Best Logo Design Contest Sites And Services For Small Business Startups

Killer logo designs and badass web designers are hard to come by for bootstrapped entrepreneurs and small business startups that are confined to a shoestring budget. Unfortunately unless you know a professional website designer with incredible skills and a vivid imagination, you’re forced to sort through the ever growing list of expensive logo and website design companies. Thankfully an improved model has emerged where web and logo designers compete directly against one another to deliver the best designs. The customer needs only to create a logo competition listing on one of these sites and set a prize amount for the winning designer. The higher the prize money, the greater the number of design submissions your listing will receive. During the logo contest the customer can rate each design, offer feedback and directions for the designers, and create polls so his friends and coworkers can place votes their favorite logo designs. Overall it’s a much better solution than just simply choosing a logo design company and trusting they’ll produce exactly what you need.


99Designs – Arguably one of the best if not the most popular logo design contest sites. They not only offer logo design services but competitions for web design, WordPress design, icon design, stationary, print, brochures, powerpoint, banner ads, buttons, and t-shirt design. Creating and launching your own design contest is simple and easy. A basic logo design contest will cost you $295 and it will attract roughly 30 designs. For $495 you can double the amount of submissions and for $695 you’ll get about 100 logo designs to choose from. 99Designs also offers plenty of upgrades to help you obtain greater exposure for your logo design competition. More exposure usually results in many more logo designs. These exposure upgrades include getting your contest featured on the 99Designs homepage, highlighting your listing, and promoting your listing on 99Designs Twitter account. Extra options include private contests and a fast tracked contest option to end the standard 7-day contest earlier.

CrowdSpring – Each year this site serves thousands of contests for web design, graphic design, and industrial design. Additional services include naming research, creative writing, business writing, online writing and editing, as well as proofreading. Listing fees for logos start at $39 with a minimum prize amount of $200. CrowdSpring states that each project gets on average 110 entries but they do not provide the average fee to obtain those 110 entries. However, each project includes a money-back guarantee such that they’ll refund everything minus the listing fee if you’re not completely satisfied with the results of your design contest.

Design Crowd – A graphic design marketplace where freelance designers compete against each other for prize money provided by the project creator. DesignCrowd features competitions for corporate identity, web design listings, print design, and graphic design. Whether you need a flyer or poster designed for your marketing campaign or a simple WordPress design for you new site, DesignCrowd has you covered. The minimum prize amount required for a logo design contest is $170 and that does not include the $30 listing fee. For that price DesignCrowd estimates that you’ll receive approximately 15 logo submissions. DesignCrowd offers a money back guarantee for projects in which the prize money is not guaranteed by the listing creator. If you ever run into any problems using the service, you can reach their support team via email or by calling them directly.

Logo My Way – This logo contest site features a logo marketplace where designers feature original, ready made logos that you can simply add your company’s name to and checkout. They offer traditional logo competitions as well with their least expensive package starting at $200 with a 10% service fee. Members have access to the forum where they can discuss related issues and support is handled via email and phone calls.

Hatchwise – A design contest site that allows you to create listings for all kinds of design projects ranging from logo contests to writing assignments. Hatchwise offers web design, logo design, brand development contests, resume writing, newsletter writing, SEO writing, book writing, article writing contests, and lyrics and poetry writing competitions. If you’re just starting out and need help with your business concept they also provide competitions to help you dream up names for your company, products, slogan, taglines, and the perfect domain. A basic logo design contest includes a $29 activation fee, a 10% winning creative fee, and a $100 minimum prize amount. Upgrading your listing to appear as a featured project or adding highlighting will attract more designers and therefore more entries to select from.

Guerra Creativa – Offers graphic design contests for logos, stationary, print, packaging, and icons. Their web design contests are available for WordPress sites, landing pages, small and large website needs, banner ads, and social networking customizations for sites like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Other design competitions include flash animation and 3D modeling and rendering contests. For comparison, logo design contests start at a minimum prize amount of $150 with a listing fee of $14.99. These economy logo competitions only receive about 25 entries but you can increase the number of submissions by raising the prize amount or paying for extra exposure.

Design Contest – Currently this design competition website only offers logo design contest projects to be listed. Their most inexpensive logo design project is priced with a non-refundable listing fee of $30 and a prize minimum of $250. The logo project can be listed for three to 14 days and it should receive about 30 to 35 entries. Private design contests and allowing all registered members access your project listing incurs additional costs.

48Hours Logo – Provides logo contests for the lowest prize amount available compared to other logo design contest websites. Starting at just $79 you can list your logo design competition and begin reviewing entries from professional designers. 48Hours Logo takes a 10% fee for providing its services and requires a $29 initial payment for each project you create. The remaining prize balance is deposited after you see the logo concepts and it is dispersed to the winner of your choice. Listing upgrade options include the ability to make your project private to prevent non-members, competitors, and search engines from indexing and viewing your logo contest.

Logo Tournament – A logo contest website where small business owners and startups can get hundreds of logo ideas submitted to them from top design pros. Logo contests start at $250 and they generally get about 50 to 200 logo concepts submitted. Logo Tournament offers a money back guarantee such that if your listing doesn’t receive at least 30 different logo entries they’ll send you a full refund.

Astada – Another design contest site that allows you to create competition based listings for your design needs. They also offer a marketplace were buyers and sellers can negotiate the sale and transfer of design works, domains, and whole websites. Astada provides contests for web design, logos, flash, buttons, icons, banners, t-shirts, and any other design competition you want to create. A simple logo contest will cost you a $20 listing fee and a minimum cash prize of $150 for the winning logo designer.