If you want to create contests and landing pages, Shortstack is a great option.
But other tools exist for the same purpose.
And you should consider them.
Why?
Shortstack is far from perfect.
For example, some of their users have complained about:
- High cost
- Steep learning curve
- Limited entries
If these are serious issues for you, think of other contest tools that meet these needs.
Luckily, I’ve researched these tools.
In a moment, I’ll show you 6 tools and features they provide to run contests and generate leads.
1. Woorise
Even though Woorise also caps the number of contest entries in its plans, it’s cheaper than Shortstack. For example, Woorise’s most expensive plan costs the same as Shortstack’s cheapest plan.
So, if you’re looking for a budget-friendly Shortstack alternative, Woorise can fit your needs.
But beyond the costs, Woorise is easy to use. First, Woorise provides over 70 templates for different use cases.
With that, even non-technical users can pick and edit a template to their taste.
And whenever you face any issues, Woorise has fast and helpful customer support that can resolve them.
Here are some key features of Woorise:
- Templates: With over 70 templates ranging from giveaways to landing pages to surveys, you’ll find a template for your campaign.
- Drag-and-drop builder: Woorise has a drag-and-drop builder to design unique contests and landing pages. You’ll find it even easier if you’re familiar with the WordPress CMS.
- Landing pages: Woorise also has landing page creation features to generate leads. You can pick one of the templates and edit it or build a page from scratch.
- Form creation: Forms let you collect information from your leads. Apart from forms on landing pages, you can also create popup forms that are triggered by a CTA button.
- Link in bio: Apart from running giveaways and creating landing pages, Woorise is also a link in bio tool. With this feature, you can create a link in bio page that drives your audience to important business pages.
- Online payments collection: If you want to collect payments for some of your campaigns, this feature lets you do that. With integrations to payment providers like PayPal, Stripe, Square, and 2Checkout, you can collect payments through your favorite provider.
- Integrations: Woorise integrates with over 30 marketing tools to move your leads easily. Then, you can nurture these leads later.
Woorise pricing
Woorise has a limited free plan. Then, the Basic plan costs $29 monthly ($23 on an annual plan), while the Grow plan costs $49 monthly ($39 on an annual plan).
Lastly, the Pro plan costs $99 monthly ($79 on an annual plan). However, the Pro plan can get more expensive if you need over 20,000 entries monthly.
2. SweepWidget
SweepWidget is one of the best giveaway tools you can find today. In fact, it’s on my list of the best Facebook and Instagram giveaway tools.
How does it compare to Shortstack?
First, SweepWidget costs less than Shortstack. For example, SweepWidget’s lowest plan costs around $25 monthly, while Shortstack’s costs $79 monthly.
Apart from the price, SweepWidget offers unlimited giveaway participants and many contest options. At least, as many options as Shortstack.
But beyond that, SweepWidget is easy to use. Of course, there’s a valid argument that Shortstack gives you more freedom in designing your giveaways, but not everyone wants that.
If you just want to design a contest in minutes, SweepWidget may be a better option.
SweepWidget also has fast customer support that can resolve any issues you face while running campaigns.
Here are some key features of SweepWidget:
- High number of entry methods: SweepWidget offers over 60 entry methods across 30 social media platforms. You can run giveaways on platforms from social media to eBay to Twitch.
- Templates: You’ll find over 25 templates for different use cases. This can be a good starting point for creating your contests.
- Giveaway builder: Even without templates, SweepWidget’s giveaway builder lays out easy steps to follow to set up your giveaway. Even if you think your technical skills are poor, you’ll still design your giveaway without external help.
- Data collection: SweepWidget allows you to collect information about your contest participants. This can be their name, email address, or other pieces of information.
- Geo-block entries: If you serve people in a specific location, you can open your giveaway to that location alone. This way, you’ll ensure you only generate leads that can become ideal customers.
- Integrations: SweepWidget lets you integrate with other marketing tools to process your leads. These range from integrations for CRM to email marketing software.
You can read my full review of SweepWidget to learn more about it.
