Are your contests losing their magic?
You launch campaigns hoping for a surge in traffic, but the excitement fizzles out faster each time, leaving you with disappointing results.
It’s frustrating to invest resources into platforms that are failing to boost real engagement or drive meaningful conversions for your business.
Uplup reports that 72% of companies experience audience fatigue from poorly spaced campaigns. This shows running contests too often without the right strategy can backfire.
The secret isn’t running fewer contests; it’s about finding the right tool to make each one more impactful and successful.
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In this guide, I’ll show you the best contest software of 2025 to help you create campaigns that captivate your audience every single time.
You’ll find tools that help you manage campaigns effectively, track ROI, and keep your audience excited to participate again and again.
Let’s get started.
Quick Summary:
| # | Software | Rating | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ShortStack → | Marketers at growing brands | |
| 2 | Wishpond → | Small to medium businesses | |
| 3 | Gleam → | Growing marketing teams | |
| 4 | Rafflecopter → | Marketing managers at all sizes | |
| 5 | Woobox → | Growing businesses |
1. ShortStack
Struggling to boost engagement and conversions?
ShortStack offers 150+ drag-and-drop templates, enabling you to launch interactive campaigns quickly. This means you can create tailored content to attract leads without needing any code.
You can customize, rearrange, or remodel any template, creating unique user experiences to collect valuable data with smart forms. Plus, ShortStack helps you fine-tune campaigns exactly how you want.
Here’s how to engage your audience.
ShortStack streamlines your campaign efforts by allowing you to run unlimited projects under one roof. You gain hassle-free control over entry collection, moderation, and winner selection.
Its flexible templates help build exactly what your brand needs, from instant win to scratch-and-win contests, quizzes, and puzzles. This helps you gather user-generated content via hashtag or comment-to-enter methods.
Additionally, you can embed your content directly on your website, publish it as a standalone landing page, or even as a pop-up. This versatility helps you easily analyze campaign data and schedule comprehensive follow-ups with leads.
Let your brand go viral.
Key features:
- 150+ customizable templates: Pick from a diverse library of templates including quizzes, puzzles, and instant win contests to quickly launch interactive campaigns.
- Drag-and-drop builder: Design and fine-tune campaigns with intuitive drag-and-drop widgets and granular controls, requiring zero tech skills to customize.
- Comprehensive campaign management: Organize unlimited projects, moderate entries, select winners, and analyze campaign data, all under one roof.
Learn more about ShortStack features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: ShortStack stands out as the best contest software due to its extensive template library and intuitive drag-and-drop builder. Its ability to streamline campaign management, from entry collection to data analysis, makes it ideal for marketers aiming to boost engagement and conversions.
2. Wishpond
Struggling to boost your campaign engagement and conversions?
Wishpond’s Social Promotions module effortlessly creates contests and giveaways, directly addressing your need for higher social engagement and audience growth.
This means you can attract followers and grow your audience without complex setups, enhancing your overall marketing efforts and building your valuable email list.
Here’s your all-in-one solution.
Wishpond provides an all-in-one marketing platform designed to streamline your efforts. It combines various tools, so you can manage campaigns from one place.
You’ll find features like drag-and-drop landing page editors, allowing you to create stunning, mobile-friendly pages in minutes without coding. Additionally, the platform integrates payments directly into your landing pages, converting visitors into customers instantaneously.
This comprehensive approach allows you to seamlessly create multi-step marketing funnels, automate time-consuming tasks with email marketing and sales automation, and easily manage appointments, all contributing to improved conversion rates and more efficient operations.
The result? Increased sales and lead generation.
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Key features:
- Social Promotions: Effortlessly create contests and giveaways to grow social media followers, improve engagement, and build your email list, attracting new customers.
- Landing Pages: Use the intuitive drag-and-drop editor to build high-converting, mobile-friendly landing pages quickly, boosting sales and capturing more leads.
- Marketing Automation: Automate routine marketing tasks like email campaigns and lead nurturing, saving you hours while ensuring powerful, consistent engagement with your audience.
Learn more about Wishpond features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Wishpond offers a robust, all-in-one platform with tools like social promotions, landing pages, and marketing automation to tackle common marketing pain points. Its integrated features and managed services make it a strong contender for the best contest software, driving measurable improvements in engagement and conversions for your campaigns.
3. Gleam
Struggling to boost your campaign engagement and generate leads?
