RafflePress vs. KingSumo: Which Giveaway Plugin Actually Wins?

KingSumo is a solid giveaway tool. If you only need basic viral sharing and want to pay $49 once, it might be exactly what you need. But if you’re running your giveaway on WordPress and want full control over your contest, keep reading.

I won’t pretend I’m neutral here. RafflePress is our own product, but I’ve spent time with both tools and the comparison below is based on real testing. I’ll tell you where KingSumo is the smarter pick.

Here’s a full breakdown of RafflePress vs. KingSumo on features, ease of use, publishing, and pricing, so you can decide which viral contest builder fits your setup.

How to Choose the Right Giveaway Builder

I think you should look for the following when comparing these WordPress contest plugin options:

• Easy Setup: The giveaway tool you choose should be easy and quick to set up. Look for functionality like drag-and-drop editing and a visual interface.
• Customization: You’ll need to customize your giveaway to your company branding, so ensure the tool offers easy customization options.
• Giveaway actions: Giveaways should be easy for users to enter. Look for a tool that offers multiple entry options to meet various marketing goals, both on and off your website.
• Publishing: You don’t want to spend hours figuring out how to publish your giveaway. The tool should allow you to launch it with a few clicks.
• Winner picker: Your giveaway tool should include methods for picking a winner. This prevents you from needing third-party generators.
• Speed: Your giveaway tool should be fast and bloat-free; otherwise it could slow down your website and frustrate potential contestants.

Features: RafflePress Vs. KingSumo

When running an online contest, the tool you use needs to have the right set of features. You should be able to build your contest easily, have plenty of ways for people to enter, connect with the top social media networks, and integrate with email marketing services.

Here’s a side-by-side breakdown before we dig into the details.

Feature	RafflePress	KingSumo
Entry actions	30+	~10
WordPress plugin	Yes	No, embed code only
Pricing	Free / $299 or $349 one-time	Free / $49 one-time
Fraud protection	reCAPTCHA + email verification + IP tracking	reCAPTCHA only
Landing page builder	Yes	No
Email integrations	15+	3 + Zapier
Giveaway rules generator	Yes	No
Social share verification	No (industry-wide limitation)	No (same limitation)
Random winner picker	Yes	Yes
Data ownership	Your WordPress database	KingSumo’s servers

Worth noting on the data ownership row: with RafflePress, every email address and entry lives in your WordPress database. With KingSumo, your entrant data lives on KingSumo’s servers.

That matters if you ever want to export your list, migrate platforms, or need reliable access to your contest data.

RafflePress Features

RafflePress is a WordPress giveaway plugin that grows your email list and social following through viral contests. Participants earn bonus entries by sharing, following, and referring friends. It’s built specifically for WordPress sites and runs entirely from your WP Admin dashboard.

Features

• Beginner-friendly drag-and-drop giveaway builder.
• Create unlimited giveaways in WordPress.
• Viral giveaway templates to create goal-specific contests.
• 1-click entry actions and fraud protection.
• Upload custom prize details and images.
• Giveaway design options, including custom backgrounds.
• Viral refer-a-friend sharing options for word-of-mouth marketing.
• Image submission actions to collect user-generated content.
• Create distraction-free giveaway landing pages to drive entries.
• Connect to major social media networks to grow your social following.
• Email marketing integrations and webhooks to grow your list.
• Powerful retargeting features.
• Giveaway rules template and generator.
• Giveaway entry reports.
• Display giveaway winners within the contest widget.

RafflePress also works with any WordPress theme and can be embedded on WooCommerce product pages if you want to run a contest alongside your store.

Both RafflePress and KingSumo include a random winner generator, so you don’t need a third-party tool to draw the winner.

Learn how OptinMonster used RafflePress to generate 3,500+ new users.

KingSumo Features

Compared to RafflePress, KingSumo is primarily a free web application. It doesn’t come with a WordPress plugin; you use an embed code to add a contest to your website. KingSumo is a hosted web app you embed on your site via code.

Features

• Create unlimited giveaways
• Users can enter your contest via email
• Upload a prize cover image
• Use your own logo
• Bonus social media giveaway sharing actions
• Bonus social media following actions
• 3 Email marketing integrations + Zapier
• Display winners inside the giveaway app

Which Is Easier to Set Up: RafflePress or KingSumo?

Both tools are straightforward to launch a basic giveaway with. The difference shows up in what you can do once you’re inside.

RafflePress Ease of Use

Setting up a WordPress giveaway with RafflePress is fast. Download the RafflePress plugin and install and activate it on your website. You can learn how to install a WordPress plugin in this guide.

Setting up your first giveaway is a matter of choosing a giveaway template, adding your prize details, selecting your viral entry options with the drag-and-drop builder, and clicking publish.

