9+ Best WordPress Giveaway Plugins to Boost Engagement and Traffic

Giveaways have proven to be a powerful tool for attracting new audiences and generating valuable leads for my websites.

In a single campaign, I’ve seen a 20% surge in unique website visitors, many of whom were completely new to my brand.

So, what makes giveaways so effective? It’s simple: people are incentivized to participate!

When you offer a compelling prize, they’re more likely to provide their email address and opt-in for future communication. This allows you to build a targeted audience of potential customers interested in your brand.

In my experience, giveaways have consistently delivered strong results, generating anywhere from 500 to 1,000 high-quality leads per campaign. These leads represent a pool of genuinely interested individuals who have already shown a willingness to interact with your brand.

While giveaways offer a powerful audience-building tool, their success hinges on more than just an enticing prize.

You need to run your contests the right way. Make sure you have fair and transparent policies, clear directions for participants, easy entry options, and a prize that’s aligned with your audience!

What I love about living in this digital world is that we can find tools for pretty much anything. There are plenty of giveaway plugins and tools that will take care of all the nitty gritty details for you.

I’ve used quite a few of them over the years. For this guide, I also tested out some new tools.

I’ll review the best and most popular giveaway plugins for WordPress I’ve come across to help you launch a successful giveaway.

Top 3 WordPress Giveaway Plugins

Plugin	Best For?	Free version	Highlight	Pricing
RafflePress	Viral Giveaways & Sweepstakes	✅	Refer a friend	$39.50/yr
OptinMonster	Contest Wheels	❌	Spin the wheel	$31.60/yr
Simple Giveaways	Basic Giveaways and Contests	✅	Verified actions	$49.99/yr

How I Test and Review WordPress Plugins

First, I’ve picked the best giveaway WordPress plugins from experience. I’ve used many of these plugins on my own websites and know what they are capable of.

Added to that, I’ve also done my research on their features, user reviews, and how well they integrate with WordPress and WordPress themes. Here’s my general process:

On a test WordPress site, I install each selected plugin. This lets me check out the plugin’s installation, setup, and compatibility with your website theme and other plugins.
I review and test its process and interface to check for ease of use, customization options, automation, and reliability.
With most WordPress plugins, there’s no one-size-fits-all. So I look for unique features to help you decide if it’s the right plugin for your website’s needs. I’ve looked for plugins with features such as templates, visual builder, automatic winner picker, contest rules generator, and refer-a-friend actions.

My goal is to find plugins that make it easy for you to create and host giveaways and contests to boost engagement and user experience on your site.

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How to Choose a WordPress Giveaway Plugin?

To host a contest on your site, there are plenty of tools available that you can simply install on your site and get started. You’ll never have to touch your site’s coding.

That said, not every plugin offers the same features and results. Before you pick one, especially if you’re investing in a premium plugin, here’s what you should look for:

Ease of Use: The plugin should be user-friendly and easy to set up, especially if you’re not a technical expert.
Entry Methods: Check if the plugin supports various entry methods such as email sign-ups, social media actions, referrals, etc.
Customization: Look for customization options to match the giveaway’s branding and design.
Random Winner Selection: Randomly selecting a winner helps maintain fairness.
Integration: It’s helpful if you can integrate the contest with your email marketing software, CRM, and other tools you use.
Tracking and Analytics: This will help you measure the success of your giveaway.
Legal Compliance: You’ll want to be sure you comply with relevant laws and regulations, especially when it comes to giveaways, sweepstakes, and data collection.

Aside from this, make sure the plugin has good customer support and comprehensive documentation. With any WordPress plugin, you’ll likely face issues or have questions, so it’s important that you be able to connect with customer support to get help.

Remember that the right choice can significantly impact the success of your giveaway campaign.

Now let’s take a look at the best contest plugins you can choose from.

Best WordPress Giveaway Plugins

1. RafflePress

RafflePress is the best giveaway plugin for WordPress. This has been my go-to giveaway plugin for a couple of years now and I’ll tell you why.

First, it’s designed to be an all-in-one solution to help you create and manage successful giveaways, contests, and sweepstakes on your WordPress website.

Second, it comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop giveaway builder. Other plugins need some level of technical expertise to work your way around setting it up. With RafflePress, everything was just clicks of my mouse button, so I absolutely loved this experience from the get-go.

Next, it offers a wide range of entry methods to engage your audience, including:

Email opt-in
Social media actions (such as sharing or following)
Refer-a-friend entries
Custom actions (like visiting a specific page)

RafflePress also allows users to earn bonus entries by completing verified bonus actions such as “Joining your Facebook page”.

