10 Best Social Media Contest Tools For 2024 (Tried & Tested)

Looking for the best social media contest tools? I’ve got you covered.

Social contests like giveaways, raffles, and sweepstakes can be a great way to generate leads, gain new followers, and grow your business.

In this post, I’ll review and compare the best apps that you can use to manage your contests and tell you everything you need to know about each of them.

The best social media contest platforms & apps – summary

1. SweepWidget

SweepWidget is the best contest tool on the market right now based on all of the tools I’ve tested.

There are a few reasons I rate SweepWidget so highly, but the main one is that it’s just so much easier to use than any other social media contest tool. 

Setting up your giveaway is a breeze. You just choose your entry method, enter basic details like a contest title, description, terms and conditions, etc., and toggle various features/settings on and off as needed. Then, publish it or embed it on your site and you’re ready to roll.

There are over 90+ pre-built contest entry methods to choose from depending on what you want participants to do. That includes all the common entry methods like ‘follow an Instagram profile’, ‘comment on a post’, ‘refer a friend’, ‘share a TikTok video’, ‘visit a website’, etc. 

Plus, some unique entry methods that a lot of other contest tools don’t support, like ‘leave a review’ or ‘enter a secret code’ (you can set up some pretty creative giveaway campaigns with this one). 

I also like the fact that SweepWidget gives you the option of adding a leaderboard to your competition, as well as tiered rewards and locked prizes. I’ve found that gamifying your contests with these sorts of features helps boost engagement and deliver better results overall. 

As you’d expect, a lot of these more advanced features are locked behind paid plans. But if you don’t need all the bells and whistles, you can create and manage a basic contest on SweepWidget’s free plan without spending a penny.

Key features

• Contest builder. Create and publish your social media contest in SweepWidget’s intuitive content builder.
• Entry methods. Choose from over 90 supported entry methods or create your own from scratch.
• WordPress plugin. Add your contest to your WordPress website easily with the SweepWidget WP plugin.
• Entry management. View, add, delete, and manage entries from your SweepWidget dashboard.
• Winner selection. Select contest winners at random or choose them manually within SweepWidget.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $29/month, save 2 months when you pay yearly.

Read our SweepWidget review.

2. ViralKit

ViralKit is the best AI-powered contest generator for users who don’t have time to waste. With it, you can build out your whole social media contest in seconds from a single prompt.

ViralKit seems to have gone all in on generative AI. A lot of other contest tools have adopted it into their workflow and now allow you to generate things like titles and descriptions, but ViralKit has taken it much further.

All you have to do is enter a single text prompt describing what kind of contest you want to build and it’ll handle everything for you. In the prompt, you might specify what your goals are, what prizes you’re giving away, when you want the contest to run, and any other details you want to include. 

It’ll build a basic version of the contest with suggested entry methods, and you can finish it up by filling in each entry method with your social links, customizing the details, and removing anything you don’t want.

This is a lot quicker than starting from scratch in my experience—the whole process takes 5 minutes tops.

I also like that ViralKit supports more entry methods than other tools. There are 250+ different options to choose from, which makes it super versatile.

Key features

• AI contest generator. Enter a prompt and let ViralKit build your entire contest for you in seconds.
• Manual contest builder. If you’d prefer to do it the old-fashioned way, you can build a contest manually, or save time with pre-built contest templates.
• Entry management. Keep track of entries, manage participant data, and select winners from your dashboard.
• Analytics. Analyze your social media contest and measure performance with all the essential metrics and KPIs.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $29/month, save 2 months with yearly billing.

3. Woorise

Woorise is a good choice if the goal of your social media contests is to generate leads. It’s more of an all-in-one tool than a dedicated contest builder and comes with additional lead-gen features that you might find useful.

I like that you can create all sorts of interactive marketing campaigns with Woorise. Not just social contests, but also things like viral quizzes, surveys, landing pages, etc. 

