13 Best Social Media Contest Tools to Run Extraordinary Giveaways

If you’re thinking of running social media contests, you probably already know how beneficial they are to brand awareness, lead generation, and other aspects of your social media campaigns.

And to make your contests/giveaways effective, we’ve written guides on running social media contests on channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and more.

But running social media contests manually is a problem no one has to face today. In light of this, we’ll explore the 13 best social media contest tools that can help you run amazing contests.

Let’s get started!

1. SweepWidget

No matter the social media network you want to run your contest, you’ll find many entry options on SweepWidget. You have access to general social channels such as Facebook and Instagram as well as niche websites such as Twitch or Etsy.

And if you want to run a contest on 4 or 5 social media channels, you can easily combine them on a single giveaway page. In a nutshell, you can add up to 100 entry methods across different social channels for a single giveaway. 

Beyond this, SweepWidget allows you to capture emails during your contest. With these email addresses and SweepWidget’s integrations to CRM and email marketing tools, you can reach participants after your giveaway. During your contest setup, you’ll find design tools that allow you to add giveaway prize images, backgrounds, and other branding features suitable to your needs.

After setting up your contest page, SweepWidget allows you to host it on a SweepWidget hosted landing or your directly in any standalone website. Or, if you’re a WordPress user, there’s a SweepWidget WordPress plugin that makes it easy to manage your blog.

What if your ideal audience is in a specific country? Or you only want participants from a particular country due to shipping considerations? 

You can specify the country for your contest. Consequently, only people from this country will be able to enter your giveaway. If your ideal audience is non-English speaking, that’s fine too, as you have access to over 100 languages.

Another problem you can face is participants trying to cheat with multiple entries. If this is against your contest rules, you can prevent multiple entries from a single IP address. With this setting, SweepWidget allows you to run a fair contest. There is also optional Google Captcha and verification emails for additional security.

There are even more options available during setup such as instant coupons, milestones, leaderboard, and more. 

Once you begin your giveaway campaign, you can track your entries in a single place on SweepWidget. Furthermore, there are other actions available here. 

For instance, pick a winner randomly, view the winner’s contact details to reach out to them, or even disqualify a participant who has breached your rules.

Perhaps, what’s most impressive about SweepWidget is its ease of use. Even if you’ve just signed up today, you can find your way around the setup and launch a contest in less than an hour.

SweepWidget also provides giveaway examples so that you can see the possibilities for your own promotions. If you want to give SweepWidget a test run to see its capabilities, you can use the free plan to launch a contest.

Overall, SweepWidget is a social media contest tool that provides essential features you need to run your giveaway successfully while having an easy-to-use interface that anyone can navigate.

Summary

• Run giveaways on 30+ social media platforms
• 90+ entry methods
• Leaderboards and instant coupons/rewards
• Viral sharing
• Unlimited contests and entries
• Host giveaway on SweepWidget or embed into your website
• Fraud detection
• Export data to CSV
• Has a free plan

Pricing

SweepWidget has a free basic plan, a pro plan for $29 per month, a business plan for $49 per month, a premium plan for $99 per month, and an enterprise plan for $199 per month.

2. Gleam

A simple search will show that Gleam is one of the most popular social media contest apps online. And there are many reasons for this.

Basically, Gleam has 4 apps, which are competitions, rewards, gallery, and capture. Using the competitions app, you can run giveaways and contests on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more.

To make this process easier, Gleam has contest templates that you can view and copy to create yours. As a result, it’s easy to get your contests ready in no time even if you have no design skills.

In a situation where your ideal audience is non-English, Gleam allows you to choose a language out of over 25 languages available. With Gleam, you can rest on its fraud detection tools that will ensure your contest is fair and in order.

Once you set up your contest, you have the option to host its widget on Gleam, your website, or your Facebook page. After your campaign, you can easily validate winners, discover invalid entries, and announce winners on your widget.

Everybody loves a reward, and the rewards app allows you to delight your customers. Based on predefined actions during your giveaway, participants can unlock rewards such as coupons, downloads, or a link to a special page.

For contests where participants submit photos or videos, you can make it more interesting by creating a gallery. Gleam allows you to import content from your social media pages into a beautiful gallery. This can increase the feel-good factor for your contest and increase participation.

In campaigns that involve generating leads, Gleam makes it easy to process your leads with over 100 integrations to email marketing and other tools. This tool also has a free plan that allows you to test run some of its features.

In a nutshell, Gleam provides features that make running your contest easy and effective.

Summary

• Run contests on all major social media channels
• Contest templates you can customize
• Host giveaway on Gleam, website, or Facebook tab
• Import UGC to create a gallery
• Integrates with over 100 tools
• Pricing according to app
• Has a free plan

3. ViralSweep

Among social media contest tools, ViralSweep is another tool that possesses the critical features users need and makes campaign creation easier. First, you have access to contest templates for different types of campaigns.