Now another important thing is to make sure the contest blends into the rest of your site. RafflePress lets you customize the appearance of your giveaway to match your website’s branding. There are premade templates available.

You can change colors, fonts, and add custom CSS. You can also create a dedicated landing page for the contest.

To embed the contest, there’s a readymade Gutenberg block, widget, or shortcode.

Once the contest’s deadline is reached, the plugin offers a fair and transparent random winner selection process, ensuring that your giveaway is conducted impartially.

If you want to sync the contest with other marketing campaigns, you can! RafflePress integrates with popular email marketing platforms like MailChimp, Constant Contact, and more, making it easy to grow your email list.

The plugin is designed to work seamlessly on mobile devices. This is so important given that most internet users are on their smartphones often.

Do you want to run a giveaway right away?

Here’s a step-by-step tutorial on How to Create a Successful Contest in WordPress. It’s 5 easy steps to set up your contest and launch it!

RafflePress Highlights

Giveaway templates and a drag-and-drop editor
Responsive designs
1-click entry
Fraud and Captcha protection
Built-in viral sharing features
Social sharing
Integrations with marketing, CRM, and social media platforms
Compliant with data protection regulations like GDPR when collecting user data
Reliable customer support and extensive documentation
Several add-ons to extend its functionality
Built-in analytics and reporting features

Added to all this, RafflePress has extensive documentation and tutorials you can follow to make your contests a success.

RafflePress offers both free and premium versions. The premium plans provide access to advanced features and integrations, and pricing is based on the number of websites you want to use it on.

Get started with RafflePress »

2. OptinMonster

OptinMonster is the #1 lead generation tool in the market. I usually use this plugin to create popups, floating bars, and inline optin forms on my websites to capture leads and newsletter subscribers.

The plugin also has a really exciting contest wheel campaign.

These spin-to-win coupon wheels engage visitors and encourage them to subscribe or take other actions on your website. Once the user spins the wheel, the results are declared instantly! It can be a fun way to boost conversions and collect leads.

There are premade templates to get you started. Then you can use the drag and drop builder to customize the colors, fonts, and images to match your brand and make the wheel visually appealing.

OptinMonster lets you divide the wheel into slices, each representing a different coupon or discount. You can create various segments with different prizes, such as percentage discounts, free shipping, or other special offers.

You also control the probability of winning. All you have to do is assign a probability to each segment to control the likelihood of winning each prize.

There are options to add a trigger to start the spinning of the wheel. Typically, visitors need to take a specific action, such as clicking a button or subscribing to your newsletter, to access the wheel.

The most powerful part about this is you can set display rules based on visitor behavior, such as exit-intent, time spent on the site, or scroll depth. This ensures that the wheel engages visitors at the right moments.

OptinMonster also lets you connect the campaign to your email marketing platform. This allows you to automatically collect and store leads who spin the wheel and provide their email addresses.

This also lets you continue the customer’s journey even after they’ve engaged with the contest. You can display a customized notification that appears when a visitor wins a prize on the coupon wheel. You can include a congratulatory message and instructions on how to redeem the coupon.

Aside from the coupon wheels, you can also create other campaign types like popups, slide-ins, scroll boxes, floating bars, and more.

OptinMonster Highlights

Stunning templates
Drag and drop builder
Targeting and retargeting rules
Exit intent contests to recover abandoning visitors
Email integrations with services like Constant Contact and Mailchimp
Email verification
Connect to Google Analytics
Test campaigns and adjust in real-time

My only concern with OptinMonster is that it’s packed with a lot of features. This translates into a bit of a learning curve. However, OptinMonster has tons of documentation, tutorials, and a helpful support team that’s always available.

Get started with OptinMonster »

3. Simple Giveaways

Simple Giveaways is designed to help website owners easily create and manage basic giveaways and contests directly on their WordPress websites.

It’s so easy to use making it easy for anyone to set up contests. So individuals, small businesses, or bloggers can engage their audience and grow their online presence through giveaways.

When I tested this plugin, I was greeted with a user-friendly dashboard where you can set up, manage, and monitor your giveaways with ease.

You can offer simple entry methods for participants, such as commenting on a post, subscribing to an email list, or following social media accounts. It’s also easy to add and manage prizes for your giveaways. You can also include prize descriptions, images, and any necessary details.

One thing that stands out is that you can specify the start and end dates and times for your giveaways, allowing you to control when they are active.

