5+ Best Social Media Contest Tools That Are Free To Use
Running a contest and giveaway is one of the best ways to grow your followers, likes, fans, email lists, and overall brand awareness. Because of this, social media contest tools are becoming increasingly popular. It doesn’t matter if you are a small blog, a startup, or a large corporation – anyone can benefit from running a giveaway.
What social media platforms can you use with contest apps?
- Facebook – let people like, share, comment, and join your Facebook pages.
- Twitter – let people post a tweet, retweet, follow, and hashtag a Twitter profile.
- Instagram – let people follow, hear, comment, share, pick a photo, and hashtag an Instagram profile.
- Pinterest – let people follow, like pins, repin, and choose photos on a Pinterest page.
- Youtube – let people visit your channel and engage with your Youtube videos.
- Twitch – let people follow, watch streams, and subscribe to a Twitch channel.
- Telegram – let people join a Telegram channel and engage with it.
- Discord – let people join a Discord server and engage with it.
- TikTok – let people follow, comment, like, and share videos.
- Steam – let people follow and engage with a Steam page.
- Snapchat – let people follow and engage with a Snapchat page.
- Mixer – let people follow and engage with a Mixer page.
- Many more social media contest apps you can run your competitions on.
Why should you use a social media contest app?
There are many benefits to using third party contest software.
- Contest apps let you can consolidate every social platform into one place.
- Require viral sharing, answering questions, newsletter subscriptions, visiting your website, and much more.
- Easily manage all of your entries in one place.
- Export results to a CSV file.
- Embed into your website or use a hosted landing page.
What are the best free contest tools?
Table of Contents
1. SweepWidget
SweepWidget is a popular free contest tool that allows viral giveaways, sweepstakes, leaderboard contests, and instant rewards. They’re known for having many features, lots of entry methods, and are very customizable. They make it easy to allow users to do several types of engagements for each social media platform.
SweepWidget has 90+ entry methods on 30+ different social media platforms. Below is a screenshot of all the entry methods you can choose from. Each entry method has several sub-actions. For example, Facebook allows you to visit pages, visit posts, like pages, like posts, post comments, join groups, and share posts.
Another popular feature with SweepWidget is that you can custom style your giveaway from top to bottom. It allows you to change the font colors, sizes, backgrounds, borders, buttons, width, and just about everything else. You can also add custom images, background images, custom logos, and much more.
Here’s an example giveaway.
Here’s an example giveaway on a hosted landing page with a custom background image.
You can also easily manage your entries in the admin dashboard. You can manually pick winners, randomize winners, delete/disqualify entries and users, filter results, view individual entry methods, and much more.
Key features
- Run a contest with 90+ entry methods on 30+ social media platforms.
- A good amount of free entry methods and features offered on the free plan.
- Unlimited entries allowed on the free plan.
- Custom style and design for your widget.
- 13+ email API integrations.
- 103 languages that you can translate your giveaway into.
- Viral sharing and refer-a-friend.
- Allows custom forms, surveys, polls, and quizzes.
- Leaderboard contests.
- Instant rewards, instant coupons, tiered milestones.
Pricing
- Free plan: $0 /m.
- Pro plan: $29 /m.
- Business plan: $49 /m.
- Premium plan: $99 /m.
- Enterprise plan: $199 /m.
2. Woorise
Woorise is a solidly build social media contest tool that is reasonably priced. They have the core social media entry methods you would want along with good styling options. You can style the widget and add an image with the free plan. They cap the entries on the free plan at 500, though, whereas SweepWidget, Gleam, and Rafflecopter are unlimited.
Here’s a screenshot of the admin section where you can add entry methods. The entry methods are limited, but they offer the most popular options.
Here’s an example of a basic live giveaway.
Key features
- Email API integrations on the paid plan.
- Good core free entry methods.
- Up to 500 entries on the free plan.
- Multi-language support on the paid plan.
- Instant win on the paid plan.
- CSV exports.
- Conditional actions.
- Viral sharing actions on the free plan.
Pricing
- Free plan: €0 /m
- Basic plan: €29 /m
- Grow plan: €49 /m
- Pro plan: €99 /m
3. Gleam.io
Gleam is one of the most popular freemium giveaway tools on the market. They have four apps to choose from: competitions, rewards, gallery, and capture. They offer advanced functionality on the paid plans while still allowing you to run an effective giveaway on the free plan. Gleam is popular for gaming contests, e-commerce contests, and well suited for small blogs and large brands.
As you can see, Gleam offers a wide variety of entry methods to choose from.
You can easily manage your giveaways from the admin console.
Also, it’s extremely simple to pick and manage winners.
Here’s an example Gleam giveaway.
Key features
- 4 apps to choose from: competitions, rewards, gallery, and capture.
- Unlimited entries allowed on the free plan.
- They have more email integrations than any other contest app.
- Lots of entry methods to choose from.
- Most actions are API verified.
- The widget can be custom styled.
- You can embed the contest into a website, a Facebook page, or use a free hosted landing page.
- Scales for high traffic giveaways.
- Good gaming actions.
Pricing
- Free plan: $0 /m.
- Hobby plan: $120 paid annually.
- Pri plan: $49 /m.
- Business plan: $149 /m.
- Premium plan: $399 /m.
4. Rafflecopter
Rafflecopter is an excellent free social media giveaway app for people trying to run a simple contest. You can create a contest from start to finish in 60 seconds which makes it the easiest widget to use. The free option has limited options, but there are unlimited entries. With the free option, you can:
- Visit a Facebook fan page.
- Post a tweet.
- Comment on a blog post.
- And invent your own entry method.
The Twitter, Pinterest, newsletter subscription, and poll entry methods are limited to the paid plans.
Managing entries is easy and offered on the free plan.
Here’s an example of how a live Rafflecopter giveaway can look.
Key features
- Easy to use.
- Unlimited entries allowed on the free plan.
- Free entry reporting.
- Email API integrations on the paid plan.
- Custom styling on the paid plan.
- Widget loads very fast without any bugs.
Pricing
- Free plan: $0 /m
- Basic plan: $13 /m
- Grow plan: $43 /m
- Premium plan: $84 /m
5. Playr.gg
Player.gg is a popular social media contest app for gamers. They have entry method API integrations for Twitter, Twitch, and Mixer (the latter two being popular amongst gamers). They have a popular free version that offers a good amount of functionality out of the gate. One of the setbacks, though, is that you must keep two entry methods for liking Playr.gg. Also, you’re limited to only one live giveaway at a time. Also, unlike the other widgets, you can’t embed this widget onto third party websites.
Here’s an example of a live Player.gg giveaway.
Key features
- Good gamer API integrations.
- Unlimited entries allowed on the free plan.
- A prize image is allowed on the free plan.
- Viral sharing actions are on the free plan.
- Affordable pricing on paid plans.
- There are several restrictions on the free plan, such as one active giveaway, 7-day max duration, 24 hour waiting period, max prize value, max winners.
Pricing
- Free plan: $0 /m
- Starter plan: $9.99 /m
- Pro plan: $24.99 /m
- Business plan: $49.99 /m
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed the 5+ best free to use social media contest tools. Be sure to research all of the recommendations to determine which one is best for your business.
Be sure to check back soon for additional tools!
