Are you looking for a fast and easy way of running giveaways on your website?

With the assistant of a WordPress giveaway plugin, you can create giveaway contests without knowing any coding. Giveaways are an excellent way for attracting new visitors to your site, grow your email list, generate leads, and can even help increase sales.

There are many plugins that you can use. Choosing the right plugin can be hard. As some are tricky to use. While some don’t offer many customisation options, and others are just plain old buggy. So in this WordPress Wednesday, let’s compare 6 different WordPress giveaway plugins and platforms. So, you can get up and running your competitions in no time.

But why is it Important to Run a Giveaway?

There are many advantages of running a giveaway contest on your site. such as boosting your social followers.

By utilising a giveaway, you can ask visitors to like and follow your social page for extra reward points or entries.

And giveaways can help you to grow your email lists. By asking visitors to subscribe to your newsletter to enter the competition. And gathering emails can helps to create leads, which you can use to convert into sales. There are plenty more other ways why running a giveaway can help you and your business.

Now, what to Look for in a WordPress Giveaway Plugin?

When it comes to picking a giveaway plugin for your WordPress website, there are a couple of things you should look for:

• Ease of Use; Giveaway plugins should be user friendly. And also can help you create engaging contests. Without requiring any coding.
• Email Integration; As mentioned above, one of the reasons for running giveaways and contests. Is to generate leads and increase email subscribers. So look out for plugins that offer email integration.
• Price; Pick a plugin that is affordable. But also offers you all the features to build a successful giveaway campaign.
• Social Sharing; Social sharing is a great option to look. As it helps to promote your giveaway and increase social followers.

1. RafflePress

RafflePress is amazingly easy to set up, configure, and use. It features a graphic block structure for customisation.

So don’t spend hours refining every bit of details as RafflePress allows you to create prizes in minutes. Use it to personalise a giveaway to suit the rest of your user experience and branding on your site. Furthermore, established bonus activities might result in genuine social media interaction.

It also offers heaps of features that may help you build your email list, site traffic, social media followers, and more. This is what makes this plugin a powerful tool for generating leads for businesses.

Price: $49.00 per year for 1 site to $449.00 (one time payment for Unlimited Sites+ Lifetime Updates)

2. Gleam

Gleam is a platform that lets you run competitions on your website. Just simply add your prize, choose your actions, and then embed the contest on your site.

The plugin lets you instantly reward yourself in return for user actions. You can ask them to visit social media pages, follow or subscribe, etc.

There are 100+ integrations to connect to your social media platforms and marketing apps. One of the downsides to using this platform. Is a lack of customisation options. As you will only be to change a few things. Another somewhat downside is the Gleam branding will be added to your contest. The only way to remove its branding is to go with either the BusinessPlan or PremiumPlan.

Also, it redirects users to other platforms to follow or subscribe and which means it doesn’t return them to your site.

Price: Starting from $97.00 per month

3. KingSumo

As a former premium WordPress giveaway plugin. KingSumo is now a SaaS(Software as a Service). Using this is easy and simple to use to create your giveaway.

KingSumo has options that let you add social sharing options such as Facebook. Also, it integrates with email services like MailChimp to help grow your subscriber list. Schedule the start and end dates of your contest ahead of time.

Plus, this service lets you grow your contest audience by encouraging users to share it.

There are a few downsides when using this as you cannot collect participant names. So you won’t get the critical information you need for marketing purposes.

Price: Free (with limitations) or $49.00 (one time charge) for Web App or From $198 (lifetime) for WP Plugin.

4. Simple Giveaways

Simple Giveaways is a WordPress contest plugin. This plugin lets you host your contest on a page on your website. Also, it has giveaway widgets and shortcodes to promote your contest page on any other page or sidebar etc.

To create your giveaway you will just need this plugin. Then define user actions, and share it on your website. When users complete actions, they will be added to your contest or sweepstake. And when they share the giveaway, they can also earn extra entries increasing their chances to win.

You can integrate email services like MailChimp and WooCommerce, but this feature is only available in the Pro version.

Price: Free to $69.99 per year

5. Lottery for WooCommerce

Built for WooCommerce, the Lottery for WooCommerce can be used to automatically generate lottery tickets.

The plugin lets you customise fields and winner selection. To control your lottery configurations. While you can issue free tickers or add a price tag. So contestants can purchase a lottery ticket to enter your contest.

You can add a requirement that customers need to first register themselves before entering into the contest. This can help grow your subscriber and member base.

Customers will be notified by email when their lottery ticket is confirmed, when the lottery ends, and announce the winner. When the winner is selected. A product order will automatically be created with zero charges to the winner account.

Price: $79.00 per a year

6. Rafflecopter

RaffleCopter is a giveaway platform for WordPress that lets you create giveaways for your site without any coding. The platform isn’t WordPress specific so it can works on other platforms as well.

This platform has been built for scale so you can customise your contest to suit your audience as it grows.

It works with all major email marketing services and offers integrations. It comes with a refer-a-friend feature, polls, and survey options.

It’s has a free plan with very limited features. You will need to upgrade to get most of the features. That you need to create a successful giveaway.

Please note that if you choose a pro plan that they can be expensive. But you will get the same features and more with other contest plugins like RafflePress. That comes at a portion of the cost.

Price: Free to $84.00 per month