You can pick a suitable template and edit it until you have a unique page for your contest. If you want to tweak the templates even further and you understand some CSS, ViralSweep gives you an option for more styling.

In a case where your ideal audience is in a particular location (or you run a local business), the geo-targeting feature allows you to display your giveaway to just this location. Likewise, you can translate to different languages if you need to.

ViralSweep allows you to have your sweepstakes in the full page, widget, or lightbox formats, and you can embed them on your website, blog, or Facebook. To create your contest rules more efficiently, there’s a rule generator where you can fill in essential details.

By running social media contests on this platform, you have access to A/B testing tools to discover high-performing contests and maximize conversions. Furthermore, there’s a leaderboard where participants can see the leading entrants.

And if you want people to vote for their favorite entries, you can set it up. Thanks to the fraud detection feature, you can eliminate cheating from your campaigns.

Sometimes, giveaways can be lead generation opportunities. Luckily, ViralSweep allows you to capture email addresses and offer 30 integrations (including Zapier) to make lead processing easier.

To track your campaign performance, this tool provides real-time analytics for metrics such as visits, entries, conversion rates, website clicks, device breakdown, and more. You have access to a 7-day free trial to test the tool.

Summary

• Run contests on major social media channels
• Unlimited promotions and entries for all plans
• Giveaway templates and CSS to style campaigns
• A/B testing of contests
• Integrations with 30 tools
• Provides real-time analytics
• No free plan, but a 7-day trial available

4. Woorise

Woorise is a powerful all-in-one lead generation platform that allows you to create a wide range of interactive campaigns such as giveaways & contests, landing pages, forms, surveys, quizzes, collect payments and more from a drag & drop builder.

Some of the key features for Woorise platform include the ability to embed the campaigns on every website or platform, send personalized email notifications, export your data in a CSV file, create multi-step forms and instant redeem rewards or have your campaign in any language.

Woorise helps you grow your audience using a wide range of pre-build social actions or easily create your own for any social platform or website. 

With Woorise you can reward users with Bonus Entries for referring their friends and increase sharing and participation. Bonus entries are tracked via a unique URL given to a user who has entered your campaign. After they enter, they get the link which they can copy or share using popular social buttons such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, email and more.

Woorise allows you to run instant redeem rewards. The Instant Win feature allows you to distribute prizes immediately among your followers. Users will try their luck and will instantly find out if they have won any of the prizes. Set the odds of winning any of several prizes and give participants a chance to win a prize instantly. Perfect for coupons, game keys, content upgrades, music or downloads.

Another cool feature is that it allows you to validate promotional codes. Promotional codes have a wide range of applications including collecting receipt/order numbers, sharing codes on your local store, printing codes on products, sharing codes via social media, including codes in brochures or vouchers and much more.

Summary

• Beautiful and fast design with a powerful drag & drop campaign and form builder
• 40+ templates with more added monthly
• Embed your campaigns on every website or platform
• Send personalized Email Notifications
• All languages supported
• Workspaces to manage all your brands or clients from a single account
• Export your data in a CSV file
• Geo Targeting to make your campaign available to specific countries
• Instant redeem rewards
• Fraud detection
• Personalized thank you pages
• Integrates with thousands apps including all major email marketing apps
• Has a free plan

5. Easypromos

This is a social media contest app that allows you to run contests and giveaways on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. For better organization, Easypromos separates all the types of giveaways and contests into 34 apps.

These apps are divided into five categories, which are giveaways, contests, games, quizzes, and coupons and codes. Apps such as photo and video contests allow you to acquire user-generated content (UGC) for your other marketing campaigns.

You also have apps such as coupons that help distribute coupon codes to your customers. Depending on the type of contest you want to run, you can select any suitable app here.

Once you select an app, you’ll find that Easypromos offer a simple drag-and-drop designer that makes your contest design seamless. Another capability you get is capturing leads for your future campaigns. 

This lets you combine your contest with lead generation. You can capture information such as email addresses, and with your participants’ consent, send messages to them in the future. 

With Easypromos’ integration with CRM and email marketing tools, you’ll have a smooth transition from capturing email addresses to launching personalized email sequences. While running giveaways, you need the right numbers to track your campaign performance. Fortunately, Easypromos provides statistics about your giveaways that deliver those insights.

One thing you need to look out for is the pricing. Some apps are only available under some pricing plans. So, you need to check pricing plans for the contest app you want to use to avoid surprises. 

Summary

• Run giveaways on major social media channels
• Has 34 giveaway apps
• Simple drag-and-drop giveaway designer
• Unlimited giveaways
• Provides giveaway analytics
• Integrations with marketing tools and Zapier
• Has no free plan

7. Shortstack

As a reputable social media contest platform, Shortstack has gained this reputation through the tool’s capabilities. You can run contests and giveaways on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and more. Generally, though, Shortstack is most popular for Facebook contests.

To make contest creation easy, you have access to templates for different types of campaigns. And with the robust contest editor, you can design to your taste.

Once you’re done with your contest design, you can host your contest on a dedicated landing page or one of your website pages. Fortunately, integrations with WordPress, Shopify, Wix, and Squarespace means your giveaways will fit into most websites.

For campaigns that allow multiple votes, you can restrict the entry frequency. For instance, you can enable voting only once in 24 hours. To increase participation in your giveaways, Shortstack allows you to display your giveaways as popups on your website.

Another feature that can increase participation is the drip email campaign you can run during your contests. This can serve as a reminder for participants. If you’ve captured leads during your contest, Shortstack has email marketing tools to contact them later.

Better still, there are integrations to email marketing tools for the easy transfer of your leads. In a case where you run a marketing team, then you’ll appreciate Shortstack’s collaboration feature. This allows you to add team members to your account and communicate with them during campaigns.

To track your campaign performance, Shortstack provides analytics that shows critical metrics. Lastly, Shortstack has no free plan but has a free trial (with restrictions) for as long as you want to try it.

Summary

• Run contests on major social media channels
• Contest templates available
• A simple contest editor
• Run email campaigns to increase contest participation
• Has team features 
• Has no free plan but a generous free trial

8. Woobox

Established in 2010, Woobox is one of the most popular social media contest software you’ll find today. With this tool, you can run contests on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.

Moreso, you have access to templates of different types of campaigns. When you see a template similar to what you need, you can select and edit it. Woobox’s powerful editor allows you to arrive at a unique page that will woo more participants.

If the majority of your audience is from a particular location, then you can set location restrictions so that only participants from this area will be able to enter. Once you’re done with your campaign designs, you can post to your social media pages, website, or mobile apps.

For contests where you collect user-generated content (through hashtags), you can pull entries from social media to a gallery. In turn, you can allow people to vote for their favorite entry in the gallery.

You also have the option to moderate these entries manually or auto-approve entries based on specified criteria. If you have a marketing team with members involved in your giveaway campaigns, Woobox has team features that can allow you to collaborate effectively.

To have your contest data for further analysis, Woobox provides the option to export your data. For campaigns where you’ve captured leads, this tool integrates with 500 tools to make lead processing easier. 

Furthermore, you get a free plan that allows you to see its capabilities before committing to a paid plan.

Summary

• Run giveaways on major social channels
• Giveaway templates available
• Simple giveaway editor
• Has team features
• Host giveaway on website, social media page, or mobile app
• Integrates with over 500 tools
• Has a free plan

9. Wishpond

When you hear Wishpond, many things come to your mind. That’s because apart from social media contests, Wishpond is also a tool for creating landing pages and running email campaigns.

For giveaways, you can run promotions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There are templates that can make the contest design faster and more efficient. 

You also have access to a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor. Here, you can make adjustments to a template till you get a design that suits your taste. Once you’re done with your design, you can publish the contest on your social media page, website, or Wishpond.

For contests such as photo contests, you can create a photo gallery where every visitor to the page can see the entries from all participants. Furthermore, there’s a voting option. With this, you can ask for email addresses (and optional opt-in to your list) before voting.

If you want to reward your audience with coupons and vouchers for specific actions, you can do that too. To reach out to your leads in future campaigns, you can use Wishpond’s email marketing feature to create campaigns.

Alternatively, you can take advantage of over 300 integrations (including Zapier) available on Wishpond to connect with other tools. Wishpond allows you to test out its features with a free trial for 14 days.

Summary

• Run giveaways on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
• Contest templates
• WYSIWYG contest editor
• Email marketing feature to reach participants
• Integrates with over 300 tools
• No free plan, a 14-day free trial

10. Vyper

Vyper provides contests and rewards programs that help you connect better with your audience. On this platform, you can run contests on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

You have access to a straightforward editor that makes it easy to build your contest page. Vyper also has a cheating detection algorithm to detect cheats and ensure they don’t emerge winners.

You have the option to host your contest on your website or Vyper. For further analysis of your promotion campaign, you can export your data as a CSV file.

Better still, Vyper allows you to integrate with 14 major email providers (including a Zapier integration that opens you up to more). This way, you can segment your leads for an email sequence.

To obtain more metrics from your giveaway campaigns, you can embed Google Analytics code into your page. Lastly, Vyper has a free plan for as long as you want to check out the platform. But you’ll have to pay before you can run a campaign.