There are a bunch of great templates for all of the above, which you can customize in the drag-and-drop builder. That includes templates for some super fun contest types, like instant win games, photo voting contests, game key unlock giveaways (great for game devs), and more.

Another thing I like about Woorise is that it lets you set up multiple workspaces within the same account. This is essential if you’re a marketer or agency that manages lead generation for a bunch of different brands, as you’ll want to keep all their data separate from each other.

My main issue with Woorise, though, is that it doesn’t offer unlimited entries on any plan (this is something you do get with a lot of other contest tools). 

You can build as many contests as you want, but the price goes up depending on how many people participate in them. If you get tens of thousands of entries, it’s going to be super expensive.

Key features

• Social media contest templates. Build contests quickly with pre-built templates for formats like refer-a-friend contests, photo competitions, and dozens more.
• Lead generation. Create other types of interactive content to help you generate leads like quizzes, surveys, and landing pages.
• Drag-and-drop editor. Customize the look and layout of your contest widgets & landing pages in the drag-and-drop builder.
• Workspaces. Keep all the data and contests from different brands you work with separate in individual client workspaces.
• Flexible publishing. Publish your contests on a subdomain or directly to your site via a WordPress plugin, and display it in different ways: as a pop-up, in full screen, in chat, on exit intent, etc.
• Advanced contest features. Enjoy sophisticated features like geo-targeting, fraud detection, instant win milestones, bonus entries, conditional logic, and more.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $23/month. Get started with a 14-day free trial.

Read our Woorise review.

4. ShortStack

ShortStack is definitely one of the most versatile and powerful social media contest tools I’ve tested. However, that’s reflected in the price tag.

The starting price is at least 3x higher than other similar tools. And to be honest, I’m not fully convinced it’s worth the cost for casual users like content creators/influencers, especially given that plans don’t come with unlimited entries.

On the other hand, it’s a good choice for teams and agencies on account of its rich collaboration and project management features. And there are a couple of other things that make it stand out from its competitors. 

For one, its template gallery is excellent. I like that it includes templates for gamified contests like scavenger hunts, ‘caption this’ contests, holiday quizzes, puzzles, spin-the-wheel games, and so on.

Its drag-and-drop builder is great too. You can remodel any template and customize everything with complete, granular control over the design and settings.

Key features

• Template gallery. Choose from a rich selection of pre-made social media contest templates in ShortStack’s template gallery.
• Collaboration features. Work alongside your team in your ShortStack account and collaborate on projects.
• Drag-and-drop editor. Enjoy complete design freedom and customize everything in the intuitive visual editor.
• Automations. Set up automations to control what happens after entrants join your contest.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $99/month, save 20% when you pay yearly.

5. Outgrow

Outgrow is another all-in-one interactive content builder that you can use to set up all sorts of fun marketing campaigns. Not just social media contests, but also quizzes, calculators, forms, polls, chatbots, and more.

There’s a huge library of templates to choose from, and they’re all customizable in the built-in drag-and-drop editor, which I found easy enough to use.

I found Outgrow offered more control than other tools in terms of contest configuration too. You can use advanced automation and personalization tools like outcome mapping, conditional messaging, personalized landing pages, and branching logic to control the content visitors who open your contest see, and how they flow through your site. 

For example, when someone submits a form to enter your contest, you can automatically send them a personalized follow-up email, or redirect them to a specific landing page.

I was also super impressed by Outgrow’s built-in analytics. It provides all the essential metrics you need to analyze your campaigns like visitors, traffic sources, conversion rate, etc. Plus, if you build surveys or forms, you can see detailed insights about user responses.

Key features

• Social media contests. Create fun and engaging social media contests to grow your business and social following.
• Interactive content. Build other types of interactive content like forms, quizzes, polls, and even chatbots.
• Automation & personalization. Make your online contests more personalized with advanced features like conditional messaging and outcome mapping.
• Contest analytics. See detailed analytics to measure campaign performance and uncover other useful insights.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $22/month and save up to 44% with yearly billing. Get started with a free trial.

