Easy to use, customizable look and to needs, with a few additions it could do everything you need!

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".

Stacks up to the hype

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.

ShortStack Review

I used ShortStack for several years as part of a social media/community manager role for both brand awareness, product spotlights and related contests/givewaways

Pros

ShortStack makes it really easy for a guy like me with no design or coding background to manage social media contests almost 100% by myself. Designing, launching, monitoring and measuring the contests and their results was really easy thanks to the platform's intuitive workflow.

Cons

After a few years of using this software, the designer and I started to reach the limits of its abilities. Part of what makes it so valuable is how plug-and-play some otherwise complicated design/programming features. However, that templated framework has its limits, keeping you from realizing fully customized ideas outside that framework.

Great Resource, Intermediate Ease, Kind of Pricey

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.

The most easy-to-use and powerful social media app for building audience... period!

Shortstack is easy to use, powerful, up to date, fast, creative... a great product for startups.

Pros

ShortStack takes you by the hand and shows you how to look like a real social media pro. It has a complete set of features that can put any small entrepreneur in the social media game without too much effort.

Having the ability to view examples and even reproduce them is a very helpful feature that provides easy understanding of the reach and scope of the software.

The edit platform is friendly and does not require any profund IT background. The free plan is already so powerful that anyone starting to use the app will feel fulfilled.

As as social media consultant, I loved to know that Shortstack is now offering marketing automation. This a great feature that will take this app into a highe and promising level.

I truly recommend small and mid size entrepreneurs to give Shortstack a try and enjoy the benefits of this great business support idea.

Plug & Play - Mostly. Enjoyed the Features

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.

Would Recommend Shortstack

Pros

It's extremely easy to use, even for non-developers and outside of the social team.
Once you get the hang of how to edit the look, padding, etc., you can really make it your own without having to have creative team members generate this aspect.

Cons

There are still some struggles with the API integrations with Instagram (i.e. disconnects the feed almost daily).
The fact that we have to fluctuate between membership levels to get the features needed from giveaway to giveaway.
We're not able to pay annually, but rather have to work on a monthly schedule - not ideal for an agency.

Six Years with ShortStack

Over all it has been very good, there's not much that I want to do using ShortStack that it can't do. It's easy to design and deploy and the customer service I have received when I needed it.

Pros

One word "flexible". I enjoy how flexible ShortStack is, how I can easily design the app / contest that I want, how I can deploy it across multiple channels and make it work with our social media channels and website. How we can design something that looks uniquely us and offers the features I am mostly looking for.

Cons

I do run into limitations occasionally with design functionality but not often, for example, recently spoke at ShortStack about running an online charity auction through ShortStack to find out that it's not a feature supported because of the payment handling.

Shortstack is Great

We use the platform at various tradeshows and events. It captures information of attendees and offers a clean interface.

Pros

After using a lot of different platforms for online contests, my previous company settled on ShortStack and it was a great decision. One of the first things I did with my new company was purchase ShortStack so we can run contests.

Cons

I really can't think of a con, you definitely get what you pay for.

Effective but hard to learn

We've used it for a photo submission contest and several form-based contests and have recommended it to several others for easy contest management. It's always proved effective and easy to use.

Pros

Absolutely love the output of data (so easy to read and interpret) and the functionality possible with the contests. It offers so much more than just a form, and I love that it gives me ideas that I would never have thought of myself.

Cons

It is tough to navigate until you get the hang of it. There are a lot of opportunities for customization and design, but it's hard to figure out how to do the customization at first.

Great Way to Get in the Giveaway Game

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...

The best way to quickly build and execute digital campaigns & landing pages!

Pros

The easy to use campaign builder is so flexible, we have yet to run into anything we can't do with it!

Cons

I'm not sure I can come up with anything negative to say about ShortStack. I've been a user for a long time now, and haven't looked back.

The software works great, your target audience may not

So far, it's been great. Customer service was excellent both before and after I made my purchase. Software works wonderfully. I would recommend their service with the proviso that you need to target a responsive audience.

Pros

Easy to put together a promo, lots of templates to choose from, lots of different types of promotions to run

Cons

It's not the software - it's the audience that can be problematic. I've run 3 different refer-a-friend promos. One was pretty good, one was so-so, and one went downright terrible. Again, the software worked flawlessly! It was the audiences that really determined how things worked. You need to start out with a large initial email list, or a large reach with an extremely targeted message to get the audience you want to respond.

Self-serve social apps made easy

I have built a variety of sweepstakes and contests in Shortstack for clients ranging from no-budget non-profits to large CPG brands, with happy clients and successful promotions.

Pros

Flexibility, ease of setup, high level of customizability.

Cons

Some of the design tools (wysiwyg) can be a little twitchy.

Amazing social software!

Pros

We've used Shortstack for several years to run social contest and it's great! We enjoy the ability to have an advent calendar giveaway at Christmas, collect leads, run photo contests and endless other possibilities. Data files are easy to export and the ability to have a auto response email to submissions is great! Customer service is great any time we've encountered an issue or question.

Cons

There are some limitations what you can do with templates if you don't know CSS or have a person for that on your team.

If only fb would make it easier ...

Been using it for years! The minor cons that I have come accross are by far outweighed by the pros!

Pros

- Great software.
- Not the easiest to use but it does cover everything giving multiple options to users and designers!
- Excellent customer service!

Cons

- Facebook intergration couyld be better. I know that Facebook changes things often but the instructions and integration process is not ammended so fast.

- Not enough premade themes and not updated for too long! It is ok ig you have a designer to make your own theme but the premade ones that are great help are very few!

Landline Pages Made Easy

I’ve had had really good experience with short stack so far, and I don’t know anything about computers or programming or making pages… It is a little overwhelming at first, but after playing around with it for a bit it gets super easy and you can save your templates

Pros

This has a great visual interface making it super easy to do basic coding and create your own landing pages and giveaway pages and ability to export the list if you upgrade

Cons

What I like least about this software is the fact that they do not have a phone support for customer service and I had to email people whenever I have a question, but at least they respond very quickly!

Overall good. Easy to use and implement campaigns.

Pros

Shortstack makes it easy to set up campaigns and lists. There are a lot of templates to choose from. Integrates seamlessly with Facebook. Easy to export lists (entries).

Cons

Customer support - they only offer chat support with no number to call. Hard to use when you don't know how to explain what you are looking to do with a campaign.

Easy way to boost performance

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.

Great Features, great for scaling, few limitations

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.