ShortStack Software

Quick development of Facebook tabs for lead generation, contests, and giveaways.

Pros

Ease of use with existing templates. Quick drop and edit feature, simple even for non-developers

Cons

Limited features, limited templates, unable to add multiple tabs or pages.

Always a positive experience with customer service and something we see our business recommending and using frequently for the forseeable future.

Pros

It's easy to use, and the ability to set up global themes for campaigns is very helpful. If you know your brand's HEX codes, typefaces and website setup, it's easy to build a form that won't look out of place on your website. Downloading entries is easy as well.

Cons

Getting it working with Wordpress and one of our client's websites was a bit of a struggle but the customer service was quick to help!

Great basic product that is easy and cheap.

Pros

Easy to use. It is alsovwey Inexpensive.

Cons

Limited on what it can do compared to some others.

Ability to embed a contest on our webpage, collect submissions efficiently, and close the contest seamlessly hiding some text (e.g., submission form) and displaying other text (e.g., "contest closed" text).

Pros

Ease of use. Fresh looking designs. Customizable to needs (voting/no voting). Widgit editing functionality (move content blocks). Visibility features (to be creating something without showing it, and timing features to swap out what is displaying).

Cons

A few rough spots to be improved upon.
Entry form -- Default has First and Last name boxes beside each other, couldn't seem to make any other entry boxes beside each other.
Text formatting – can’t have two lines with different font sizes without a space between lines. Gallery Widget – Doesn’t work in all browsers (looks bad in Chrome?). It stacks the images, instead of laying them side by side. Displaying Entries - more options for the layout of these would be preferable. Particularly what entrant info displays - and in each entries info, ability to add fields if we want to put certain info on each entry when displaying them (info that wasn't in submission form).
Also - love the timing feature, but pretty sure one didn't work the way it should have. I had set to show something on a date and hide something on a date and it only did one of the two things. Couldn't figure out why the other wouldn't have worked.
Email confirmation - only sends once per email address. I wish you could override this (we allowed multiple entries, would prefer they got an email for each one and it could reference one of the submission boxes like "photo caption". E.g., "Thank you, we received your entry "SEM image of microchip".

Good...love the brand

Pros

Very easy to use . I like the free stockphotos to use and the quiz templates

Cons

Some of the coding can be difficult if you are not a developer

Pros

It's easy to use when you're just running a single campaign. It allows for complete customization.

Cons

No complaints. The software is easy to use. I'd appreciate it if it was mobile friendly for small changes when you're not at your desk.

When I had questions they would refer me to the help section on the website which was outdated. Overall, it's a great tool if you have the money. They have multiple tiers to unlock different functionalities which was disappointing. Charge one price and give me all the things.

Pros

This was somewhat intuitive to use once you get the hang of it. You are easily able to integrate your social profiles to push out your campaign. We did photo submission contests and it worked great. Created a Giveaway section on our Facebook page and promoted it from there. Great turnout with a little Facebook promotion behind it.

Cons

It was kind of pricey for what you are getting. The software to building out your page if very technically involved so my assumption is that is what you are paying for. The overall collection of emails and assets, such as images, is fairly easy. Would probably make up for itself if you are doing a larger giveaway versus some under $100 items like we did. That way you are more likely to convert those into entries, aka emails that you can use.

Pros

The appearance was great and professional looking.

Cons

Confusing interface, time consuming to customize even the smallest changes, lack of flexibility for displaying photos--a randomized list would be helpful: we received over 300 photos and it wasn't fair for those in the middle or the back end as theirs weren't often seen.

It was delightful, and we will continue to use them.

Pros

Ease of use and the help I received to make things work.

Cons

Limitations. Wanted to have some functionality that wasn't possible, but team provided work arounds that got us 90% what we wanted.

We have been using shortstack platform to create promotional competitions for seasonal campaigns which in turn has increased our sales during these times. Overall it’s a great tool and allows businesses like ours to not pay more for pricey developers we can do this ourselves for minimal cost but great results.

Pros

Ease of use, If you have some coding experience and can learn quickly this platform can be easy to implement once you get the hang of it. I could also adapt to suit my needs by adding unique code. Any questions I had were quickly and expertly answered by the support team. The framework of the design was easy to work with and design our own backgrounds and elements for also which made the end result presentation much more professional looking.

Cons

It can take a while to get the hang of the platform particularly if you are using sporadically. It would also be good to have the platform save all your data inputted without deleting if you don’t have monthly subscription - this would work better for us for seasonal campaigns as we only use 2 or 3 months but have to pay for 12 to make sure our data not deleted. The data tools also could be more refined ie it would be good to know which people clicked on which element within the design I don’t think this is possible atm from what I have seen.

Pros

Highly configurable, shortstack allowed us to create a simple form game for our customer.

Cons

for the price, shortstack should offer more animated games

We are doing some contest on facebook

Pros

Is very friendly, a lot of possibility for visual

Cons

nothing for me, except you need a good internet connection.

Pros

Allows me to do all of the different types of contesting that I need to do in one place without having to use several apps, and/or programs.

Cons

UX takes a little getting used to, it could be a bit more intuitive.

Service is great and helpful.

Pros

Easily get engagement from our audience with incentives to participate.

Cons

The publication tool can be a little tedious but nice since it has many way to customize your page and campaign.

Pros

Easy to use with options for a lot of customization

Cons

Changed the policy about the Facebook tabs, now I can't use this function for most of my campaigns.

I used Shortstack multiple times to run contests around email collection and was pleased with the results. It was easy to implement and after a few rough starts, was fairly easy to construct a campaign.

Pros

After creating everything at Shortstack, it was really easy to implement on my side. I implemented a campaign on both Magento and Shopify with absolutely no problem. It worked well the entire time it was live.

Cons

Getting started for the first time was a little complicated/confusing. I wasn't sure what to do and had to restart my project a few times after not being sure what I was doing. After I figured it out though, no problem.

Pros

Easy to start, learn and implement in an hour or less. Intuitive interface with a small learning curve.

Cons

The updates are often excessive leaving the user wondering if they should pause the campaign, and update, or leave alone...

We use ShortStack to engage with our customers

Pros

It was easy to build engaging experiences for our customers

Cons

Little tough to implement some of the more advanced features, but still a great tool.

Pros

I love the many templates to choose from!

Cons

Can seems a little overwhelming at first glance, but give it your full attention just a few minutes and you’ll realize how easy it is.

Overall a great experience and would definitely recommend them.

Pros

The customer service is outstanding all the time.

Cons

The templates could be a little more user friendly.