13 Best UpViral Alternatives to Hold Viral Giveaways in 2024

Word of mouth is one of the oldest and most successful ways of driving referrals to any business. When analyzing the best viral giveaway software for marketers (solopreneurs, small businesses, and enterprises), UpViral takes a special place.

Why is UpViral special?

Only viral marketing software that lets you A/B test Sign Up and Share Pages and email notification messages
Run rewards and sweepstakes at the same time
Automatic and Manual winner selection methods
Post giveaway actions (display a blank web page, redirect traffic to another giveaway campaign, or direct people to the custom web address)
Drag-and-drop visual giveaway page builder (best I have ever seen)
Use UpViral landing pages and Widgets in campaigns (Not any other tool cannot do it)
Custom tracking links give you a bigger picture of which networks’ or brands’ traffic is converting better.

But, UpViral might not be suitable for your needs.

Why might you want to replace UpViral?

In my recent UpViral review, I shared multiple pros and cons of UpViral. Here are several reasons why you might be looking for an UpViral alternative:

UpViral pricing – When analyzing UpViral’s subscription plans, it’s crystal clear that significant features like A/B split testing, brand removal, Zapier, countdown timers, and API are offered in the mid-tier plan, which is the ‘Business’ that costs $119/mo that might not be currently affordable for you.
Referral marketing functionalities – UpViral is an excellent sweepstakes competition tool for marketers. It integrates with most landing pages, and you can run contests on UpViral servers. Still, UpViral lacks features when it comes to referral marketing (i.e., refer-a-friend type campaigns and Loyalty programs). For instance, you cannot reward two sides (i.e., referrer and referee) prizes and customize sign-up and share widgets extensively.
Customization – Upviral provides excellent features for creating both sign-up and share pages. However, still, you cannot personalize web pages and widgets and set up email messages as you want. (e.g.: send emails after 7 days of registration, if a user is inactive for three days, last 24 hours, last 3 hours of the campaign so on.). Plus, there is no way to add a countdown clock to email messages unless you use a service like Powr.
Points System – UpViral uses a points system instead of a referral system. You cannot reward referrals. When running a giveaway with tons of custom actions, rewarding the right people for their efforts in referring people can be complicated.
UpViral widget not working – Many UpViral users have complained that the UpViral widget is not loading or not working on their WordPress websites and other sites. So, if you are looking for an Upviral alternative for WordPress, you might want to check out one of the tools below.
UpViral is not eCommerce friendly – Want to deliver dynamic coupons for each successful referral? That is not currently possible with UpViral.
Test viral co-efficient with different tools – No perfect tool or service will skyrocket your email list growth or referrals to your business. You have to test other techniques, strategies, and even tools.

So, in this article, I will list the best UpViral alternatives and compare each one with UpViral as a giveaway and referral marketing platform.

Best UpViral Alternatives for Marketers, Business Owners, and Enterprise Businesses

Here are the top sites like UpViral to create your next giveaway, referral program, and evergreen content.

SweepWidget

SweepWidget is an online sweepstakes builder like UpViral. It provides many features, from creating a campaign, designing, and promoting to analyzing performance.

SweepsWidget stands out from UpViral on these features and functionalities:

API Verified actions – Automate your giveaway campaigns by easing the workload of verifying custom actions. UpViral does not have a task-verification system.
90+ ways to enter – Upviral has only two ways to enter a giveaway: Email opt-in and Facebook login. SweepWidget includes tons of ways a visitor can participate using 30+ social platforms in a giveaway.
Repeatable actions – Engage participants by allowing earning points daily by completing tasks. In addition, SweepWidget lets you make a task mandatory to become a winner. Mandatory and repeatable actions are not currently supported by UpViral.
Upload entries into your contest with CSV – One of the reasons why SweepWidget might be the best UpViral alternative for regular giveaway holders. Import a list of participants to a new campaign without them having to re-enter.
WordPress plugin and Shopify app – Easily run giveaways and rewards programs on your WordPress sites and Shopify shops.
SMS text verification – Want to build a list of targeted phone numbers? UpViral might not be the most reasonable choice as it does not integrate with an SMS verification system such as Twillo.
Email verification via random unique code – Want to add an extra layer to your giveaways? SweepWidget has the option to generate a unique email verification code which is sent right after a user joined a campaign.
Run crypto contests – Want to hold an NFT giveaway to promote your NFT and run an Airdrop contest to promote your token? SweepWidget got it. Plus, the integration with crypto wallet address types such as ETH / BEP-20, BEP-2, and BTC will help in improving campaigns.