For more detailed instructions, see this step-by-step guide on how to run an online contest with RafflePress.

The free version lets you include these entry actions without spending a penny:

• Visit a Facebook page
• Follow on Twitter
• Tweet a message
• Follow on Pinterest
• Visit on Instagram
• Visit a page

Most of those actions allow users to enter your giveaway daily to accumulate more entries.

The free and paid versions both include a GDPR consent checkbox and a giveaway rules generator. That gets you a head start on what’s usually a complicated set of guidelines.

You can customize your contest’s look with a range of design options. Choose fonts, layout, and colors with a few clicks.

KingSumo Ease of Use

The KingSumo web app is straightforward, though it doesn’t include a visual drag-and-drop builder that lets you preview your contest while building it.

After entering your email address, you’re taken straight to the creation page. You can enter your competition title, description, start and end times, and prize images.

You can choose which platforms to allow users to share your giveaway on, and add several bonus entries via a drop-down menu.

One important gap: KingSumo doesn’t include an area to enter your giveaway’s terms and conditions. Instead, it links to KingSumo’s own terms of service.

KingSumo also doesn’t support collecting user-generated content (UGC). Gathering and displaying UGC, such as images and photos, is a powerful way to increase user trust and engagement and can influence purchase decisions.

What the Giveaway Looks Like to Entrants

The entrant experience differs between the two tools in ways that affect how many people complete the entry process.

With RafflePress, entrants see a live-preview widget showing the prize, a countdown timer, and all available bonus entry actions on a distraction-free landing page. Every entry action is clearly labeled with the points it earns.

With KingSumo, entrants see an image, a countdown, and the sharing options. After entering, they get a congratulations page. The experience is clean but limited compared to RafflePress’s entry action depth.

One thing worth knowing: neither tool can verify whether a social share actually happened. That’s an industry-wide limitation, not a specific weakness of either platform.

How Do You Publish Your Giveaway in WordPress?

WordPress powers around 43% of all websites, so publishing is where the two tools diverge most clearly. Here’s how each handles it.

Adding RafflePress Giveaways to WordPress

RafflePress offers 3 easy ways to publish a giveaway in WordPress:

• RafflePress WordPress Block: Embed the giveaway widget in any post or page using the block editor.
• WordPress Shortcode: Embed the giveaway in the classic editor, sidebar widgets, or inside your WordPress theme.
• Giveaway Landing Page: Create a distraction-free landing page on your website for your giveaway.

Here’s how to publish using the RafflePress WordPress block:

1. Create a new post or page and give it a name.
2. Click the plus (+) icon to open the block finder in your WordPress editor.
3. Type RafflePress into the search box to find the RafflePress block.

4. Click the block to add it to your post.
5. From the dropdown menu inside the block, select your giveaway.

6. The RafflePress giveaway widget will appear with a live preview.

7. When you’re happy with how everything looks, publish your page.

If you’d prefer a distraction-free giveaway landing page, choose the Giveaway Landing Page option from the Publish page and enter a unique permalink. Then target your traffic to that single page to drive contest entries.

Adding KingSumo Giveaways to WordPress

The primary method to publish your KingSumo giveaway in WordPress is to use the embed code provided. Copy the HTML embed code and paste it into a new Custom HTML block inside your WordPress page editor.

After publishing your page, your WordPress giveaway will look similar to the example below.

There is no WordPress-native installation for KingSumo. The embed-code approach works, but it means no WP Admin integration, no live preview in the block editor, and no WordPress-based entry management.

RafflePress Vs. KingSumo Pricing

Getting good value for money is a central factor when choosing any tool. I’ve compared the pricing below to help you understand how much these giveaway builders will cost.

RafflePress Pricing

RafflePress lets you run giveaways with the free version. Upgrading to the paid version unlocks more features, including:

• Multiple sites: Add RafflePress to more than one of your WordPress websites.
• Time controls: Set the start and end time for your giveaways.
• Multiple prizes: Offer more than 1 prize on the giveaway widget.
• Email verification: Verify entries by asking participants to confirm their email addresses.
• Prize image gallery: Display stunning prize images.
• Design options: Customize the design of your giveaway widget and landing page.
• Polls & surveys action: Run a poll or survey as a way to enter.
• YouTube actions: Ask entrants to visit your YouTube channel or watch a video.
• Image upload actions: Run a photo contest with image uploads.
• Optional Facebook actions: Ask users to like your Facebook page or share your giveaway to enter.
• TikTok actions: Ask users to visit your TikTok profile or watch a TikTok video.
• Email integrations: Grow your email list by integrating with your email marketing software.
• Zapier and webhooks integration: Connect to thousands of other apps and services.
• Mandatory actions: Make specific entry actions required to enter.
• Winner announcement: Display the giveaway winner on your contest widget.
• Entry Reports: See a visual representation of your best-performing entry actions.