SweepWidget pricing
SweepWidget’s Pro plan costs $29 monthly ($24.2 on an annual plan), Business costs $59 monthly ($49.2 on an annual plan), Premium costs $119 monthly ($99.2 on an annual plan), and Enterprise costs $249 monthly ($207.5 on an annual plan).
You also get a free plan if you’d like to try SweepWidget before committing to a paid plan.
3. ViralSweep
One thing ViralSweep has going for it is its great designs and many giveaway options.
In terms of pricing, only ViralSweep’s lowest plan costs less than Shortstack’s. Once you go up, it gets more expensive than Shortstack.
What does ViralSweep offer?
First, it’s easy to use. ViralSweep provides examples of its use cases. So, these examples can feed you ideas for your own promotions.
Then, you have so many options. From sweepstakes to hashtags to instant win contests, you’ll likely find your preferred contest type here.
Apart from that, ViralSweep allows unlimited participants for every plan.
If you want to get your contests in front of a bigger audience, the ViralSweep partner network provides a platform for that.
Also, ViralSweep has fast customer support to help you out of any issues you may face during your campaigns.
Here are some key features of ViralSweep:
- ViralSweep partner network: The partner network includes businesses on ViralSweep. You can reach out to these companies to promote your contest to their audience or vice versa. With this, you can reach a bigger audience.
- Extensive contest types: ViralSweep has many contest types if you want to create unique campaigns. Apart from the popular contest types, you can create instant win, waitlist, and milestone contests.
- Email/SMS collection forms: These forms let you collect giveaway participants’ email addresses and phone numbers. You can also create multi-step forms that let you collect more information.
- Fraud detection: ViralSweep has a fraud detection system that alerts you if a participant is suspected of fraud. You can also prevent multiple entries from a single IP address.
- A/B Testing: This feature lets you change elements of your promotions and divide your traffic between contest variations. Through this, you can find contest variations that perform best in terms of your goals.
- Integrations: ViralSweep has over 40 integrations, including CRM and email marketing tools.
ViralSweep pricing
The Starter plan costs $49 monthly ($41 on an annual plan), while the Business plan costs $199 monthly ($166 on an annual plan).
The Premium plan costs $399 monthly ($333 if you pay annually), while the Elite plan costs $999 monthly ($833 on an annual plan). To subscribe to the Enterprise plan, you have to contact the ViralSweep team for the price.
ViralSweep also allows you to go for a 7-day trial before paying for any of the plans.
4. Vyper
Vyper is another option that competes favorably with Shortstack. In terms of price, both tools are similar. Vyper also caps participation at up to 30,000 participants for its lowest plan.
With its contest builder, Vyper gives you a lot of options to edit your contest page according to your needs. You can edit the colors, text, buttons, and other parts of your page.
With the structure of your contest page, you can easily modify it to serve as a landing page for other marketing campaigns.
What’s really impressive is that Vyper provides extensive customization options while making the software easy to use.
You can also deliver your contests as a landing page, embedded form, or a popup widget.
But beyond that, Vyper has responsive support that can help you create better pages. For example, their support team can check your landing page and give you ideas to improve it.
Here are some key features of Vyper:
- Easy-to-use contest builder: Vyper gives you more creative freedom while maintaining an easy-to-use interface. You can use the builder to create contests and landing pages for other campaigns.
- Templates: You’ll find many templates for various use cases. These range from giveaways to referrals to leaderboards.
- Data collection forms: Vyper has a data collection form on your contest landing page. By default, you have name and email address on the form. But Vyper allows you to add form fields to collect more information.
- Thank you page: This thank you page appreciates your participants. But it also provides more options to get more points in your contest.
- Referral: This is one of the contest types available on Vyper. Participants gain more points when they refer their friends to enter your giveaway. This can help you create viral social promotions.
- Leaderboard: This contest type lets participants compete against one another to come out on top. Their position may be determined by voting or the actions they take.
- Analytics: Vyper provides metrics to understand your performance. And you can integrate with Google Analytics to get more data.