Like UpViral, SweepWidget provides many features:

1. Unlimited campaigns and user entries
2. Custom actions builder – Add tasks to participants to complete and earn entries
3. Custom SMTP – Send emails via your email address.
4. Custom fields – Collect more data, such as phone numbers, and qualify leads with by collecting additional details. Additionally, SweepWidget provides a “secret codes entry” feature in which participants should enter a code that they set to enter a giveaway.
5. Integrations – Integrate your email marketing service, and add Google Analytics, Facebook tracking pixel, and Google Tag Manager to power up your campaigns.
6. Restrict users by country – Run region-specific giveaways to collect targeted leads.

How does SweepWidget pricing compare with UpViral?

One of the best aspects of SweepWidget’s pricing compared to UpViral is that SweepWidget has a free plan. The free plan consists of generous limits such as unlimited campaigns, participants, etc.,

SweepWidget free plan

• Unlimited contests
• Unlimited entries
• Export to CSV
• Pick random winners (do not have to use a random winner picker)
• Social Login options
• Moderate entries (disqualify and delete entries)
• Data management, widget installation, and more.

Pro – $29/month

• All Free features and…
• 50+ entry methods
• Email integrations
• Use Google Analytics and Facebook Tracking Pixel on campaigns
• 1 Team member
• Repeatable actions, SMS links, Timed actions, Styling Options, and more.

Business – $49/month

• All Pro features and more entry methods and…
• Google Tag Manager & Zapier integration
• Manage 2 brands (and two team members)
• 5,000 unique coupon codes per contest
• More security features such as blocking people from entering with a VPN
• Unlock more giveaway types (Rewards, Coupon, and Leaderboard), NFT, Airdrop and whitelist raffles, and more features.

Premium – $99/month

• All Business features and No SweepWidget branding and…
• Telegram API authenticated entries with a custom bot
• Manage 3 brands (and three team members)
• Upload entries into your contest with CSV
• Email verification, Advanced security features, and more.

Enterprise – $199/month

• All Premium features and…
• Phone Verification
• Manage 5 brands (and five team members)
• SweepsWidget API
• Prepopulate forms
• Custom HTML emails and send transactional emails
• Dedicated agent, and more.

If you are looking for UpViral alternatives with a free plan and unlimited participants, SweepWidger would be a reasonable choice as the free plan allows picking random winners and exporting winners via CSV.

When comparing the pricing plans of Upviral and SweepWidget, SweepWidget has the lowest entry price ($29) and does include team member functionality and brand management features.

UpViral vs SweepWidget

SweepWidget is quite similar to Gleam and provides many features to power up your campaigns than UpViral. It is an excellent UpViral contender for the following reasons:

90+ ways to enter on 30+ social platforms – SweepWidget integrates with many platforms such as Reddit, Steam, Youtube, Twitch, Facebook, and Telegram. UpViral does not have those entry methods.
Mandatory and repeatable actions – Make your campaign engaged throughout the running period.
Brand Management – Are you an agency or a marketing firm? SweepWidget provides team members and brand management functionalities which cannot be found on UpViral.
Run crypto giveaways – The integration with crypto wallets and the ability to run NFT and Airdrop contests.

Vyper

Vyper is a giveaway marketing tool that provides various features to help you grow your business via:

Viral giveaways – Create one-off giveaway campaigns
Referral, rewards, and loyalty programs – Give points for purchases, referrals, and social media actions.
Recurring, evergreen contests – Hold competitions that never run off! One of the best ways to slowly and steadily grow your business

Like UpViral, Vyper provides three display modes to create stunning, targeted, and flexible giveaway campaigns.

Landing Page – Use the Vyper giveaway builder to hold giveaways on Vyper servers.
Embed Form – Want to integrate a giveaway campaign to an existing page built on WordPress, Clickfunnels, Shopify, or Brizy platforms? Simply use the ‘Embed Form’ option.
Widget – Display an Intercom-style widget and run your entire giveaway campaign through the widget. If you are a blogger and want to run a site-wide campaign, Vyper would be an excellent option to consider.

