Forgetting someone’s birthday is never fun. You certainly don’t mean to forget, but life happens, and the next think you know, you’re apologizing your face off and feeling terrible.
Thankfully, technology has come a long way to help save you, as long as you take the time to get it set up properly.
Today, we’re going to look at the best birthday reminder strategies and birthday reminder apps that can have your back.
The Best Birthday Reminder App for Couples
If you’re in a relationship, the most important birthday that you cannot forget…is your partner’s. On top of that, you also better not be forgetting your anniversary, Valentine’s day, wife appreciation day (or husband appreciation day), and every other big day that matters in a relationship.
So, how do you do it? Well, the best birthday reminder app that also helps with these other important dates is the LoveTrack app. And the best part? It’s literally 100% free.
Get push notifications to remind you of your partner’s birthday, your anniversary, and all the other days we mentioned.
For birthdays, it starts to show in the app 45 days out. Your first reminder comes at 30 days (a month before the birthday). After that, you’ll get a push notification at two weeks, one week, the night before, and the day of. The LoveTrack app has literally mastered birthday reminders so you never forget.
And the best part (besides it being free), is the app also gives you suggestions to celebrate.
Here’s the link to download it free now!
Other Birthday Reminder Apps
The one drawback of the LoveTrack app (that we think is made up for by everything else it offers) is that it currently is only for your spouse. If that’s what you’re looking for, it’s great (especially because all the other birthday reminder apps don’t do any of the other holidays or important dates). But if you’re looking for something to handle all the birthdays in your life, here are some other options.
Birthday Calendar (Android) – Not Free
This is probably the most utilized birthday reminder app we’ve found. It has over 5 million downloads and a pretty impressive 4.9 star rating. The app does also seem to be regularly maintained with the most recent update in August of this year.
There are some things to be aware of, though. First, it looks like it’s only available for Android. Second, there are some reviews where people talk about reliability issues with the notifications. Here’s one of those reviews:
There are a few other concerns from users, but overall, this app seems to be a pretty good option for remembering birthdays.
It’s important to note that this app is not free and offers in-app purchases to use it. Purchases are listed at $3.49 per item.
Birthday Reminder & Countdown (iOS) – Not Free
A less popular option that is only available for iOS is the Birthday Reminder & Countdown app. It has a 4.7 star rating across about 9.5k ratings which shows some popularity but nothing massive. Last update was January of this year, which does show an app that is maintained, but not as much as the other apps mentioned.
While a lot of the reviews are good, there are quite a few that talk about pretty intrusive ads being annoying. Here’s one of those reviews.
It’s important to note that this app is also not free and offers in-app purchases to use it. Pricing is $4.99 annually or $8.99 lifetime.
Birthdays.app (Surprisingly, not actually an app) – Not Free
You would think with a name like this it would be a birthday reminder app. In fact, though, it’s just a website. You input your phone number, pay, and then they send you text messages when a birthday is coming up. According to the site, over 250k texts have been sent thus far, which gives us a little teaser about the size of the operation.
Because it’s not an app, we can’t see any public reviews (only the reviews the company curates). If you’re someone who doesn’t like apps and doesn’t want to download anything, this might be the option for you. That said, you do have to give them your phone number, so privacy could be a concern. We did look up the company and were able to find who runs the company, but not a lot of additional information outside of an AI-style photo. It would be helpful to see more privacy and trust signals on the website before we hand over our phone number.
This “app” is also not free with pricing at $3 per year for basic and $9 per year for premium.
Birthday Reminders Without Using an App
Outside of these birthday reminder apps, there are options you can use. You might refer to these as your “old school” options that certainly work, but do have limitations. Here are a few of the well known.
Facebook is still an option.
There are a lot of people out there who say they still keep Facebook solely because it lets them know when other people’s birthday’s are. It’s definitely a free birthday reminder options, but it does have its limitations.
- It only works if someone has put their birthday into Facebook (and is on Facebook).
- It doesn’t give you reminders leading up to the birthday, just when it’s happening.
- You often have to seek out the notifications as they’re not prominent on the dashboard anymore.
You can use the calendar in your phone.
Another free option that some people use is the calendar in their phone. In the past, this wasn’t a viable option because you had to input the date every year. Now, though, you can set it to repeat annually so that you only have to put it in once.
Here’s the challenge, though. This really only works well for day of reminders, unless you want to flood your calendar with “events” for reminders.
With something like the LoveTrack app, you put in the date once, and you’re automatically getting birthday reminders for the month leading up to the date, so you not only remember, but you have time to prepare to celebrate.
When you just use your phone calendar, you’d have to set a separate event on your calendar for each reminder.
You can type up a sheet for your wall.
If you don’t like technology and are unwilling to try something new, you can always type up a sheet of paper (or handwrite it if you don’t like technology that much) and put everyone’s birthday on there.
It gives you a quick spot for reference, but it does have a lot of drawbacks.
- You aren’t truly getting birthday reminders because it’s up to you to regularly check your sheet.
- If you have to add a new birthday, you have to redo the sheet if you want to keep it organized.
- Much like with Facebook and the calendar app on your phone, you’re not getting reminders leading up to the birthdays.
Tips for Using Birthday Reminders
Technology can be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but if you don’t use it properly, you can’t get all the benefits. Here are a few tips you can use when utilizing birthday reminders.
- Always have redundancies. – Especially for important birthdays, have a backup plan. Even with an app like LoveTrack that is incredibly reliable, you never know when your phone may have a bad day and you miss a notification. Have a few things in place to make sure you don’t miss anything.
- Make sure you set them up correctly. – You can have the greatest alarm system in the world, but if you don’t set it up and turn it on, it does you no good. Think of your birthday reminders like this analogy. If you don’t take the time to set them up, they can’t help you.
- Do something when you get notified. – Lastly, notifications are only helpful if you act on them. When the notification comes in, take action right away. Otherwise, it can end up being like when you turn your alarm off in your sleep and don’t wake up on time. Take the action right away when the notification comes in because celebrating someone special on their big day is the whole point of remembering.