Vyper pricing
The Enterprise plan costs $149 monthly, while the Agency plan costs $299 monthly.
In contrast, if you pay annually, you’ll get a massive 50% discount on each plan.
Vyper lets you create a free account to try all its features. However, you have to pay before running a giveaway.
5. Easypromos
In terms of price, you’ll find 2 Easypromos plans cheaper than Shortstack’s lowest plan. While Easypromos’s Basic plan only allows 5,000 participants, the Basic pro plan allows unlimited participants.
Another thing you can expect is a high number of contest types. Apart from giveaways, you can find contests like knowledge quiz, puzzle, and multimedia contests.
Along with that, you can access the large template library for your contest type. These templates will give you a good foundation to build your contests.
Overall, Easypromos’s contest builder is easy to use, and most marketers will design a contest in minutes.
Easypromos also allows you to pay for a single promotion. So, if you only run a few giveaways annually, you’ll find this cost-effective.
Here are some key features of Easypromos:
- Extensive contest types: with over 40 contest applications, you’ll have unique ideas to run giveaways for years.
- Extensive templates: Easypromos offers over 300 templates for their contest types. So, you’ll likely find a few templates, no matter the contest type you want to use.
- Data collection form: For some of the contests, you can create forms to collect participants’ data. While this can help lead generation, you can also learn more about your audience.
- Email autoresponder: This feature lets you set up automatic emails during and after your giveaways. You can set up emails that are triggered by your participants’ actions.
- Organize Brands: If you run a marketing agency, you may need to run contests for a few brands. The Organize Brands feature lets you group contests for each client in one place.
- Analytics: With Easypromos analytics, you’ll find metrics such as visits, sources, shares, and participants. You can even uncover more data with a Google Analytics integration.
- Integrations: Easypromos provides integrations to CRM and other marketing tools. With these, you can reach out to participants after your giveaway.
If you want more information about this product, read my full Easypromos review.
Easypromos pricing
Easypromos’s Basic plan costs $29 monthly ($25 on an annual plan), while the Basic pro plan costs $49 monthly ($41 on an annual plan).
The Premium plan costs $199 monthly ($167 on an annual plan), while the White label plan costs $399 monthly ($334 on an annual plan).
If you want to subscribe to the Corporate plan, you’ll have to contact the Easypromos team.
6. Gleam
Compared to Shortstack, Gleam costs more. Their base plans cost the same, but Gleam costs more in the higher plans.
But for this, you get unlimited participants for all Gleam’s plans.
On Gleam, you’ll find extensive entry methods. In addition to traditional giveaway methods, you can find entry methods like app downloads, blog comments, and adding a book to shelf in Goodreads.
Beyond that, Gleam is easy to use. Even with poor technical skills, you can design a giveaway without help.
Here are some key features of Gleam:
- Contest delivery styles: Gleam gives you many options to deliver your giveaway to participants. For instance, you can host your contest landing page on Gleam or your website. You can also embed your contest widget or use a smart popup.
- Extensive entry methods: As I mentioned earlier, Gleam gives you many entry methods. You can even get contest ideas by just going through the entry methods.
- Referrer reporting: This feature shows the sources that drive traffic to your giveaways.
- Galleries: If you want to see all the creative ways your customers use your product, galleries can work really well. Gleam lets you collect images and videos into galleries that other participants can see.
- Integrations: On Gleam, you can integrate with popular marketing tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, GetResponse, Shopify, and more. This allows you to collect and transfer your leads effectively.
Gleam pricing
Gleam’s Pro plan costs $97 monthly ($79 on an annual plan), while the Business plan costs $397 monthly ($299 on an annual plan).
Lastly, the Premium plan costs $997 monthly ($749 on an annual plan).
Conclusion
You may be looking to cancel Shortstack for another tool.
Or just considering the available options.
Now, you can compare these 6 Shortstack alternatives to choose the right option.
Visit their websites to check out their pricing plans and the features available for each plan.
Disclaimer: This page contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you). This doesn’t affect my opinions or reviews.