Simple Giveaways Highlights

Customizable entry methods
Custom styling
Easy prize management
Entry tracking
Anti-fraud measures
Email integrations

There’s a free version as well as a premium plugin.

Get started with Simple Giveaways »

4. WP Contest Creators

WP Contest Creators is a service rather than a tool to help you set up and run online giveaways and contests on your WordPress website.

You can let the team know what you need and they’ll set it up for you. Usually, requests are completed within 3 to 5 weeks but it can be more if the contest solution requested is more complex.

If you need to integrate the custom plugin with any other software, you can reach out to the developer and they’ll do it for you. The cost for this will depend on how complicated or simple the integration process is with the other software.

WP Contest Creators Highlights

Your own contest solution
No monthly or yearly fees
Integrate it easily with a new or existing WordPress site

Get started with WP Contest Creators »

5. Gleam

Gleam is a plugin for running contests, giveaways, and interactive marketing campaigns. It offers a range of tools and features to help you engage with your audience and grow your online presence.

Gleam allows you to add and showcase prizes, along with descriptions and images, to attract participants. You can customize entry forms to collect participant information, including names and email addresses.

This giveaway tool automates the process of selecting winners fairly and transparently once the campaign ends. Plus, you get in-depth analytics and reporting tools to track campaign performance, monitor engagement metrics, and analyze conversion rates.

The platform integrates seamlessly with popular email marketing services, CRM systems, and other marketing tools to manage and utilize participant data effectively.

Gleam Highlights

Instant redeemable rewards
Viral sharing options
Email subscribers capture
Import, curate and display content from social networks
Run engaging photo competitions with the beautiful Gallery app
Over 100+ integrations

Get started with Gleam »

6. KingSumo

KingSumo is a WordPress plugin and platform that specializes in creating viral giveaways and contests to help website owners grow their email lists and engage with their audience.

It’s designed to make it easy for users to set up and manage effective giveaway campaigns. There’s a straightforward setup process with a user-friendly dashboard.

You can showcase prizes effectively with descriptions, images, and details, making them attractive to potential participants.

KingSumo is particularly popular among bloggers, content creators, and small businesses looking to rapidly expand their email lists and boost user engagement through viral giveaways and contests.

KingSumo Highlights

Unlimited giveaways
GDPR compliant
Embed on any site
Auto reminder emails
Multiple prizes/websites

They offer a free plan and a lifetime plan for $49.

Get started with KingSumo »

7. WPForms

WPForms is the best form builder for WordPress and I’ve used it for years on all my sites.

You can create any kind of form you need for your website from basic ones like contact forms to advanced calculator forms.

You can set up a simple contest by creating a custom entry form. It can include fields for participant information, such as name, email address, and any other details you need.

WPForms has a Post Submission addon that you can use. This lets users upload files such as photos, videos, and blogs to enter your contest.

It’s also easy to set up confirmation messages within WPForms to thank participants for entering the contest and inform them about what to expect next.

Now to deal with spammers, WPForms includes security features to protect against spam entries and fraudulent submissions.

With WPForms Pro, you can manually track and manage entries submitted through WPForms. (This isn’t available on the free version.)

Keep in mind that this is not a dedicated WordPress giveaway and contest plugin. So it does not provide features like automated random winner selection or tracking the number of entries per participant, which are typically found in dedicated contest plugins.

WPForms is best suited for simple contests where you can manually manage the selection process and track entries.

Learn how to use WPForms »

Highlights

1800+ form templates
Visual drag and drop builder
Smart conditional logic
Accept file uploads
Built-in spam and captcha protection
Seamless integrations with all popular email services

Read our Full Review of WPForms

Get started with WPForms »

8. Rafflecopter

Rafflecopter is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform, meaning that to bring the giveaway widget to your WordPress site, you simply insert a code snippet.

What’s more, Rafflecopter seamlessly integrates with leading email marketing services and offers connectors to well-known social media networks. It comes with a refer-a-friend function and provides options for conducting polls and surveys as part of your campaigns.

From my demo tests, I liked the flexibility in personalizing the appearance of the giveaway widget. You can add your own images and backgrounds for a truly customized look.

Rafflecopter Highlights

1-click random winners
Unlimited giveaways and entries
Embeddable entry form
Export participant data
Refer a friend

Rafflecopter has a free basic plan with limited features. You’ll need to upgrade to the paid plans to get most of the features you need to create giveaways and contests.

The drawback here is that the pro plans are really expensive. You’ll get the same features and more with other giveaway and contest plugins like RafflePress that come at a fraction of the cost.