These benefits make Vyper a great UpViral alternative, isn’t it?

But what about integrations?

Luckily, Vyper is already integrated with many CRM and email marketing tools like Aweber, Klyavio, MailChimp, ConvertKit, and Drip. Plus, Vyper can be connected with thousands of other apps via Zapier, Make, Pabbly Connect, and Integrately.

How does Vyper pricing compare with UpViral?

Pricing is a significant factor when considering which giveaway tool to choose.

Currently, Vyper has two plans:

1. Enterprise
2. Agency

Vyper Enterprise

$149 per month or $75 per month if paid annually

• 30,000 leads per month if connected to own SMTP. Else 15,000 participants per month
• Use your own custom domain
• Remove Vyper branding
• Track up to $30,000 revenue generated by Vyper per month

Vyper Agency

$299 per month or $150 per month if paid annually

• All Enterprise features
• Up to 120,000 leads per month if connected own SMTP. Otherwise, 60,000 participants per month
• Track up to $120,000 revenue generated by Vyper per month
• Create up to 10 sub-accounts (clients)

UpViral subscription plans start from $79/mo, and its highest tier, which is Premium, costs $199/mo. When comparing Vyper’s fees with Upviral’s, it’s clear that UpViral is cost-effective for small business owners and budget marketers.

UpViral vs Vyper

Vyper is an excellent competitor (and a great replacement) for UpViral because of these two main reasons:

Vyper has functionalities to track conversions happening on your website and reward based on sales. But, transaction and conversion tracking is not a part of UpViral. It’s on their roadmap, though.
Vyper is an excellent UpViral replacement if you run a digital marketing agency. Currently, UpViral does not have a team member or sub-account feature.

GrowSurf

If you are looking for an UpViral alternative for referral marketing, GrowSurf is what you should probably have!

Growsurf is a referral marketing software for tech companies. GrowSurf can skyrocket your app installs, users, engagements, and paid customers through intelligent referral marketing campaigns.

If you own a SaaS business, GrowSurf is the tool you should look for instead of UpViral. Here is a video that shows how to use GrowSurf to create a referral program.

Why use GrowSurf instead of UpViral?

UpViral is a great tool to build your email list fast. Its custom actions can be used to incentivize people to complete tasks like installing an app and subscribing to your iTunes, Youtube, SoundCloud, and Spotify channels. But, it is not enough. GrowSurf goes beyond general contests and lets you build your campaign with no coding skills required.

For example, you can customize the campaign to have all these reward types:

1. Single-sided reward
2. Double-sided reward
3. Milestone reward
4. Leaderboard reward

GrowSurf gives you the full extent of campaign-building ability.

• Automate fraud prevention
• Setting up credit expiration window
• Getting notifications on Growsurf events

Plus, Growsurf integrates with popular services like ActiveCampaign, Klayvio, HubSpot, and Zapier. JavaScript web API and REST API can be beneficial if you want to build your custom interface and run personalized refer-a-friend campaigns that resonate with your branding.

And GrowSurf gives you full flexibility to build your own campaign for your directed needs. E.X: Reward only when someone installed your app and added payment details or signed up for a trial account

GrowSurf equips WebHooks so you can connect your apps quickly. Here is an instance of connecting Growsurf with Integrately.

GrowSurf provides functionalities to track transactions and rewards based on purchases. Already, Stripe, Tango, and Klayvio are integrated – Perfect for boosting B2B and B2C paid customers!

Everything’s good. But…

How does GrowSurf pricing compare with UpViral?

GrowSurf has a free plan with very limited features and three paid plans.

1. Startup — $200/mo – 2 campaigns. 10K participants
2. Business — $400/mo – 5 campaigns. 25K participants
3. Elite — $600/mo – 20 campaigns. 75K participants

Considering GrowSurf is a full-fledged referral marketing software for B2C and B2B companies, prices are considerable. Although UpViral’s fees are less expensive than GrowSurf, it is worth the price, especially if you have the right strategy to utilize referral marketing.

GrowSurf vs UpViral

UpViral is poor in team management, conversion tracking, two-sided reward campaigns, and referral marketing functionalities. One downside of GrowSurf is it does not have a split-testing feature. But if you can spend some time, you can integrate GrowSurf form into your existing landing page building software and split test from there.

