ShortStack Reviews

ShortStack Review

Comments: 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.

Happy since I signed up!

Comments: I acquired Shortstack to help roll out raffles and promotions the company I work for does monthly. This has made it easy to work with our website developer when needed to get buttons added bringing them to the Shortstack form I build.

Pros:

The ability to be guided from start t finish with tips along the way is a great feature. This allowed me to acquire shortstack and teach myself how to use it, as the software is very user friendly.

Cons:

Only thing I was having trouble with would be getting the URL set into a landing page with redirection. Maybe a bit more info on how to get it out and rolling once finished building.

I really liked my ShortStack experience

Pros:

hortStack is a versatile marketing platform that specializes in creating and managing interactive campaigns, contests and landing pages for businesses and organizations. Here are some key points about ShortStack: 1.

Cons:

Versatile, specializing in creating and managing interactive campaigns and contests

Easy to use for competitions and lead gen

Comments: Very good for what we needed it for. Great out of the boxes features - and quick to setup.

Pros:

Easy to Setup. Great for quick landing pages & lead gen. great to customise & email triggers built in are a nice touch.

Cons:

Little expensive. Some functions look generic unless designed & customised.

Professional Look Without the Pricetag

Comments: Positive. A well-designed piece of software. I will definitely be returning if we do this promotion again.

Pros:

I really loved how easy it was to build a professional looking giveaway. My giveaway was very unique (different clues appearing at different days) and I loved how I could set the entire thing up ahead of time and let it run, confident all the timing was correct. This took a lot of stress out of the giveaway week.

Cons:

It was hard to track the entries through social media.

A really great out of the box solution

Comments: We were able to get very intricate with the features in our campaign. Customer support is extremely responsive and has gone above and beyond more than once.

Pros:

It's very easy to use, and flexible enough to do whatever we want.

Cons:

You have to have a more advanced knowledge in order to pull of some things, but for straight forward application it covers a lot.

ShortStack has been great for what I've needed it for!

Pros:

It's a great interactive tool that engages our audiences. I use it for specific programs and it works well for me.

Cons:

Some of the functions are not as user friendly as I would like them to be.

Great Resource, Intermediate Ease, Kind of Pricey

Comments: 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!

Comments: 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.

A great solution for those running contests

Comments: We are in a very niche market and we rarely run contests outside of social media giveaways, but I needed a good option for allowing our customers to enter using multiple platforms (i.e. Facebook, Youtube, submitting images, etc.). I looked at quite a few options and even tried out some other ones but ShortStack was by far the easiest to use AND offered the most versatility for the price. Because we do these types of contests so rarely, I actually did end up cancelling my account so that we weren't paying for a service that we didn't use, but for the time period that we needed it, ShortStack was great.

Pros:

I chose ShortStack because we needed a platform that would allow multiple types of entries--everything from viewing a Youtube video to following us on social media to uploading images. Of the different software programs that I viewed or tried, ShortStack had the most versatility, was the most user-friendly, and had the best price point.

Cons:

At first, it was kind of difficult to navigate all the different options and figure out how to create the contests that I wanted to. It took some playing around with, but I think compared to some of the other platforms I looked at, it was still more user-friendly.

Customizable

Pros:

I loved how customizable we can make our contest process with ShortStack.

Cons:

Sometimes the amount of options with design would get overwhelming.

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

Comments: 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".

Helpful software for competition management

Comments: Our web agency find it easy to integrate into the website. Gallery option works well to allow people to see other entries. Easy way to gather enties together in one place. We had issues embedding Shortstack into Facebook and now direct people to a link within the post copy. Load time was an issue when we added too many videos for one competition. Hard to identify what platform winners came from to contact them.

Pros:

Ability to vote for winners and easily collate the results.

Cons:

Unable to tell what platform the competition entries have come from in order to know how to contact the winners.

Stacks up to the hype

Comments: 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.

Social Media Contest Launch for NonProfit

Comments: Great. I would highly recommend.

Pros:

I planned a series of social media photo contests for my client, Greenwich Botanical Center, to help create engagement during the COVID shut down of their programs and events. We held two photo contests 1) Hydrangea Envy and 2) Dazzling Dahlias and both were well received and increase overall engagement in our social media and web visits. Shortstack was very easy to use without extensive software knowledge in this space other than creating simple websites. It was easy to use and there was ALWAYS customer support at my beck and call. Every time I had a question...someone ws right there to guide me and put me back on track. on the higher priced subscription.The interface with our social media accounts was also a breeze for voting on FB and sharing. I still have the subscription and now want to do regular contests for all of my clients.

