Are you one of those businesses seeking the best online giveaway tools to boost your traffic, increase more followers and generate more leads?
Let’s face it. Running an online giveaway and contest can be one of the best marketing assets of your company. If you choose the best prize, an online giveaway is an excellent way of drawing qualified leads to your website.
However, the only issue here is hosting an online contest can be challenging to deal with and become more troublesome than it is worth. Nonetheless, if you have the best giveaway plugin, tool, or app, things could become a lot simpler.
That’s why in this article, we are going to review one of the best giveaway software you can start using today: ShortStack. Let us get clear on why you should utilize this marketing tool to increase engagement. Learn its pros and cons, awesome features, pricing, and everything in between.
If you’re ready, then let’s begin!
Click on “open” if you want to see exactly what we will talk about in the rest of this article.
Quick Overview
What is ShortStack?
ShortStack is a complete marketing tool that enables you to make awesome giveaways. It claims to be the most customizable all-in-one giveaway software in the market today. With this tool, you can make an unlimited number of interactive landing pages for quizzes, contests, giveaways, and many more for collecting leads as well as landing conversions.
You can utilize its white-label capabilities to make all your contests your own. Big thanks to the simple embed option. You can put your contests anywhere you want and allow them to pop up on your website and capture your visitor’s attention. How awesome is that?
It is a practical tool for anyone who runs giveaways and social media contests. On top of that, it can be utilized to create a contest, design a particular landing page for it, send automated emails into your lists, and so much more.
You see, it is a niche solution for running highly engaging social media contests or giveaways end-to-end. Thus, if you are searching for something that does that, without any bells and whistles, then this is the perfect answer for you!
ShortStack specifications
Features | Analytics / Email marketing / Giveaway / Landing Page Platform |
Best suited for | Small businesses, Mid size businesses, Large enterprises |
Website languages | English |
Website URL | Visit official website |
Support link | Support page |
Live chat | No |
Company address | Nevada, US |
Year founded | 2012 |
Pricing
ShortStack pricing: How much does ShortStack cost?
Compared to many other services out there, ShortStack offers a free version that is 100% commitment-free. The trial is free forever, and it also does not oblige you to give your credit card details. It includes everything in the Business plan. However, there’s a big catch. You are only limited to only twenty entries and one hundred views for every thirty days. That is enough to get a good feel of the platform, but it will not be enough in the end. Thus, after you try it for free, you can pick from one of their paid plans.
Pricing range | From $99 to $499 per month |
Pricing types | Annual subscription / Monthly subscription |
Free plan | Yes |
Free trial | No |
Money back guarantee | No |
Pricing page link | See plans |
ShortStack pricing plans
Apart from the free plan, here are different pricing plans on ShortStack:
Business plan ($99 per month/$79 annual)
With this package, you receive 10,000 entries per campaign and 50,000 views every month. Keep in mind that the number of campaigns and emails you could send is unlimited. You can also make giveaways and other social media contests.
Agency plan ($249 per month or $199 with annual subscription)
The storage limit goes to 50,000, and the monthly view count goes up to 250,000. With this package, you get access to hashtag, retweet, and video upload contests. On top of that, you can upload at least five photos in every contest. This package eliminates the ShortStack logo and lets you make a personalized domain.
Brand plan ($499 per month/$399 per month with annual subscription)
With a 30-day limit of 2,500,000 and an entry limit of 500,000, this package offers businesses enough room to grow. Other users complained about it for being too costly in their reviews. However, we would say it is worth it, considering its advanced functionality. That plan also enables at least five simultaneous users.
Enterprise plan
This is the most powerful package, which eliminates the limits and enables you to personalize everything. To identify the ShortStack price and parameters, you should get in touch with their sales.
Who Should Use It
Who should use ShortStack?
ShortStack is ideal for digital marketers, enterprises, businesses, and brands that are on the lookout for excellent social marketing tools. It is also suitable for bloggers and companies who wish to get more traffic and leads to their websites.
You see, the platform offers users tracking pixels, customizable templates, social contests, and apps to help grow their blog or brand.
Who is eligible to use ShortStack?
As mentioned earlier, ShortStack is a cloud-based app that enables brands and marketers to grow their audience and target-specific users and make advanced, lead-capturing tools to boost their revenue.
What makes this platform stand out from other platforms out there is that it is an all-in-one platform for highly efficient marketing campaigns without needing any coding at all. Also, it develops each aspect of a campaign with an easy drag-and-drop interface, which could be edited to suit your project perfectly.
ShortStack also integrates with different services such as Campaign Monitor, Zapier, MailChimp, Facebook, and more, enabling you to send targeted emails even push notifications for featured deals and special promotions.
Features
ShortStack features: What can you do with it?
This is the most crucial section of this review, as this is where we will categorize all of the key features of the platform. We will talk about all of those in detail and let you know if it meets our standards or not.
Templates
With ShortStack, you receive a huge number of engaging templates both for social media contests and landing pages. Those templates are helpful if you like to design and launch a contest or giveaway without a lot of effort. You can also pick the kind of contest and a template, then personalize it based on your needs.
Landing pages
With the platform, you can make various contest landing pages, which include quizzes, refer-a-friend contests, photo contests, giveaways, and a lot more. For every type of contest, you obtain numerous template options for you to choose from. Thus, if you like to run a giveaway contest, you’ll get different templates for that type of contest.
Social media contests
ShortStack also offers templates for various social media contests for different platforms. For each of those, you can pick from different templates. You can also receive templates for contest forms that contestants must fill out to enter.