Suppose you are a marketer and want to grow your email list and increase your social following, podcast subscribers, TikTok followers, etc. In that case, GrowSurf is weaker than UpViral because it does not have a custom action feature.

All in all, if you are a marketer, use UpViral, and if you are a technical business like a SaaS business, use GrowSurf’s referral marketing tools.

Gleam

Gleam.io is one of the most popular giveaway tools for one reason — It’s easy to use!

Be it a social media promotion, Facebook giveaway, Crypto opportunity competition, or standard sweepstakes, Gleam got it. Since it’s the industry-leading giveaway software, it offers many features and benefits over UpViral.

100’s of powerful, ready-to-use templates
Hold a giveaway on your website, Gleam servers, or even inside a Facebook tab
Direct integration with 100’s apps
Link tracking, analytics, and many more features

Essentially, You can use Gleam in four different ways:

1. Competitions – Hold competitions and sweepstakes and incentive people to complete tasks and refer friends
2. Rewards – Boost your business’s sales with coupons, gift cards, and sale promotion giveaways. Perfect for eCommerce site owners
3. Galleries – Generate user-generated content (UGC) and improve social engagement
4. Capture – Build your email list

How does Gleam’s pricing compare with UpViral?

Gleam has a complicated pricing structure. People can purchase individual apps or subscribe to an all-in-one package.

1. Competitions – From $10/mo
2. Rewards – From $29/mo
3. Galleries – From $29/mo
4. Capture- From $29/mo

Gleam’s all-in-one package’s pricing starts from $97 per site per month. Its all-inclusive plan, which is Premium, costs $997/site/mo.

If paid yearly, customers save 24% and get double limits. Plus, Gleam has a limited free plan that is not worth any serious marketing campaign.

Gleam vs UpViral

Gleam is years ahead of UpViral in terms of features, templates, and integrations. However, there are still areas where UpViral stands out from Gleam. Here are some of them:

Drag and drop landing page builder of UpViral gives you more opportunities to customize Sign Up and Share Pages to resonate with your brand, but Gleam has the same-looking templates that thousands of other people use.
UpViral allows you to split-test landing pages and widgets to achieve better conversion rates, but Gleam does not have an A/B testing feature.
UpViral is fully Whitelabel. To emphasize your brand, you can use UpViral’s advanced integration methods, such as HTML form and custom domain (for both landing page and referral links). However, Gleam lacks in this area, where referral links will look the same as in thousands of other Gleam giveaways.
Gleam limits integrations based on the plan you are subscribed to. That is one of the worst features of Gleam. It categorizes email integrations based on the plan (i.e., Pro, Business, and Premium), so you cannot connect your Hubspot or Ontraport accounts if you are not a Business plan subscriber. Upviral does not have integration limitations based on the plan.
UpViral allows choosing unlimited winners, while Gleam limits it.
Gleam is more expensive than Upviral. The truth is that UpViral is more affordable than Gleam.

Gleam is a lot of things. But, you expect specific objectives or goals from running a giveaway or contest.

It could be increasing your social engagements, boosting sales and app installations, or growing your email list size.

In my experience, UpViral is best for increasing email subscribers and getting people to complete tasks via custom actions.

And Gleam is best for increasing social engagement. If you are in a niche like video gaming, cooking, and traveling, where social media plays a big role, Gleam would be an excellent Upviral contender to run contests that go viral. Gleam’s direct integrations with platforms like Twitch and Esty will come in handy when running a successful competition.

ViralSweep

Viralsweep is another UpViral alternative that allows you to run giveaway campaigns by offering many features. It is ahead of UpViral in some functionalities.

Run different types of contests like Instant Win, Hashtag, and Comments
Sales tracking
Video and photo uploads
Entry frequency (allows participants to complete the same task daily or weekly and receive entry points)
Voting competitions
Collect payments
Entry codes (Gives people a chance to collect points by entering custom entry codes provided by you. People can get those codes after completing tasks, for instance.)
Official rules generator

How does ViralSweep pricing compare with UpViral?

ViralSweep provides more reasonable pricing than Gleam, for example. Although ViralSweep has tons of features, integrations, and several apps to run giveaways, it only has four main pricing tiers.

