In a way, the beloved children’s story Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is about a successful sweepstakes campaign. By placing five golden tickets in candy bars, chocolate magnate Willie Wonka got the publicity he wanted for his factory—Wonka chocolate bars sold out everywhere—and he also found an heir to his business.
Brand contests like this are popular in real life, too. Offering a prize is a relatively low-cost way to get attention for your brand, generate buzz, and spur customers to take action. Giveaway apps provide an easy solution for ecommerce companies looking for an exciting way to boost engagement.
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What is a giveaway app?
Giveaway apps are software tools that help businesses, influencers, and even solopreneurs run online contests. They’re a quick way to add the digital infrastructure for giveaways without making significant updates to your website.
Ecommerce giveaways are usually a type of giveaway raffle—anyone who enters gets a chance to win a prize, discount, or other reward. Common entry methods include submitting an email address on an entry form, following brand social media accounts, or completing a survey. Giveaways can support various ecommerce business goals, including attracting new email subscribers, increasing social media followings, and collecting customer data.
Best giveaway apps
- Gleam Competitions
- Sweep Widget
- ViralSweep
- Social Boost
- Giveaway Ninja
- Gratisfaction
- Audience
- Apps Mav
Giveaway apps simplify the process of modifying your website, collecting entries, and picking winners. A good tool is all you need to start running exciting contests and collecting customer emails. Here are eight of the most popular giveaway apps in the Shopify App Store:
Gleam Competitions
Gleam Competitions is a simple tool for running giveaways, surveys, and sweepstakes. You can easily embed it in your Shopify store. This trusted giveaway app supports multiple customer entry methods, such as submitting an email address, interacting with your social media account, or clicking on a specific link. This tool offers a variety of helpful analytics features, including robust conversion tracking. Gleam also includes a native A/B testing tool to help page owners compare messaging strategies and create effective contests. Users can design their campaigns or use one of Gleam’s templates.
Pricing: Gleam offers a free plan that supports unlimited giveaways. Paid plans range from $59 per month for a Pro plan to $399 per month for a Premium plan, which includes additional customer support and enhanced customization tools.
Sweep Widget
Sweep Widget can run giveaways directly from your Shopify page or a social media account—it supports Facebook contests and Instagram giveaways. This app offers multiple entry methods you can customize to support your goals. You can create automatic contest entries when an email recipient signs up for your newsletter. Or, to encourage purchase completion, try creating a campaign that offers customers contest entries for checkout completion or sharing an Instagram post.
Sweep Widget includes anti-cheating tools to verify valid contest entries. User ratings and reviews mention this tool’s simple setup and responsive customer support team. This app is an easy, low-cost way to start running contests.
Pricing: Sweep Widget’s free plan supports unlimited giveaway campaigns and Shopify store embeds. Paid plans are available for $29, $59, and $110 per month. Purchase-triggered entries are available starting at the Pro level for $29 per month.
ViralSweep
ViralSweep is an easy giveaway app with a suite of social media features. ViralSweep promotions can encourage engagement by offering entries in exchange for social media actions, including shares and likes. It includes tools to help analyze audience data. The app also supports photo and video contests to help your business collect user-generated content, while visitors can vote for their favorite submission. ViralSweep is best for businesses that want to build their social media followings, and it’s built to handle large volumes of data.
Pricing: ViralSweep has four paid plans ranging from $49 to $999 per month. Social action-triggered entries are included in the starter plan. A seven-day free trial is available for each tier.
Social Boost
Social Boost offers a wide range of entry methods. Customers can enter contests by engaging on social media platforms, submitting an email address, and referring a friend, in addition to other options. It also features customization options, including the ability to design unique entry forms. User reviews mention loving Social Boost’s intuitive drag-and-drop interface and responsive customer support team.
Pricing: Social Boost’s free plan includes unlimited campaigns and supports up to 50 entrants. Paid plans range from $49.95 per month for 500 entrants to $179 per month for 5,000 entrants.
Giveaway Ninja
Giveaway Ninja is a comprehensive tool for creating online giveaways or contests. The intuitive interface sorts entry methods by campaign goal, making it easy to design contests that support your business needs.
Giveaway Ninja can run photo contests in addition to raffles. For photo contests, the app displays an interactive gallery of photos or Instagram posts submitted by participants. Users can vote by selecting their favorite. Giveaway Ninja includes mobile-ready design templates for iPhone and Android users. Users praised Giveaway Ninja’s seamless Shopify and Mailchimp integrations.
Pricing: Giveaway Ninja has four paid plans, ranging from $29 per month for up to 500 monthly entrants to $199 per month for unlimited monthly entrants. Each plan is also available for a discounted annual rate.
Gratisfaction
Gratisfaction lets businesses run giveaways and collect entries on multiple platforms. It includes several templates to streamline the campaign creation process. When a contest concludes, Gratisfaction picks winners at random from the contestant pool. Gratisfaction also supports customer loyalty and rewards programs. Users can design customized rewards programs that offer points based on purchases or give registered customers a free giveaway on special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries.
Pricing: Gratisfaction’s free plan includes all features and supports unlimited campaigns for up to 100 entrants. Paid plans range from $19.99 per month for 200 entrants to $69.95 per month for 1,000 entrants.
Audience
Audience is an audience management and giveaway platform that supports advanced data collection. This tool specializes in giveaways based on multistep quizzes and surveys to record information about customer behaviors and interests, not just email addresses. After collecting entries, Audience consolidates the data and creates a customer profile for each new registrant. Shop owners can use this data to develop tailored messaging and support retargeting efforts. Audience includes a simple campaign-building tool to support survey development.
Pricing: Audience offers a free version and a Growth plan for $249 per month. A 30-day free trial is available for the paid plan.
Apps Mav
Apps Mav specializes in creating gamified giveaway experiences. The app provides templates for interactive pop-ups that include scratch cards, spin-to-win games, and quizzes. Web visitors enter their email addresses for a chance to play. The app supports bonus entry offers for additional user actions like referring a friend or returning to the page after a set time. Apps Mav focuses on instant-win campaigns—it doesn’t support giveaway draws or photo contests.
Pricing: Apps Mav’s free version includes all features and supports unlimited campaigns for up to 50 entrants. Paid versions start at $34.95 per month for 500 users and range up to $124.95 per month for 10,000 entrants.
Giveaway app FAQ
Is there an app for giveaways?
Yes, you can find a range of trusted giveaway apps in the Shopify App Store. These tools help manage collecting entries and randomly picking giveaway winners.
How do you pick a random winner for a giveaway?
Most tools on the app market include automatic winner selection tools for giveaway raffles. When the contest is over, the app will pick winners randomly from the pool of entrants.
Where can I post my giveaways?
Sharing information about your giveaway can help increase visibility and promote customer participation. Consider posting a link and a summary of the giveaway rules on social media accounts like Instagram, X, or Facebook. You can also include a banner or pop-up on your website to alert visitors.