Analytics and data management
ShortStack can offer you the necessary analytics on your contest landing pages and how well they performed throughout. You can utilize that data to evaluate where you lacked, allowing you to improve and enhance your future contests.
A few of the key metrics you can check are device type, shares, clicks, traffic sources, views, and traffic, among many others. It’s worth mentioning that you can integrate ShortStack’s analytics along with other analytics services like Google Analytics and evaluate your campaigns and contests’ performance to make future improvements.
Platform management and account services
On top of that, ShortStack also offers some customized services that cost a little more. For instance, you can employ their team to moderate your contest entries on your behalf. You can utilize their custom design services and have their team develop and run contests for you.
You can also talk along with their sales team to talk about your needs and receive a quote for such added services.
Built-in email tools
Did you know that you also have the option to deliver automated emails to your participants straight from the ShortStack platform? How awesome is that? Those could be thank you emails for participating, informational content announcing the winner, and so much more. The best part is that you can also send follow-up emails once the contest has ended to nurture all your needs.
What’s more, the platform helps you make drip email campaigns where you can plan and send numerous emails to one another. Therefore, after investing in ShortStack, you receive the dual benefit of an email marketing and content management solution in one!
Contest management tools
ShortStack is not only suitable for crafting landing pages and contests, but it will help you run your campaigns. It features numerous contest management tools, which could help you make and run a contest end-to-end with the least effort.
Here are some of the contest management tools you can get:
Entry and voting restrictions
Numerous types of contests accept one entry per user. However, the platform helps you enforce such entry restrictions. You don’t like the same users voting many times for one participant in the contests where voters choose a winner. Right? For those situations, ShortStack offers voting restrictions that you could enforce.
Rights management
Using contests is an excellent way to produce user-generated content you can post on your social media platforms or highlight on other brand platforms. Nonetheless, you should request explicit permission from the users so you can use their content.
That’s something that the platform can answer. It leaves a comment on the user’s post that you’d want to use and alerts them when you offer their permission. The entire process is extremely automated, and you can find UGC for which you have the user’s content to use.
Winner selection
One critical aspect of running any kind of contest is to decide the winners in a fair and unbiased way. ShortStack could help you automate that process and make it a lot simpler, preventing you from doing that manually.
On top of that, the Advanced Entry Picker of the platform is a practical tool to choose random winners in just a few seconds. You can also include your selection criteria to ensure that the winner selection follows the contests’ rules.
Conclusion
ShortStack review: Why you should use it?
There’s no doubt that ShortStack is the best giveaway software for online contests. It is shockingly secure, versatile, simple to use, and most of all, it works well. In addition, its excellent customer support and free version make it available for everybody.
ShortStack could introduce freshness to your entire search engine marketing agency and help you create unique SEO-friendly landing pages. It has a single dashboard where you can handle all your campaigns and create the landing pages you want.
That dashboard has various tabs that have Builder, campaigns, lists or entries, media, emails, and tables. The dashboard also presents you with all the statistics and the active landing pages or campaigns you currently have.
What are the advantages of ShortStack?
ShortStack is one of the best tools to grow your blog or brand by marketing or branding. You can easily make unique landing pages, send emails, run social contests, and evaluate results (no coding needed).
With this platform, you can also get more insights by including tracking pixels from your favorite services such as Google AdWords, Facebook, Google Analytics, and many more. It also provides forty customizable templates personalized campaign design services and integrates them along with other famous platforms.
Here are some of the other advantages you can enjoy when you use ShortStack:
Hassle-free and easy setup
The smooth and simple setup is the first thing that draws in new users to ShortStack. To begin with, the platform has a great free trial version—no credit card needed and no time constraint. You are only limited on the number of views and entries of your ShortStack landing page.
After you sign up, the software will direct you through the initial steps. It will also offer you efficient tips all the way through and even offer video tutorials for each new activity.
The editing is a breeze
The Campaign builder will be your buddy when making ShortStack landing pages. It is based on the WYSIWYG principle, not to mention the final product will look like the campaign you see in the editor.
That also indicates that you can create contests and pages without any coding experience. Indeed, you can also add your CSS code if you like.
It enables you to create all types of online contests
You can make campaigns for TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, requesting users to upload their videos and photos and pick a winner. You can even advertise your ShortStack contests through Facebook ads.
Furthermore, there’s an option of building quizzes, where all participants answer a question for a chance to win something. You will also find instant win contests and giveaways where the first user to engage with your page wins.
With those creative ShortStack pages, you can boost your sales leads and visitor engagement without breaking the bank. How awesome is that?
Excellent analytics capability
We’re surprised by the analytics capability of this platform. You can easily connect it with Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics, or you can take advantage of its native real-time analytics. The software also computers your shares, clicks, views, and highlights which devices your potential customer utilizes the most.
The best part is that you plan a date range and check all of those throughout a specific time. But what most shocked us during our review process what their email analytics functionality. You see, the platform offers amazing insights into your campaign’s efficacy. You can also see the number of emails you have delivered.
Security
ShortStack provides different safety and privacy features. Those include SSL encryption, GDRP compliance, and single-sign-on (SSO) with the OneLogin integration, adding an added layer of security.
Now, we want to hear from you. Have you tried ShortStack before? How was your experience with it? Let us know in the comment section. If you have more concerns about the giveaway software, let us know!
Alternatives
ShortStack Alternatives
Before subscribing to ShortStack, it’s always a good idea to check out the competition and find the best giveaway software for your needs. You can find the ShortStack alternatives here.
Here are some versus to compare ShortStack with its competitors: