5 WordPress Giveaway Plugins That Convert Visitors to Leads

Giveaways are a practical way to help your blog grow, turn casual visitors into subscribers and followers by offering a clear value exchange … a chance to win, in exchange for taking a simple action. This concept reflects the psychological power of contests to capture attention in ways standard marketing messages simply can’t match, making them a useful addition to any conversion strategy. 

Giveaways have evolved from simple prize drawings into sophisticated lead generation engines that create genuine excitement while building valuable email lists. The best campaigns tap into viral mechanics where each participant becomes a potential advocate, multiplying your reach through social sharing and referral bonuses.

This guide covers what WordPress giveaway plugins actually do behind the scenes and why they’re effective at driving growth. Plus, we give you a detailed analysis of the 6 best options available.

What Are WordPress Giveaway Plugins?

Giveaway plugins generally automate the entire contest workflow from start to finish, including entry collection, winner selection, and lead capture. This allows you to set up the mechanism on your site and leave it to do the rest. 

Behind the scenes, these tools create database tables to store entries, process validation checks for each action, and run queries to randomly select winners based on weighted entry counts. The automation transforms what would otherwise require spreadsheets, random number generators, and manual verification into a streamlined process.

However, there’s a consideration many overlook: storing thousands of contest entries directly in your WordPress database can impact site performance, especially during viral campaign spikes when entry submissions flood in. Full-featured giveaway plugins typically handle everything internally, storing all participant data, social actions, and referral chains in your WordPress installation, which works well for smaller campaigns but can strain resources as you scale.

You might want a complete giveaway plugin for the all-in-one convenience, especially if you plan to run frequent promotions. But you might instead prefer to use a plugin like FooConvert that helps you capture sign-ups for your giveaway while making it easy to store email data off your site through your existing email forms and marketing tools.

6 WordPress Giveaway Plugins That Drive Real Results

1. FooConvert: Built for Measurable Business Growth

One of the best features of this plugin, is that you get clarity on what’s tracked: FooConvert logs Events, Views, Engagements, Unique Visitors and more for each campaign. Plus, you can collect entries by embedding your existing form (e.g., Gravity Forms) in a popup, bar, or flyout, giving you a clean handoff to your analytics or ecommerce stack for ROI work.

Logistically, FooConvert provides a fairly simple mechanism for running giveaways. 

• Select your preferred popup (flyout, bar or popup) and use a predesigned template or design your own. 
• Use the built-in form settings to set up fields for name and email address – for a giveaway where you are collecting minimal information, this would work well. But you can also use a form plugin to embed an entry form in your popup; the advantage here is that entries would be stored externally on your email service provider, rather than locally.
• Set up the display rules (for location and users), and set your open and/or close triggers. 

Once published, you will be able to capture entries via the popup and track on-site conversions. When connected to your ecommerce or analytics stack (e.g., WooCommerce or GA4), you can attribute post-entry sales for a realistic view of ROI.

The behavioral targeting built into FooConvert means that you can show the giveaway only to engaged visitors using rules like scroll depth, time on page, page targeting, or exit intent. This allows you to prioritize qualified traffic rather than interrupting everyone.

Campaign assets are designed to load only when needed (on pages where the giveaway is active) to minimize impact during traffic spikes. As the popup (and form) is hosted on your WordPress site, rather than externally, load times are faster with minimal impact to user experience.

FooConvert then provides you with actionable reporting, letting you see views, entries, and conversion rates for individual popups in the dashboard, with optional revenue attribution if ecommerce or analytics tracking is configured correctly. This information not only gives you insights into which popups are performing best, but also helps you make data-driven changes to popups to effect maximum conversions. 

The free version of FooConvert supports launching basic giveaway capture and conversion tracking. FooConvert Pro adds more granular targeting and testing options suited to higher-volume campaigns, as well as more advanced analytics. 

Top Tip: If you’re looking for a way to run photo contests on your WordPress site, you can use FooGallery and User Uploads to gather submissions and collect names and emails.

2. RafflePress: The Popular Choice for Quick Setup

RafflePress Lite is a widely used giveaway plugin, with over 30,000 active installs, making it a trusted option for launching campaigns quickly. Its intuitive drag-and-drop builder and library of pre-made templates allow users to create professional-looking giveaways in just a few minutes, even without technical expertise. This makes it an appealing choice for marketers and small businesses that need to launch promotions quickly and efficiently.