Gleam offers an all-in-one marketing platform to run exciting contests and giveaways, helping you acquire new customers. This means you can overcome decision paralysis and easily launch engaging promotions.
They aim to simplify viral promotions, enabling you to drive impactful results and grow your brand.
Here’s how you unlock growth.
Gleam’s collection of apps, templates, and integrations allows you to run viral promotions and drive impactful results. This includes competitions to skyrocket engagement and photo contests to generate user-generated content.
You can also create viral referral machines by giving users the chance to win prizes by signing up and referring friends. Additionally, you can use instant win rewards and content gates to boost sales and grow your brand by offering gift cards, discounts, or exclusive content.
Plus, you can generate fresh leads and grow your email list with perfectly targeted popups and website banners, and even use coupon popups to turn visitors into customers. The result? You’ll see measurable improvements in customer interaction and conversions.
Discover your next viral marketing campaign.
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Key features:
- Viral Competitions and Giveaways: Run engaging photo contests and referral campaigns to collect user-generated content and supercharge lead generation.
- Unlockable Rewards and Content Gates: Drive meaningful action by offering instant win rewards like discounts or exclusive content, boosting sales and email list growth.
- Personalized Popups and Galleries: Convert visitors into leads with targeted opt-in forms and showcase social proof by collecting and displaying user-generated content.
Learn more about Gleam features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Gleam offers a comprehensive suite for marketing managers at growing companies, enabling you to attract customers and generate leads with viral campaigns. With features like referral contests and reward gates, Gleam is a strong contender for the best contest software, proven by its 1 million+ business users.
4. Rafflecopter
Need to simplify your contest management?
Rafflecopter offers an incredibly easy way to launch and manage giveaways for any brand, on any website, requiring no IT help or coding. This means you can create engaging campaigns quickly.
The platform is designed to make the entire process delightfully simple, allowing you to select prizes, choose entry methods, and collect entries with just a few clicks.
It makes running contests easy-easy.
Rafflecopter solves the problem of complex software by making the process straightforward, enabling you to launch your next giveaway in minutes. Your team won’t need to learn complicated software.
You can customize the look and feel of your giveaway to match your brand, website theme, or promotional event. This allows you to align your contests with existing marketing initiatives. Additionally, Rafflecopter is built for scale, supporting hundreds to hundreds of thousands of entries with its robust cloud infrastructure, ensuring reliability and fast performance. The result is a powerful tool that’s both user-friendly and dependable.
You can grow your community effectively.
Key features:
- Effortless Campaign Creation: Launch and manage giveaways in minutes without any coding required, making it incredibly simple to get your campaigns live quickly.
- Scalable Infrastructure: Built to handle hundreds to hundreds of thousands of entries, ensuring your giveaways run smoothly and reliably no matter their size.
- Brand Customization: Easily customize the look and feel of your giveaway to match your brand, website, or promotional event, ensuring a consistent brand experience.
Learn more about Rafflecopter features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Rafflecopter’s focus on extreme ease-of-use and robust scalability makes it an ideal solution for marketing managers seeking the best contest software. With its no-code setup, advanced theming, and proven reliability for over 19,000 companies running 325,000+ giveaways, it empowers you to boost engagement and community growth without technical headaches.
5. Woobox
Struggling to find contest software that truly engages your audience?
Woobox helps you tackle this by offering various interactive experiences, from social media campaigns to landing pages, popups, and embeds. This means you can easily create and run successful contests, giveaways, polls, and more, all designed to boost engagement. The platform covers all your interactive experience needs across marketing channels. Here’s how to simplify your campaign management.
Woobox simplifies the process of creating engaging campaigns across multiple platforms. This allows you to collect content and incentivize participation using hashtags, likes, and comments on social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook.
The platform provides a range of tools for landing pages, helping you collect leads, gain insights, and reward your audience. You can create giveaways, photo/video contests, polls, and even distribute unique digital coupons. Additionally, Woobox offers instant win games and personality or trivia quizzes to entertain and collect more leads through social sharing. Its webpage popups can also grow your email list and incentivize signups with discount codes, all without needing any coding. Plus, you can embed hashtag galleries, forms, and polls directly into your website to further engage visitors. The result is a comprehensive solution that helps you drive measurable improvements in customer interaction rates.
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Key features:
- Diverse Campaign Types: Easily create social media contests (Instagram/Facebook giveaways, hashtag contests), interactive landing pages (giveaways, quizzes, polls, coupons), engaging popups, and embeddable content.