The paid version starts at $299 for a Single Site. It’s a one-time payment with no annual renewal. If you start using RafflePress Lite, you’ll automatically get a discount at checkout when you upgrade to Pro.

For agencies and developers, the Unlimited Sites license costs a single payment of $349. That gives you all features, all future updates, and use of RafflePress on an unlimited number of websites.

KingSumo Pricing

KingSumo’s paid plan is a one-time $49 lifetime deal. It removes AppSumo branding, adds custom rules, Meta pixel tracking, and advanced integrations. There is no separate WordPress plugin. KingSumo is a hosted web app you embed on your site via code.

The free web app lets you create a basic giveaway with standard social sharing options. Zapier integration, Facebook pixel tracking, additional entry fields, custom rules, and removal of KingSumo branding all require the paid plan.

Still not sure? Check out these KingSumo alternatives.

Pricing Summary

Here’s a quick comparison of pricing for each giveaway tool.

Tool	Free Plan	Paid Plan	Unlimited Sites
RafflePress	Yes (WordPress plugin)	$299 one-time	$349 one-time
KingSumo	Yes (web app only)	$49 one-time	Not available

If email list growth is your primary goal, RafflePress’s 15+ integrations (Mailchimp, ConvertKit, AWeber, ActiveCampaign, Drip, and more) give you more automation options than KingSumo’s 3.

RafflePress Pros and Cons

Pros

• Free version available
• Drag and drop builder
• Create unlimited giveaways
• 1-click entry and fraud protection
• A large variety of entry actions
• No design knowledge needed
• Viral giveaway templates
• Giveaway rules generator
• Includes image submissions
• Contest management dashboard
• Email marketing and Zapier integrations
• Random winner picker
• Entry Verification
• Priority support

Cons

• Most powerful features in the Pro version

KingSumo Pros and Cons

Pros

• Free web application
• Easy to set up
• Variety of social sharing options
• Create unlimited giveaways
• Affordable one-time $49 paid plan
• Email support

Cons

• Distracting branding in the free version
• No verification for entries
• Cannot collect participant names
• No entry management dashboard
• No WordPress-native installation; requires embed code only
• Social share actions cannot be verified (industry-wide limitation)
• Limited integrations (3 email services vs. 15+ for RafflePress)

Frequently Asked Questions

Is RafflePress better than KingSumo for WordPress sites?

Yes. RafflePress is designed specifically for WordPress. It installs as a native plugin, integrates directly with WP Admin, and gives you 30+ entry actions, 15+ email integrations, and a built-in landing page builder. KingSumo is a hosted web app with no WordPress plugin; you add it via embed code. For any WordPress giveaway, RafflePress is the clearer fit.

Does KingSumo have a WordPress plugin?

No. KingSumo does not offer a WordPress plugin. It’s a hosted web application; you create your giveaway on KingSumo’s platform and embed it on your site using an HTML embed code. There is no WP Admin integration, no live preview in the block editor, and no WordPress-based entry management.

Can you use KingSumo for free?

Yes. KingSumo has a free tier that lets you run basic giveaways with standard social sharing options and email entry. The free version includes KingSumo branding. To remove branding, add custom rules, enable Meta pixel tracking, and access advanced integrations, you need the paid plan, which is a one-time $49 lifetime deal.

What entry actions does RafflePress offer that KingSumo doesn’t?

RafflePress supports 30+ entry actions including image uploads for photo contests, polls and surveys, TikTok profile visits, YouTube video views, mandatory actions, and a refer-a-friend mechanic. KingSumo covers basic email entry and social sharing only. RafflePress also includes a built-in giveaway rules generator that KingSumo doesn’t offer.

Which giveaway tool is cheaper long-term?

KingSumo is cheaper upfront at $49 one-time vs. RafflePress at $299 one-time. Long-term, both are one-time payments with no annual subscription. The question is feature depth: RafflePress at $299 includes 30+ entry actions, 15+ email integrations, fraud protection, and a landing page builder. KingSumo at $49 covers basic viral sharing for non-WordPress users.

Which Is the Best Giveaway Tool: RafflePress vs. KingSumo?

RafflePress is the right pick if you’re running WordPress and want full control over your giveaway. Your data stays on your site, you get 30+ entry actions, and you never pay again. KingSumo is the smarter choice if you’re not on WordPress, want to spend $49 instead of $299, and only need basic email and social sharing. The difference comes down to what you’re building on.

Get started with the premium version of RafflePress now. Or grab the free version here.

After setting up your first giveaway campaign, check out these effective contest promotion ideas.

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