1. Starter – $49/mo. Unlimited Promotions & Entries. No team members
2. Business – $199/mo. Geo-targeting. Remove Viral Sweep branding. Team members. Host partner sweepstakes. Tracking links & tracking scripts, Custom actions, Leaderboards, and Sales tracking
3. Premium – $399/mo. Video uploads, Collect payments, A/B testing, ViralSweep API, Dedicated SendGrid account to send emails from your business email address
4. Elite – $999/mo. Unlimited orders on Purchase App, Manage up to 10 brands. Dedicated agent, 1 promotion built for you per month, strategic consulting

ViralSweep is similar to UpViral with comparable features like A/B testing, tracking links & scripts, custom actions, and Geo-targeting. When comparing the prices of ViralSweep and UpViral, ViralSweep’s charges are reasonable but can be expensive if you only want to find an UpViral competitor for building your list.

Here’s what it means:

A/B testing, a crucial feature to optimize viral giveaway funnels, is offered in the Business plan, costing $399/mo in ViralSweep. But, UpViral provides the A/B testing in its Business plan, which costs $79/mo.

However, if you want to run social-media-focused campaigns, payment collection competitions, Hashtag sweepstakes, and waiting lists, ViralSweep’s rates are better than UpViral’s.

ViralSweep vs UpViral

ViralSweep is similar to UpViral, with many features and capabilities. However, each tool has standard features, benefits, and weaknesses.

UpViral has a drag-and-drop visual page builder, but ViralSweep does not have a drag-and-drop builder.
ViralSweep has more features like the Gallery App, Comments App, Sales Tracking, Partner sweepstakes, and Entry codes which UpViral does not have.
Live Draws. Stream your drawings across social media platforms for your audience without exposing critical information. Here is a demo of the Live Draw feature of ViralSweep.

ViralSweep’s ‘Audience Segments’ feature is helpful for filtering participants based on different factors like sign-up sources, entries made, referrals, etc. UpViral does not have an audience filter.
UpViral does not have an entry frequency but ViralSweep
UpViral lets you share campaigns with others, but ViralSweep does not

Viral Loops

If you were looking for a quality newsletter referral tool, Viral Loops stands out from UpViral and most of its competitors.

Viral Loops is used mainly by creators and business owners to grow through referral marketing techniques. Its template collection includes the following:

The Milestone Referral – Inspired by Harry’s milestone referral program, they built a list of 100K quality leads in a week. Participants can unlock rewards in this template (Prelaunch campaign) when they reach a particular milestone. This gives contest holders to get their giveaway going viral because of incentives and boosts sales by providing coupons.
The Startup Prelaunch – Looking for a quality UpViral alternative for your prelaunch? Maybe Viral Loop is what you want because its Startup Prelaunch gives you all the features to build a waitlist where participants can improve their place by referring others.
The Newsletter Referral – One of the best UpViral alternatives to build a newsletter “refer a friend” program. Increase your email subscribers with the help of loyal newsletter readers.
The Tempting Giveaway – The more friends they invite, the higher their chances of winning. Placing leaderboards and tempting to improve their positions make this template special.
Viral Loops for Shopify – Want an UpViral competitor to grow your Shopify store sales? Give Viral Loops a try.
Refer a Friend – Remember DropBox’s refer-a-friend program? Viral Loops gives you tools to build a friend invitation program similar to DropBox.

How does Viral Loops Pricing compare with UpViral?

Viral Loops is not a free UpViral alternative. But it allows you to try it for free. It has three main paid plans and an Enterprise plan in which costs differ.

1. Start-up – $49/mo – Up to 1,000 participants – Viral giveaways, Viral Loops pages
2. Growing – $99/mo – Up to 3,000 participants – Referral & Ambassador Campaign Templates, API access
3. Power- $299/mo – Up to 25,000 participants – Remove Viral Loops branding

When comparing the prices of Viral Loops and UpViral, UpViral is quite more affordable than Viral Loops; considering $99 in Upviral, you can remove UpViral branding and collect up to 25,000 leads per month. But in Viral Loops, you can only collect 3,000 leads.

Also, Viral Loops charges $20 for every 2,000 participants (only in the Growing plan).

Viral Loops vs UpViral

So, who should use Viral Loops over UpViral?

Viral Loops is good for you if you are a Shopify store owner, SaaS business, or marketer who wants to launch a Robinhood-style marketing campaign.