Cons:

My only issues were that someone with an IT background used software to hack the voting and gave themselves over 4000 votes by appearing as unique IP addresses for each vote. My other issue was I found it hard to really. be creative in the initial design of the landing page...but that being said it always looked beautiful for my client and looked professional. I did not ask for more assistance to go to the next design level ann maybe that is also available at a higher subscription rate...I did not look.

Great little tool for your toolbox

Comments: Great experience. My first hour of training when I signed up went fast and was full of info but I got it. Then I did have to reach out for help through chat and finally figured it out. They were very professional and helpful.

Pros:

I have a client that submits multiple job requests to me almost daily. We needed to create a form so they would be able to fill out all the pertinent info that i need to know in order to do their job requests. After much research, I found this product and it does what I need it to do (mostly)

Cons:

There is a learning curve, and you cannot reach customer support by phone. But they definitely respond quickly by chat and are very helpful. But you as the user need to figure things out. One thing that I would like to see improved is the option to have the submitter be able to add more than one image at a time.

Good solution

Comments: Elegant and capable product

Pros:

Good support on line and from executives

Cons:

There is a learning curve which had to be navigated

Used it for years

Comments: An easy, affordable solution.

Pros:

Easy WYSIWYG designer. I use mostly for simple splash pages, some social contests. Have not explored the full functionality for a while, but I know there is lots more.

Cons:

Not really loving the new design, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. Everyone grumbles about change.

Superior Network Review

Comments: We have been able to provide additional services with ShortStack, providing our customers a more rewarding and enticing experience.

Pros:

ShortStack provides an easy-to-use interface that allows many different functions that help us communicate with our customers. Everything we have needed ShortStack to do has been met with satisfaction.

Cons:

The design tool layout/screen is a little confusing and not as easy to use. Perhaps it could be made to be a little more simple and more clear.

Shortstack is a Phenomenal Tool

Comments: Overall, I would absolutely recommend that companies use Shortstack if they would like to run giveaways, signups, or create any sort of landing pages.

Pros:

I absolutely loved the signup sheets and campaigns you could create, especially for giveaways. It gives you the ability to get creative with the art and layout while gathering very good analytics. It is the perfect tool to use when running a giveaway for a client.

Cons:

It takes a bit of time to get used to all of the tools and aspects in the software but that is also a plus because it just shows all of the options available in creating a great landing page.

First time using this type of program

Comments: I was totally impressed with the support I received. I experimented until I was confident that my contest was going to work. Payment started once it went live, not while I was learning how to use the site. I loved this because I work in a non-profit organization and I didn't want my organization to have to pay for my learning curve. After the contest was over, I was able to pause my account until ready to start another.

Pros:

I was a novice when I did my first contest. I had never done anything like this before. I liked all of the support. There were written instructions and videos for each step and a a staff person (always the same person) was just a click away when I got stuck. I only needed help a couple of times.

Cons:

I don't have any complaints. Having never done anything like this before, I had some difficulty with the meaning of some of the terms, but consider that I was able to successfully create an Instagram contest by just reading the instructions, seeing what the software was doing and asking for help when I really got stuck.

Great Option for Contests

Comments: My overall experience with ShortStack has been very positive. It's allowed our team to run an entire contest from landing page design through selecting winners on our own, without having to use an agency for help. It's ultimately saved us money by allowing us to keep this in-house.

Pros:

I love how easy ShortStack is to set up and use. I was able to design and deploy a beautiful landing page for a contest without needing to use any code. Managing the photo contest has also been super easy and smooth, with all of the entries in one place.

Cons:

I wish we could run a video upload contest without requiring contestants to upload their videos to another site (like Youtube) first.

Effective but hard to learn

Comments: 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 Customer Service Team

Pros:

I VERY MUCH APPRECIATE their responsive and helpful customer support.

Cons:

It takes some time to navigate the numerous template options.

Great Product & User Friendly

Comments: I have enjoyed the few campaigns I have created. It was fun to play around with and easy to make.

Pros:

ShortStack is very each to use, even for a first-timer. Most of the software is intuitive and also easy to navigate.

Cons:

Some of the functionality can seem overwhelming during your first try. It also doesn't seem very intuitive on where to download your collected emails.