The plugin supports a rich variety of entry actions beyond basic email capture. Users can boost engagement through social actions such as following or visiting profiles, viewing posts or videos, sharing or tweeting content, and/or leaving comments. These flexible entry options help brands increase visibility across different channels while keeping participation simple. RafflePress also includes a built-in random winner picker, allowing for fair winner selection at the end of your campaign.

For businesses looking to scale growth, RafflePress offers referral-based entries through its “refer-a-friend” feature, though this is limited to the Growth plan and higher tiers. Advanced integrations are also available by plan level: the Pro version unlocks direct connections with popular email marketing tools like ActiveCampaign, ConvertKit, and Mailchimp, while the Growth plan adds landing pages, Zapier and webhook support, detailed entry reports, and social login options.

3. ViralKit: AI-Powered Campaign Creation

ViralKit sets itself apart with AI-assisted campaign setup designed to minimize time-to-launch. From a short brief – even a single sentence – the platform can generate a ready-to-edit contest, including suggested structure and entry actions. Users then refine the rules, customize the design, and adjust participation mechanics before publishing. This can be particularly useful for teams that want speed without starting from a blank canvas, while still keeping control over the final campaign experience.

The platform offers a deep library of entry actions and social integrations, with higher-tier plans unlocking hundreds of options. Referral and bonus-entry mechanics are built in, making it easy to encourage sharing and organic reach. Campaigns are hosted on ViralKit’s own servers and embedded into WordPress sites, reducing database strain, especially during traffic spikes – an advantage for high-visibility promotions.

While AI helps streamline setup, optimization remains user-driven. ViralKit provides analytics, validation, and fraud-control tools that let marketers fine-tune weighting and entry rules over time. Rather than “auto-magic” optimization, the platform supports informed iteration based on performance data.

4. Gleam: Enterprise-Grade Reliability

Gleam is a robust, enterprise-ready giveaway platform built for stability and scale. Campaigns run as hosted widgets, meaning all entry processing and validation occur on Gleam’s servers rather than within your WordPress environment. This significantly reduces database load and improves reliability during high-traffic campaigns.

A key strength of Gleam is its built-in anti-fraud framework. Automated checks identify duplicate or bot-like behavior, suspicious IPs, proxy or VPN usage, and unusual device patterns. Where social networks allow it, actions are verified through official APIs; for actions that cannot be directly verified, Gleam relies on alternative validated actions combined with fraud detection safeguards.

Gleam also excels in reporting and attribution. Campaign-level analytics can be passed into broader analytics or ecommerce stacks using integrations and UTM tracking, helping teams connect giveaway participation to conversions down the line. Gleam is best suited for brands and agencies that want reliability, compliance, and performance at scale, and are comfortable paying SaaS pricing above entry-level WordPress tools.

5. KingSumo: The Budget Lifetime Deal Option

KingSumo became widely known through lifetime deals, particularly via AppSumo, offering unlimited use for a one-time payment. This pricing model made it especially attractive to startups, solopreneurs, and marketers experimenting with giveaways without committing to recurring SaaS costs.

The tool focuses on simple viral giveaways, combining email capture with refer-a-friend bonus entries to encourage sharing. Its builder is straightforward, making it easy to launch classic prize draws with minimal setup. Core features like entry collection and random winner selection are handled reliably, without being overly complicated.

However, KingSumo prioritizes essentials over advanced capabilities. It lacks many of the features found in higher-end platforms, such as deep analytics, A/B testing, extensive integrations, or sophisticated fraud prevention. As a result, it’s best suited for beginners or small campaigns aimed at testing audience interest. As campaigns grow in size or complexity, users often benefit from migrating to tools with stronger safeguards, richer data, and faster feature evolution.

Turn Your Giveaway Into a Growth Engine

Giveaways remain one of the fastest ways to build an engaged audience when executed properly. But success depends on choosing the right technical foundation for your needs, and that can scale with your campaigns.

The right plugin can transform your giveaways from simple prize drawings into sophisticated growth engines. For this, you need to consider whether you need a full giveaway platform or a lighter approach. FooConvert works with your existing form tools (like Gravity Forms) to capture entries while keeping email data in your marketing stack rather than bloating your WordPress database.

Smart targeting will also make a difference to your lead generation and marketing efforts. For this, you need to display your giveaway at the right moment using exit intent, scroll triggers, or time delays rather than interrupting every visitor immediately.

Modern tools also provide the analytics, automation, and optimization features needed to prove ROI and justify continued investment.

Get measurable results with FooConvert, optimize quickly, and grow confidently.