Overview
Gift Buddy is a wishlist and gift coordination app for iOS, Android and the web. People create wishlists, share them with friends and family, and claim a gift before they buy it. The claim syncs to every device in real time, so two people never buy the same present.
Challenge
The client needed one product that works natively on three platforms, iOS, Android and the web, with shared state and live updates. Gift coordination only works if sync is instant. When someone claims a gift on their iPhone, every other device has to show it right away. Apple and Google also require native in-app subscription flows, each with its own billing API, renewal logic and compliance rules. The app had to handle two different payment systems and show the user one simple subscription.
Solution
We built the mobile apps on React Native, so iOS and Android share one codebase. The web version runs on Next.js for fast loading and SEO. Appwrite handles authentication, the database and real-time subscriptions, with data stored in EU data centers. Native subscription modules talk directly to Apple StoreKit and Google Play Billing. Each platform handles its own renewals, receipt validation and subscription state.
Key Features
- Wishlists sync in real time through Appwrite Realtime, and a gift claim reaches every connected device within milliseconds.
- Apple and Google subscriptions use native billing with receipt validation on the server.
- More than 25 built-in gift categories with status tracking: New, In Progress, Done and Canceled.
- A social graph with a follow system and user search by nickname or name.
- Offline browsing with a local cache and background sync once the connection is back.
- Dark mode that follows the system theme, and two interface languages, English and Ukrainian.
Result
Gift Buddy launched on all three platforms within 2 months. The native subscription integration passed both Apple and Google review on the first submission. Real-time sync delivers updates across devices in under a second, and animations run at 60fps, so the app feels native on every platform.