Get started with Rafflecopter »

9. Lottery for WooCommerce

Lottery for WooCommerce is a plugin designed to bring the excitement of lotteries and raffles to your WooCommerce-powered online store.

You can create and manage lottery campaigns seamlessly on your eCommerce store. These campaigns can offer various types of prizes or products to attract customer engagement.

Plus, there are various entry methods for customers. So for instance, I could add options for customers to purchase tickets, share on social media, or subscribe to my newsletter in order to enter the contest.

Lottery for WooCommerce Highlights

Set a limited number of lottery tickets
Add price per ticket
Offer free tickets
Select winners manually or automatically
Email notifications for admin and users

Get started with Lottery for WooCommerce »

Bonus plugins:

1. Contests by Rewards Fuel: Create 6 kinds of contests with 35 entry methods and digital prizes.

2. Smash Balloon: Connect your social media contest to your WordPress site.

3. Easypromos: Create a giveaway, online contests, games and digital experiences.

That’s my list of the best WordPress giveaway plugins to grow your business and increase engagement.

Which is the Best WordPress Giveaway Plugin?

Here’s my top pick of the WordPress giveaway plugins for any website:

Plugin	Best For?	Free version	Highlight	Pricing
RafflePress	Viral Giveaways & Sweepstakes	✅	Refer a friend	$39.50/yr
OptinMonster	Contest Wheels	❌	Spin the wheel	$31.60/yr
Simple Giveaways	Basic Giveaways and Contests	✅	Verified actions	$49.99/yr

Ready to start building your contest?

Follow our step-by-step tutorial on How to Create a Successful Contest in WordPress. It’s 5 easy steps to set up your contest and launch it!

Below, are answers to the most commonly asked questions about WordPress giveaways.

FAQs on Viral Giveaway Plugins

What are giveaway plugins in WordPress?

Giveaway plugins in WordPress are tools or extensions that allow website owners to create and manage giveaways, contests, sweepstakes, or other promotional campaigns on their WordPress websites. These plugins are designed to simplify the process of running such promotions and engaging with audiences, building email lists, or increasing social media followers.

What is an entry form for a contest?

An entry form is basically where website visitors can enter the contest. These forms can include fields for name, email address, social media handles, and so on.

Should I add a countdown timer to my contest?

You definitely can! Most WordPress giveaway plugins include a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency and encourage more people to participate before the giveaway ends.

How to run a photo contest in WordPress?

If you want to run a contest where you accept photo submissions from users, we recommend using WPForms. It lets you create a form where you can accept file uploads safely from users.

How to run a quiz contest in WordPress?

You can use a plugin like Thrive Quiz Builder to run quizzes in WordPress.

Are there other giveaway plugins than the ones mentioned in this list?

Yes, there are! We only mention the top plugins that are best and most popular among WordPress users. Other tools include Wishpond, Woobox, ShortStack, and ContestFriend. You’ll find lots of other plugins in the WordPress plugin repository.

What are the benefits of hosting a contest on my WordPress site?

Increase user engagement
Make your site interactive
Grow website traffic
Get more social media followers
Build your email list
Collect user data and insights
Promote products and services
Build a community

Are there WordPress giveaway plugins with a free plan?

Top WordPress contest plugins with a lite or free plan include:

RafflePress
Simple Giveaways
Contests by Rewards Fuels
KingSumo
Gleam
Woobox

Which plugins can run polls and surveys in WordPress?

WPForms is the best form builder plugin for running surveys and polls. You can also see Formidable Forms and Woorise.

How to create a leaderboard contest or quiz in WordPress?

You can use the SweepWidget plugin to create a leaderboard competition in WordPress.

What is the best plugin for Facebook giveaway?

RafflePress is a great WordPress plugin to create Facebook-friendly contests.

Are there rules or laws to follow while hosting an online contest?

Yes, these legal regulations can vary depending on your country and jurisdiction. RafflePress includes a customizable template for terms and conditions that you can use in your giveaways. You can add specific rules, eligibility criteria, and other legal information required for your promotion. RafflePress also allows you to add checkboxes to your entry forms, asking participants for their consent to collect and use their personal information. This helps with compliance regarding data privacy regulations, such as GDPR.

Do I have to use Random Winner Selection?

You don’t have to use this feature, however, randomly selecting winners promotes fairness and transparency, addressing legal concerns related to fairness in contests and sweepstakes.

That’s all I have for you today. I hope this guide helped you find the best contest plugin for your WordPress site. You may also want to see our other popular articles:

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