- Lead Generation & Engagement Tools: Collect leads and insights through customizable forms and quizzes, incentivize participation with unique digital codes or instant win games, and manage user-generated content effectively.
- Seamless Multi-Channel Integration: Run campaigns directly on social posts or embed interactive experiences into your website, ensuring broad audience reach and consistent brand interaction across all your marketing channels.
Learn more about Woobox features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: Woobox excels in offering a wide array of customizable interactive experiences, making it an excellent choice if you’re seeking the best contest software. Its tools, from social media giveaways to engaging landing pages and popups, directly address the need for boosted engagement and lead collection for growing businesses.
6. VYPER
Struggling to choose the perfect contest software?
VYPER offers solutions for generating referrals, loyalty, and maximizing paid media with interactive giveaways. This means you can create one-off campaigns and evergreen programs.
You can easily engage your audience and foster brand loyalty, leading to increased conversion rates and social followers.
Here’s how VYPER simplifies the process.
VYPER allows you to create engaging viral contests and reward programs to grow your customer base. This helps you build pre-launch hype and cultivate loyal fans.
The new visual designer makes creating a beautiful, modern campaign easy, and you can choose from multiple pre-made templates to get started in minutes. Additionally, you can use up to three different display modes—landing page, embed form, or widget—to run your campaigns, and easily deliver rewards to keep contestants engaged and increase revenue.
The result is a high-converting UX/UI without needing a designer.
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Key features:
- Viral Giveaways & Reward Programs: Create engaging, shareable campaigns that drive new referrals, increase social media actions, and boost revenue for your business.
- Flexible Display Modes: Utilize landing pages, embed forms, or widgets to seamlessly integrate your campaigns into your existing marketing channels and reach your audience effectively.
- Intuitive Visual Designer & Templates: Design stunning, modern campaigns effortlessly with a user-friendly visual editor and choose from a variety of pre-made templates for quick setup.
Learn more about VYPER features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: VYPER stands out as a strong candidate for the best contest software due to its ability to generate referrals and loyalty, maximize paid media, and simplify campaign creation with its visual designer. The platform’s high-converting UX/UI, flexible display modes, and success stories like Foundr’s 2x email acquisition target make it a powerful tool for marketing managers.
7. KingSumo
Struggling to boost your campaign engagement?
KingSumo provides a straightforward solution for growing your email list through viral giveaways.
This means you can easily attract new prospects and expand your reach, turning casual visitors into engaged subscribers.
Here’s how to capture more leads.
KingSumo helps you grow your audience by enabling viral giveaways. You can set up contests where participants sign up with their email or Google account, making entry incredibly simple.
This ease of entry and the ability for contestants to share giveaways for bonus entries significantly increases your brand’s visibility and reach. You can also define custom actions for entrants, directing more leads directly to your business. This flexible approach ensures your campaigns are tailored to your specific goals, from building your email list to driving targeted actions.
Boost your campaign’s reach and impact.
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Key features:
- Viral Giveaways: Effortlessly expand your audience and email list by encouraging participants to share contests with friends for bonus entries, amplifying your reach.
- Custom Actions: Drive specific business objectives by defining personalized actions for prospects and entrants, converting engagement into tangible leads.
- Simple Sign-Up: Enhance user adoption with convenient sign-up options via email or Google account, ensuring a seamless entry experience for participants.
Learn more about KingSumo features, pricing, & alternatives →
Verdict: KingSumo simplifies the process of running viral giveaways, directly addressing the pain point of generating leads and boosting engagement. Its ability to define custom actions makes it ideal for marketing managers seeking the best contest software to measure and optimize campaign ROI.
Conclusion
Your campaigns deserve better engagement.
Choosing the right tool from a sea of options is overwhelming. This often leads to decision paralysis, causing you to stick with platforms that fail to boost real engagement.
According to Dataintelo, the right tools can lead to 40% faster campaign execution. This means less time spent on setup and more on creating impactful campaigns that captivate your audience and drive results.
So, what’s my top recommendation?
After reviewing all the options, I found ShortStack stands out from the rest. It directly solves the engagement challenge with its powerful and intuitive campaign builder.
Its library of over 150 templates and drag-and-drop builder makes creating unique user experiences incredibly simple. I believe it’s the best contest software for driving real conversions.
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I highly recommend you start a free trial of ShortStack today. See for yourself how easy it is to build your next viral campaign.
Your engagement rates will thank you.
