13 Best UpViral Alternatives to Hold Viral Giveaways in 2025

Word of mouth is one of the oldest and most effective ways to drive 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?

The 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 (No other tool can do it)
Custom tracking links provide a clearer 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 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 $149/mo that might not be currently affordable for you.
Referral marketing functionalities: UpViral is an excellent tool for marketers to run sweepstakes competitions. 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, you still cannot personalize web pages and widgets, or 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 utilizes a points system rather than a referral system. You cannot reward referrals. When running a giveaway with numerous custom actions, rewarding the right people for their efforts in referring others can be a complex task.
UpViral widget not working – Many UpViral users have reported that the UpViral widget is not loading or functioning properly 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: Do you want to deliver dynamic coupons for each successful referral? That is not currently possible with UpViral.
Test viral coefficient 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 offers numerous features, including campaign creation, design, promotion, and performance analysis.

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 offers numerous ways for visitors to participate using 30+ social platforms in a giveaway.
Age restriction: Unlike UpViral, SweepWidget includes an age restriction feature that allows you to set both minimum and maximum age limits.
Repeatable actions: Engage participants by allowing them to earn points daily by completing tasks. Additionally, SweepWidget will enable you to make a task mandatory to win. UpViral does not currently support mandatory and repeatable actions.
Upload entries into your contest with CSV: One of the reasons why SweepWidget might be the best alternative to UpViral for regular giveaway hosts. Import a list of participants into a new campaign without requiring them to re-enter their information.
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 suitable choice, as it does not integrate with an SMS verification system, such as Twilio.
Security settings: SweepWidget stands out in terms of available actions to secure your giveaway. For example, you can enable block VPN, email/text verification features to add an extra layer to your online sweepstakes.
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 joins a campaign.
Run crypto contests: Consider holding an NFT giveaway to promote your NFT and an Airdrop contest to promote your token. SweepWidget got it. Additionally, integrating with various crypto wallet address types, including ETH/BEP-20, BEP-2, and BTC, will help improve campaigns.

Like UpViral, SweepWidget provides many features:

1. Unlimited campaigns and user entries
2. Custom actions builder – Add tasks for 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 by collecting additional details. Additionally, SweepWidget offers a “secret code entry” feature, where participants enter a code they have set to participate in 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?

Pricing plans of SweepWidget start from $29 per month.

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 you to pick random winners and export winners via CSV.

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

UpViral vs SweepWidget

SweepWidget is quite similar to Gleam and offers numerous features to enhance your campaigns, surpassing those of UpViral. It is an excellent UpViral contender for the following reasons:

90+ ways to enter on 30+ social platforms – SweepWidget integrates with numerous platforms, including Reddit, Steam, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, and Telegram. UpViral does not have those entry methods.
Mandatory and repeatable actions – Make your campaign engaging throughout the running period.
Brand Management – Are you an agency or a marketing firm? SweepWidget offers team members and brand management functionalities that are not available 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 out! 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’re a blogger looking to run a site-wide campaign, Vyper is an excellent option to consider.

These benefits make Vyper a great alternative to UpViral.

But what about integrations?

Luckily, Vyper is already integrated with many CRM and email marketing tools like AWeber, Klaviyo, 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 crucial factor when selecting a giveaway tool.

UpViral subscription plans start at $99 per month, and its highest tier, Premium, costs $199 per month. 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 are not a part of UpViral. It’s on their roadmap, though.
Vyper is an excellent alternative to UpViral for digital marketing agencies. Currently, UpViral does not have a team member or sub-account feature.

GrowSurf

If you’re looking for an UpViral alternative for referral marketing, GrowSurf is probably the best option.

Growsurf is a referral marketing software for tech companies. GrowSurf can significantly increase your app installs, users, engagement, 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 demonstrates how to utilize GrowSurf to set up a referral program.

Why use GrowSurf instead of UpViral?

UpViral is an excellent tool for quickly building your email list. Its custom actions can be used to incentivize people to complete tasks, such as 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 provides you with the full extent of campaign-building capabilities.

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

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

And GrowSurf gives you complete flexibility to build your campaign tailored to your specific needs. E.X.: Reward only when someone installs your app, adds payment details, or signs 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’s pricing plans start at $179 per month (for up to 2,500 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’s, they are worth the price, especially if you have the right strategy to effectively 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 that it lacks a split-testing feature. However, if you can spend some time, you can integrate the 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 lacks a custom action feature.

All in all, if you are a marketer, use UpViral; if you are a technical business, such as 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!

Whether it’s a social media promotion, a Facebook giveaway, a crypto opportunity competition, or a standard sweepstakes, Gleam has got it. As the industry-leading giveaway software, it offers numerous features and benefits that surpass those of UpViral.

100s 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, sweepstakes, and incentives to encourage people to complete tasks and refer friends
2. Rewards – Boost your business’s sales with coupons, gift cards, and sale promotion giveaways. Perfect for e-commerce 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 $19/mo
2. Rewards – From $49/mo
3. Galleries – From $49/mo
4. Capture- From $49/mo

Gleam’s all-in-one package’s pricing starts from $119 per month. Its Premium all-inclusive plan costs $1199 per month.