For example, if you get an extra 2,000 customers from referrals to your Shopify shop, subscribing to the Viral Loops Growing plan will be worth it, considering acquiring a new customer costs a lot (some studies show it costs x5 more than retaining an existing customer).

But, if your primary goal is to build an email list and incentivize people to complete actions like following you on social networks, Viral Loops is not the best option compared with UpViral because it’s not designed for it.

More UpViral Alternatives

You found the best alternatives to Upviral viral giveaway software and comparisons in this article. But, there are more sites like UpViral to hold contests and sweepstakes. Here are a few:

SociaMonials – More than a giveaway tool. Its giveaway features allow you to run viral voting, email capture, and social media engagement campaigns.
KingSumo – Another UpViral alternative with basic features. Not all of the plans allow removing KingSumo branding, so if you are not serious about branding, KingSumo is an excellent tool to consider. Check out the UpViral vs KingSumo review for more details.
RaffleCopter – RaffleCoper is a low-cost alternative to UpViral. Its paid plans start from $13/mo. However, the customization is far less than UpViral.
KickOffLabs – KickOffLabls allows you to build scalable viral giveaways using leaderboard competitions, prelaunch waiting lists, Shopify rewards, Opt-in bribes, Unlock rewards, and Instant win giveaways. Although it is an alternative to UpViral, pricing is a bit off, considering it limits how many people can view your landing pages, emails, and API calls. But, Upviral does not qualify on these – Pageviews are unlimited on UpViral.
WooBox – A contest-creating software that allows you to boost social engagements via Facebook giveaways, Instagram contests, Polls, Photo/video contests, and more. If you are looking for a low-cost Upviral alternative to get your social metrics going up fast, check out WooBox.
GiveLab – GiveLab.com is a close alternative to Gleam with similar widgets and features. Its free plan allows you to create unlimited campaigns and get unlimited participants. Therefore, GiveLab is a free UpViral alternative to consider.
RafflePress – If you are looking for the best Upviral alternative for WordPress sites, maybe RafflePress is what you might need. It’s from the WPBeginner team behind who are brands like OptinMonster, MonsterInsights, and AffiliateWP. So they know what they are doing. It is required to have a self-hosted site to use RafflePress. And depending on the campaign’s virality, your host server should be able to handle traffic as well.

The Best UpViral alternative for you

In this ultimate list of the most reliable UpViral alternatives, you discovered diverse viral giveaways and referral software with unique use cases. You may be looking for an UpViral substitute for one or more following reasons:

1. Want a better giveaway app like UpViral but better for boosting engagements on social accounts
2. Want a better referral marketing software
3. Your software apps, and services aren’t integrated with Upviral
4. Want to boost eCom store sales
5. Needs features like transaction tracking

Depending on your needs, here are the best UpViral alternatives for you:

If running engaging sweepstakes that incentivize participants to share their referral links everywhere on the internet and get them to complete tasks to receive giveaway entries is your desire, Vyper.ai is your most suitable UpViral option.

If you want to boost social metrics like followers, likes, and reposts, give Gleam a try. Gleam can help you build a viral campaign easier and quicker if you are in niches like video gaming.

When building a customized referral program is your priority, GrowSurf is your best candidate. Additionally, you can give Prefinery a try too. Prefinery is perfect for running Pre-launch waitlists, Closed beta programs, and video game releases.

If adding a newsletter referral program to your weekly newsletter is the purpose, Viral-Loops is an excellent platform to consider.

Final Words on UpViral Alternatives

I have been doing viral giveaways and contests for years, and Upviral has been my go-to tool to build them. However, as far as my experience, UpViral lacks certain features like conversion tracking, repeated actions, etc.

One of the huge downsides of Upviral is that it does not allow users to provide rewards based on referrals. UpViral uses a points system that can be complicated if you add up many tasks.

One of the benefits of using Upviral over UpViral competitors is giving points for referring visitors. Not all participants are convinced that they will get referral sign-ups and have a chance to become a winner. But, still, they can be encouraged to send traffic and receive points.

UpViral is an advanced giveaway app. Features like One-Click Sign-up links and the ability to use custom Share Pages make the platform more marketer-friendly.

So, what are your thoughts on UpViral and your best UpViral alternatives? Share your opinions below.