Read our Outgrow review.

6. Gleam

Gleam is one of the easiest-to-use social media contest tools I’ve tried. It has a great user interface, and its Galleries app makes it ideal for photo contests in particular.

Gleam is four different marketing apps rolled into one, all of which work together to allow you to create super engaging contests.

The Competition app is where you build the contest itself. You can choose from dozens of entry conditions, and Gleam will verify actions as participants complete them. This reduces the steps you need to do to manage your contests.

For example, let’s say you were asking users to follow your Twitter account to enter your contest. 

Without Gleam, you’d have to manually check if each entrant had followed you before adding them to the prize draw. With Gleam, you don’t have to do anything—it requires participants to connect their socials first so it can automatically verify any action.

You can use the Rewards app to set up tiered, unlockable prizes and offer embeddable instant-win rewards in exchange for actions. And if you were hoping to use your contests to build your email list, the Capture app will come in super useful. 

But my favorite feature is the Gallery app—it’s fantastic for UGC contests like photo competitions. You can use it to pull in media from across socials via hashtags and @ mentions and display them in a stunning responsive gallery.

Key features

• Competitions. Create all sorts of social media contests and competitions with Gleam’s templates and building tools.
• Rewards. Offer instantly redeemable rewards to users who complete actions, like QR coupons, survey rewards, item unlocks, etc.
• Capture. Build your email list and generate leads with email signup popups, lead capture banners, etc.
• Galleries. Create a beautiful gallery to display media from your social media contests, hashtag campaigns, and more.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $10/month.

7. Vyper

Vyper is a viral contest tool that recently revamped its UI. I was impressed by the new Vyper 2.0 but, as with ShortStack, I’m still not convinced it’s worth the hefty price tag for most users.

It’s super expensive as its plans are geared toward brands, marketers, and agencies with big budgets rather than casual users.

The good news is they do offer generous usage limits (up to 30k or 120k leads per month, depending on your plan). And the app itself is great.

I particularly like the way the visual campaign builder is laid out. You can customize your whole campaign from the editor, including the contest page/widget, thank you page, rewards, actions, etc.

There are only 8 starting templates to choose from, fewer than most other social media contest tools, but they cover all the common contest types.

The ‘Viral Contest Or Giveaway’ template is good for basic refer-a-friend social media contests. 

Then there’s the ‘UGC Contest’ template, for when you want to set up photo or video contests, and the ‘Milestone Contest’ template, which lets you deliver tiered rewards to participants when they reach set point milestones.

The rest of the templates are for other marketing campaigns like referral programs, pre-launch waitlists, leaderboard competitions, etc. 

Key features

• Campaign builder. Create your social media contests in Vyper’s intuitive and powerful campaign builder.
• Templates. Get started quickly with a choice of 8 pre-made templates for different types of contests and marketing campaigns.
• Display modes. Choose how you want to display your social media contest with 3: Intercom-style widget, embeddable form, or landing page.
• Milestones & bonus entries. Offer bonus entries to entrants who complete additional actions and set up reward milestones when they reach a pre-defined number of points.
• Analytics. Keep track of your participants, contest views, conversions, revenue, and more with basic analytics.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $149/month, save 50% when you pay yearly.

8. Wishpond

Wishpond is the most feature-rich tool on this list. It’s a true all-in-one marketing solution that can help with much more than running social media contests.

Wishpond’s Social Promotions module includes all the usual features you’d expect from a social media contest tool. It supports 12 contest types including hashtag contests, photo contests, caption competitions, essay contests, leaderboard contests, and voting competitions.

But it’s the wider ecosystem that makes Wishpond so powerful. For example, you can manage the leads you gather from your social media contests in its built-in leads database. Plus, email them with the help of the built-in email marketing tool, and nurture them to conversion with Wishpond’s marketing automation and funnel builders.

And that’s not all—there are a ton of other features on top of that.