If paid yearly, customers save 37% and get double limits. Additionally, Gleam offers a limited free plan that is not suitable for 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:

The UpViral drag-and-drop landing page builder offers more opportunities to customize Sign Up and Share Pages to resonate with your brand. However, Gleam has templates that resemble those used by thousands of other people.
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 entirely Whitelabel. To emphasize your brand, you can utilize UpViral’s advanced integration methods, including HTML forms and custom domains (for both landing pages 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 unless you are 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 suited for increasing email subscribers and encouraging people to complete tasks through 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 significant role, Gleam would be an excellent Upviral contender to run contests that go viral. Gleam’s direct integrations with platforms like Twitch and Etsy will come in handy when running a successful competition.

Viralsweep

Viralsweep is another UpViral alternative that allows you to run giveaway campaigns, offering numerous features. It provides more functionalities than UpViral.

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 offers numerous features, integrations, and several apps for running giveaways, it has only 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 the Purchase App, manage up to 10 brands. Dedicated agent, one promotion built for you per month, and strategic consulting

Viralsweep is similar to UpViral, offering comparable features such as A/B testing, tracking links and 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 for optimizing viral giveaway funnels, is included in the Business plan, which costs $399 per month in Viralsweep. However, UpViral offers A/B testing in its Business plan, which costs $149 per month.

However, if you want to run social media-focused campaigns, payment collection competitions, Hashtag sweepstakes, and waiting lists, Viralsweep’s rates are more competitive 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 features a drag-and-drop visual page builder, whereas Viralsweep does not.
Viralsweep offers additional features, including the Gallery App, Comments App, Sales Tracking, Partner Sweepstakes, and Entry Codes, which UpViral does not provide.
Live Draws. Stream your drawings across social media platforms to engage your audience without exposing sensitive information.
Viralsweep’s ‘Audience Segments’ feature helps filter 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’re looking for a high-quality newsletter referral tool, Viral Loops stands out from UpViral and most of its competitors.

Creators and business owners primarily use Viral Loops to grow their audience 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) by reaching a specific milestone. This allows contest holders to get their giveaway going viral because of incentives and boost sales by providing coupons.
The Startup Prelaunch: Seeking a high-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 making it 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: Do you 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 alternative to UpViral. But it allows you to try it for free. It offers three main paid plans, as well as an Enterprise plan, with varying costs.

1. Start-up – $49/mo – Up to 1,000 participants
2. Growing – $299/mo – Up to 10,000 participants
3. Power- $399/mo – Up to 25,000 participants

When comparing the prices of Viral Loops and UpViral, UpViral is significantly more affordable than Viral Loops. For $99, UpViral allows you to remove its branding and collect up to 10,000 leads per month. But in Viral Loops, you can only collect 1,000 leads for $49 per month.

Viral Loops vs UpViral

So, who should use Viral Loops over UpViral?

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

For example, if you acquire 2,000 extra customers through referrals to your Shopify shop, subscribing to the Viral Loops Growing plan will be worthwhile, considering that acquiring a new customer costs significantly more (some studies show it costs five times 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’ll find the best alternatives to Upviral viral giveaway software, along with 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 plans allow for removing KingSumo branding, so if you’re not serious about branding, KingSumo is an excellent tool to consider. Check out the UpViral vs KingSumo review for more details.
RaffleCopter: RaffleCopter is a low-cost alternative to UpViral. Its paid plans start from $13 per month. However, the customization options are far fewer than those offered by UpViral.
KickOffLabs: KickOffLabs enables you to create scalable viral giveaways utilizing leaderboard competitions, pre-launch waiting lists, Shopify rewards, Opt-in bribes, unlock rewards, and Instant win giveaways. Although it is an alternative to UpViral, the pricing is a bit off, considering it limits the number of people who can view your landing pages, emails, and API calls. However, Upviral does not qualify in this regard – page views 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’re looking for a low-cost Upviral alternative to boost your social metrics quickly, consider WooBox.
GiveLab: This is a close alternative to Gleam with similar widgets and features. It’s free plan allows you to create unlimited campaigns and get unlimited participants. Therefore, GiveLab is a free UpViral alternative to consider.
RafflePress: If you’re looking for the best Upviral alternative for WordPress sites, RafflePress might be what you need. It’s from the WPBeginner team behind brands like OptinMonster, MonsterInsights, and AffiliateWP. So they know what they are doing. A self-hosted site is required 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 of the following reasons:

1. Want a better giveaway app like UpViral, but better for boosting engagement 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 you desire to run engaging sweepstakes that incentivize participants to share their referral links everywhere on the internet and encourage them to complete tasks to receive giveaway entries, Vyper.ai is your most suitable UpViral option.

If you want to boost your social metrics, such as followers, likes, and reposts, give Gleam a try. Gleam can help you build a viral campaign more easily and quickly 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 hosting viral giveaways and contests for years, and Upviral has been my go-to tool for building them. However, based on my experience, UpViral lacks certain features, such as conversion tracking and repeated actions.

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 that it gives points for referring visitors. Not all participants are convinced that they will get referral sign-ups and have a chance to become a winner. However, they can still be encouraged to send traffic and earn 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.

What are your thoughts on UpViral and its best alternatives? Share your opinions below.