, and the email delivery log), and sooner on request to contact@vivory.fr. The six-digit codes are gone 30 days after the party. The invoice stays, as accounting law requires.

Removing a colleague who asks: during sign-ups, the cross (“Remove …”) in the “Participants” tab, freely. During the draw, the cross only appears on people who haven’t spun yet; Vivory then reconnects the circle if the person who was to give them a gift hasn’t spun either, and otherwise tells you so (“Not possible: the person concerned has already seen their name.”). For someone who has already drawn, or after the automatic draw, write to us: we delete their data by hand, and the gift gets sorted out in person.

Questions

9Frequently asked questions

How many people do we need? Three at least (you included, if you take part), and six for the second chance at the wheel. If the closing date comes with fewer than three, Vivory pushes it back by a day and logs it, three times at most; at the third postponement, it emails you. After that, the list stays open: you close it yourself (“Close the list now”) once there are three, or change the date (“Edit”).

Someone leaves the company after the draw. If they haven’t spun yet, remove them (the cross on their row, “Participants” tab): Vivory reconnects the circle on its own when the person who was to give them a gift hasn’t drawn yet; otherwise it tells you, and you sort it out in person. If they have already drawn, or the automatic draw has passed, write to us. In a very small group, a late removal can leave a two-way swap: Vivory notes it in the activity log.

Two colleagues have the same first and last name. The second one can’t sign up as is: Vivory suggests adding an initial to tell them apart, for example “Camille M.” or “Camille (Accounts)”.

A colleague lost their code or link. On the device they signed up on, they just reopen the public link. If they left an email, the link in their sign-up confirmation opens their page on a new device, once. Otherwise, write to us.

I lost my admin link. It’s in the email you got when you created the event; the browser you used keeps it too (the home page of santa.vivory.fr offers it on that browser). Otherwise, write to us from the address you used to create the event.

I didn’t get the setup link. It’s in the “Your Secret Santa is booked” email (check your spam folder) and on the payment confirmation page. Otherwise, write to us: we’ll resend it.

Remote colleagues? They take part in the draw like everyone else, mail their gift or hand it over next time they’re in, and add their photos through the Vivory event link: they’re in the film.

Colleagues in several time zones? The event keeps the time zone of the computer you create it on. On the site, everyone sees dates in their local time; Vivory’s emails and the ready-to-copy texts use the event’s time zone, and say so when it isn’t Paris time. For a spread-out team, mention the time zone in your note (“list closes Monday 9 am, London time”).

A team outside the euro area? Pick the budget currency when you create the event (or in “Edit”): “£20”, “$25”… The Secret Santa itself is paid in euros; your bank converts if your card is in another currency.

Can we change the language? The event language can be changed in “Edit”; each participant can also switch on their page.

I want to see the pairs. You can, with “Show the pairs” in the “Pairs” tab, noted in the activity log. We advise against it, but it’s your Secret Santa.

How much does it cost? €29.99 per Secret Santa, paid once when you book, no subscription: everything in this guide is included, the Vivory event for the party on Premium and the film too. Another Secret Santa (another team, another office) is booked separately.

What if we change our minds? Until the Secret Santa has been created, it is refunded on request to contact@vivory.fr. After that, the refund cases are in the terms of sale (article 9).

Feedback

10Your feedback: ten questions

In January, if you’re happy to, we’ll email you these ten questions; answer right under each one, in a word or three lines, and send it back to contact@vivory.fr. Five minutes, and it shapes what we build for 2027.

1. How many people are on your team, and how many signed up?
2. Booking and creating the event: how long did it take, and what was missing or got in the way?
3. The two emails provided: used as is, edited, or not used? Why?
4. The dashboard: what did you look at most, what was missing?
5. Your colleagues: any questions or snags (sign-up, code, phone, wheel)?
6. Reminders and the automatic draw: how many latecomers, did it help?
7. Party day and the film: did you do it, why or why not, and what did the team think?
8. Data and privacy: did anything bother or worry you?
9. The price, €29.99 per Secret Santa with the film included: too expensive, fair, or cheap for a team your size? And who paid: you, a team budget, procurement?
10. Would you recommend Vivory to another company? A score out of 10, and one sentence.

And if you have one, the idea you miss most. We read everything and we’ll tell you what we do with it.

Contact

11Contact

Yann Gbaguidi · Vivory · contact@vivory.fr · vivory.fr. Monday to Friday; in December, we usually reply the same day. To set things up together, a fifteen-minute call is one email away.

Terms

12The terms of sale, in short

You accept them by checking “I accept the terms of sale” when you book. The full text is at santa.vivory.fr/conditions?lang=en (the French version is the binding one); in short:

• The service: one Secret Santa (one event) for one team, on santa.vivory.fr, with the party’s Vivory event on Premium, for €29.99, paid in euros before any access, no subscription; the VAT statement is in the terms. Vivory app offers and discounts don’t apply.
• Access: the setup link arrives after payment, on the confirmation page and in the “Your Secret Santa is booked” email; it creates one Secret Santa. The admin link that follows is secret: keep it to yourself.
• Refunds: in full, on request, until the Secret Santa has been created; after that, if the service couldn’t be provided through our fault, or in case of a double payment.
• Data: your company is the data controller for the event’s data, Vivory its processor (GDPR, art. 28); the data processing agreement is attached to the terms. Everything is deleted 60 days after the party, or sooner on request.
• Service providers: Supabase (database, European Union), Netlify (site delivery), Resend (email delivery), Stripe (payment and invoice), IONOS (the contact@vivory.fr mailbox) and Apple (iPhone notifications, for people who have an app account at the same address); each one’s safeguards are on the Privacy page.
• Support: by email, contact@vivory.fr; if something doesn’t work, we fix it as fast as we can and, if needed, help you finish the draw by hand.