You can also use Wishpond to build websites, landing pages, popups, forms, and contests. Plus, take payments, manage appointments, run ads, and everything else you need to do to grow your business.

If anything, it might be a bit too feature-rich. If you’re just looking for a dedicated social media contest tool and don’t need all the other bells and whistles, Wishpond might not be the right fit.

Key features

• Social Promotions. Use Wishpond’s Social Promotions module to build your social media contests.
• Leads management. Manage your leads in the built-in database.
• Automation. Build automation workflows to create seamless user experiences and nurture leads.
• Other marketing tools. Unify your efforts with Wishpond’s all-in-one marketing toolkit including landing pages, payments, appointments, ads, forms, and more.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Contact Wishpond to discuss pricing and to start a free trial.

9. Rafflecopter

Rafflecopter is another contest tool that I found particularly easy to use. It hugely simplifies the process of setting up your contest, which makes it a good choice for beginners and casual users.

In my tests, I managed to set up a basic contest in under a minute with Rafflecopter, which is stupidly fast.

You just add a prize, choose an entry option (there are 9 pre-made options or you can invent your own), set a start/end date, and add your terms and conditions (you can pre-fill this in one click with Rafflecopter’s Easy Template).

Then, grab the HTML embed code or page URL to share your giveaway with your audience. Participants are added to the Entries tab once they complete the required actions. And you can pick the winner in a couple of clicks.

Another thing I like about Rafflecopter is that it’s one of the only social contest tools that offers unlimited giveaways and entries on its free plan tier. A lot of other tools don’t even offer unlimited entries on paid plans.

That said, while it’s great for building basic viral giveaways, there are a few features it’s missing that I’d consider pretty essential. Most notably, there’s no analytics and no email list integration with the free and basic plans.

Key features

• Social media contest builder. Rafflecopter’s beginner-friendly social media contest builder makes setting your giveaway up a breeze.
• Entry options. Choose from 9 pre-made entry options such as ‘refer a friend’, ‘visit a Facebook page’, ‘pin an image’, and ‘answer a poll’. Or, invent your own from scratch.
• Weighted entry points. Offer multiple ways to enter and award a different number of points to each method.
• Winner selection. Choose winners in one click and manage entries inside Rafflecopter.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Plans start from $13/month. Get started with a 7-day free trial.

10. Woobox

Woobox is another simple but powerful social media contest app with a great user interface.

You can use it to run all kinds of contests, from basic Facebook giveaways to photo/video voting contests, instant win games, and more.

Plus, build other types of interactive content like quizzes, polls, popups, forms, and more.

I particularly like the Hashtag Gallery feature. It allows you to curate and display the photos/videos your contest participants share by automatically pulling them in from posts with branded hashtags.

Woobox’s free plan is perfect for small giveaways but it’s limited to 100 entrants per month. The Standard plan is great value—it comes with unlimited entrants and is still very affordable.

Key features

• Contest templates. Save time by starting from a pre-built template, then customize it to make it your own.
• Interactive content. Also, build other types of interactive content to engage your audience and generate leads.
• Automated emails. Send out automated emails to deliver coupons and other digital prizes for your instant win contests.
• Participant management. Manage contest entries, approve and collect submissions for photo contests, and pick random winners.
• Publishing options. Publish to a dedicated URL or embed in websites, pop-ups, Facebook pages, and more.

Pros and cons

Pricing

Free plan available. Paid plans start from $32/month.

Final thoughts

Each of these social media contest apps has its strengths and weaknesses. 

The best choice for you will depend on the type of contest you’re hoping to run, the social media platforms you’re focusing on, the features you need, and your budget.

Most of these tools offer free trials or free plans, so I’d recommend trying a few of them out to see which one you like best.

Not sure what to offer as a prize for your contest? Read our roundup of awesome giveaway prize ideas.

For more tools that can help you to grow on social, see our comparisons of the best social media publishing apps, social media management apps, and social media analytics tools.

And don’t forget to check out these examples of social media giveaways for inspiration.

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