Summary

• Run contests on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
• Simple editor
• Fraud detection
• Host contest on Vyper or your website
• Integrates with email tools and Zapier
• Export data as a CSV file
• Has a free plan (you can’t run a contest)

11. Heyo

Here’s another social media contest app that allows you to run contests on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Even if you lack design skills, you’ll find templates for different types of campaigns.

Then, you can pick one similar to your campaign and use the simple design editor to customize the design to your taste. If you have some CSS skills, you’ll find them useful as Heyo provides the capability.

For your contests, you can collect user-generated content (UGC) such as photos and videos and organize them into a gallery. To prevent invalid entries, Heyo allows you to validate or invalidate entries before they appear on your gallery.

Apart from that, you can capture leads by collecting details such as email addresses and more. Fortunately, there are integrations with email providers to ensure better lead processing.

If you want feedback from your customers, you’ll find the quizzes and polls useful. Meanwhile, you can also share coupons with customers who have taken an action.

To track your campaign performance, Heyo provides analytics that displays critical metrics. Lastly, Heyo has a 7-day trial during which you can test the tool’s capabilities.

Summary

• Run contests on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
• Templates for different types of campaigns
• Simple design editor with CSS styling
• Displays UGC gallery
• Provides giveaway analytics
• No free plan, 7-day trial

12. PLAYR.gg

If you’re a gamer, then PLAYR.gg might just be the social media giveaway tool you need. This platform has features for general social media contests and some tailored to gamers.

Therefore, you can run giveaways on social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Twitch, and Discord. With its giveaway editor, you can customize your image and other elements of your giveaways.

Moreso, you can set up a minimum age restriction and schedule your giveaway for a period. There’s an option to run a community giveaway where you team up with other gamers to reach more participants.

Another available option is to buy a verified giveaway. This extends the positive reputation of this giveaway to yours. In some of their plans, PLAYR.gg will promote your giveaway on their Discord server.

Furthermore, PLAYR.gg allows you to pick winners randomly and customize shipping availability for physical gifts. If you need to capture leads, you can do that on PLAYR.gg and process your leads by integrating with your email service provider.

Finally, PLAYR.gg has a free plan through which you can see its capabilities.

Summary

• Giveaway platform for gamers
• Run giveaways on major social media channels plus Twitch and Discord
• Schedule giveaway
• Run community giveaway
• Buy a verified giveaway
• Giveaways promoted on PLAYR.gg’s Discord
• Customize shipping availability
• Has a free plan

13. Agorapulse

Even though Agorapulse is popular for social media management, it has contest tools for your campaigns. On the platform, there’s an option to run Facebook contests.

On Facebook, you can run sweepstakes, quizzes, and photo contests. For sweepstakes, you can pick a winner randomly among the fans who have liked or commented on a post.

With quizzes, you’ll see how well your audience knows your brand or industry. Photo contests allow you to collect user-generated content (UGC) on Facebook. 

Agorapulse has a 28-day free trial when you can see if the tool suits your needs.

Summary

• Contests on Facebook.
• Run sweepstakes, quizzes, and photo contests.
• Offers a 28-day free trial.

Bonus Tip

Don’t overlook the power of email marketing to promote your giveaway and maximize participation. If you already have an email list, you’re sitting on a goldmine of potential contest entrants. Use an email marketing service to announce your giveaway, send reminder emails as the deadline approaches, and create a drip campaign that builds excitement throughout the contest period.

Here are some effective email strategies for promoting your giveaway:

• Launch announcement: Send a dedicated email to your subscribers announcing the giveaway with clear entry instructions and prize details.
• Drip campaign: Set up automated emails that go out at strategic intervals (e.g., mid-contest reminder, 48-hour warning, last chance email) to keep your audience engaged.
• Segmented messaging: Target specific subscriber segments with personalized messaging based on their interests or past behavior.
• Winner announcement: After the contest ends, email your list to announce the winner and tease upcoming giveaways to maintain engagement.

Many of the contest tools mentioned above integrate directly with popular email marketing platforms, making it easy to sync your participant data and follow up with entrants after the giveaway concludes.

Conclusion

Phew! If you’ve read this guide to this point, congratulations! You’re now a social media contest tools hero.

Of course, this post doesn’t cover every feature of the tools considered, as a single post is insufficient for that. To get all the details about a specific tool, you’ll still need to visit their website.

And again, all the features mentioned won’t be available for the lowest plans. So, you’ll need to find a plan that fits your needs.

If you ask us which tool we’ll recommend for your social media contests, then we’ll say SweepWidget. Are you surprised?

This is because we believe we provide the best features at the best price for our users. And their excellent reviews show they agree with us.

That said, picking a social media giveaway tool for your campaign will take time. So, ensure you check your options thoroughly before settling for one.

Are you planning to use a social media contest tool soon? What’s the most important feature you want in a tool? Tell us in the comments!