It’s the end of an era.
In the 2000s, blog contests became very popular, but they were a nightmare to both administer and participate in. Bloggers would make a list of actions they wanted you to take to garner entries. Then you had to return to the post and comment once for each action. Then the blogger would manually draw a winner from the comments.
Then Rafflecopter came along. A widget that a blogger could embed in their post, making it easy for entrants to enter and for bloggers to conduct a fair drawing. I loved it as both a contestor and a marketer. I would recommend it to anyone hosting a giveaway.
It’s Time to Say Goodbye
After 15 amazing years, the Rafflecopter platform will be shutting down on October 1, 2025.
Through September 30, the platform will continue operating as normal, and you will continue to have full access to your account. We strongly encourage you to Log in before then and export anything you want to keep.
We’re incredibly proud of the millions of giveaways—run by everyone from bloggers to Fortune 500 brands—that helped make the internet a brighter, more joyful place.
Thank you for your never-ending enthusiasm, creativity, and support! It’s meant the world to us.
— The Rafflecopter Team
I have used Rafflecopter myself for the past 15 years to host most of my contests. Right now, I am hosting my last two. I will be looking for a new contest widget that is comparable at a reasonable price. Currently, I am using KingSumo for ContestQueen because I discovered I purchased a lifetime license at some point, which integrates with my newsletter. I know it’s not everyone’s favorite, but it will suffice for now. (Let me know what your favorite contest widgets are.)
In 2015, when I went to Boulder, CO, to assist Robert Ohotto with his weekend workshop, I was lucky enough to have coffee with Greg Goodson, one of the co-founders of Rafflecopter. (He left in 2017 and now owns Foxhaven Photography and What’s This Cloud.)
Do you remember using Rafflecopter to enter blog giveaways? Let me know in the comments the best blog prize you ever won.
I like rafflecopter and gleam the best. The other ones (SweepWidget, Kingsumo, Viralsweep) often give me problems when I try to enter sweeps that use them.
I don’t know what I will do about this problem as King Sumo is free for me to use at the moment. Gleam is cost prohibitive to merge with my newsletter. I will have to do more research.
I also like woobox and giveaway tools is not bad.