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ShortStack Logo

Contests, forms and landing pages.

Last updated: August 2024

ShortStack Reviews

Overall rating

4.4

/5

145

Rating criteria

  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8.23/10

Reviews by rating

Suggested alternatives

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Pros and cons

We are not very computer savvy and we found this to be very user friendly. The online support provided was good - friendly, quick and thorough.
Had a very good experience and it accomplished for us what we set out to do.
We were very pleased with this product and would definitely recommend it.
Out of the box and with a below average understanding of software/applications, users can get lost.
Sometimes the templates are different (newer) than the tutorial videos, so I can get a little lost at times.
I understand having a limit on the lower tier plans, but in the full plan, having limitations on the amount o page views and or entries on the account seems rather unprofessional to me.
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145 reviews

Recommended

BL
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Brent L.

Restaurants, 1,001-5,000 employees

Used daily for 6-12 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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ShortStack Review

Reviewed 3 years ago

Overall experience has been good.

Pros

Ease of use. Real-time updating. Mobile-friendly production.

Cons

The type of contests are cool, but I'd like to see a bracket contest and more multi-layered contest templates.

Vendor response

Thank you Brent for your awesome review! We are always looking for new ideas to improve our platform and services offered. Your ideas of having bracket contests and multi-layered contests will be shared with the rest of the team. You can also always send us your ideas at theteam@shortstacklab.com.

BW
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Bryan W.

Civic & Social Organization, 11-50 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend6/10

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Good solution

Reviewed 3 years ago

Elegant and capable product

Pros

Good support on line and from executives

Cons

There is a learning curve which had to be navigated

Vendor response

Thank you Bryan for your review. To help new users navigate and learn our platform we have several resources available with youtube videos, help docs, blog articles, and support staff. Our most in-depth resource is ShortStack University which can be found here: https://www.shortstack.com/ssu/.

AM
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Amberlee M.

Retail, 51-200 employees

Used monthly for less than 6 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend7/10

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Good Program for Basic Giveaways

Reviewed 3 years ago

Overall I am happy to keep using ShortStack. While it isn't perfect it gets the job done for what I need it for.

Pros

They offer a variety of different giveaway templates. There are settings that enable you to hide certain sections based on the date. You can export your entries. You can email confirmations to your entrants. There is a social share ability that gives bonus entries when someone enters off your share link.

Cons

Not the easiest to set up the templates. Would be nice to be able to save custom templates and template sections for easier customization. The dashboard has never loaded for me - spins and spins.

Vendor response

Amberlee, Thank you for your review! We are happy to hear you like using our wide variety of templates. You can save a campaign as a personal template! Within the Campaign Builder, select the name of the campaign in the upper left corner. In the drop down menu there will be an option to save the campaign as a template. Click that and and you you now have a customized template.

LT
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Leigh T.

Nonprofit Organization Management, 1-10 employees

Used monthly for less than 6 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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First time using this type of program

Reviewed 3 years ago

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.

Vendor response

Leigh, thank you for your fantastic review! With our free trial, anyone is able to create campaigns and test out the majority of our features before committing to a paid plan. We are also happy to hear you utilize our Pause feature which allows users to take a break from billing but keeps all data secure until the plan is resumed.

BK
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Betsy K.

Public Relations and Communications, self-employed

Used monthly for less than 6 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Social Media Contest Launch for NonProfit

Reviewed 4 years ago

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.

Vendor response

Thank you, Betsy! It sounds like your overall ShortStack experience was a good one! But sorry you had to deal with a cheater. That is never fun. We have a few resources on our blog that may help you combat cheating in the future. If you head to our blog (https://www.shortstack.com/blog/), in the search bar type in "cheating" and you'll see a whole list of articles. Thanks again for your feedback!

SC
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Shelby C.

Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

Used weekly for less than 6 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Great Solution to Online Contests

Reviewed 4 years ago

Contests for clients, great tool

Pros

I loved this product; it worked perfectly for contest solutions across many of our clients, and ended up very useful for my entire team to get inspired with new opportunities in campaign types. Customer service was also SO helpful and quick to get answers to us as we set things up.

Cons

I did have a little trouble getting the form embedded to our LP initially, which development was able to fix, but I wish the code to embed auto-sized the form to fit the entire form on mobile automatically, as development had to custom code this in. It was cutting off the submit button once someone uploaded images to their entry. Otherwise, it was great.

Vendor response

Thank you for this great review, Shelby! I'm glad our developers were able to make your form work on mobile. We're always looking to make the platform better, so building a baked-in solution will be on our radar. Thanks again!

RM
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Randy M.

Leisure, Travel & Tourism, 51-200 employees

Used monthly for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Years of experience working with Short Stack

Reviewed 4 years ago

It's hard to remember when we first started with ShortStack it's been over 5 years for sure most likely 7 or 8 I would guess. I love the customer service we get through the online chat with a customer service person. I would give it a 10 out of 10 stars and I often recommend it to other businesses looking to customize contests or promotions they are offering online.

Pros

Super easy to manage ourselves, very intuitive design and options. Freedom to start from scratch or use one of their many predesigned templates. Customer service is A+

Cons

There's really nothing I dislike about it, often with I assume there may be a limitation just speaking with customer service we are able to find a way to over come any limitations. If I had to say something I would maybe say that our plan wasn't grandfathered with the options and price from when we originally signed up, that said I still think it really offers great value and if we had to step up to the higher plan to get the same features we had it would still be good value.

Vendor response

Wow, Randy! We are so grateful for your amazing feedback. Thank you so much for this stellar review!

SC
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Samantha C.

Retail, self-employed

Used other for less than 6 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend5/10

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On the Fence

Reviewed 5 years ago
Pros

I did receive some visits to my FB page, which led to a few visits to my website, but overall for the price, I am not really getting what I need. My industry is actually a gift and engraving business, and retail was the closest option I could find on the list. I will try this again once more for a promotion and go from there. If it works out better, I will update my review.

Cons

It seemed a little complicated, and for the price, I would have expected the FB feature to actually be enabled at the level I was paying for, rather than having to upgrade to a higher cost. I might actually use it if that were the case.

Vendor response

Hi Samantha! Thank you so much for your feedback. For your next campaign, feel free to reach out to us for tips and ideas on how to promote your campaign. We'll do our best to make sure it's a success. Also, publishing to a Facebook Page creates a tiny link under your list of apps that no one will ever see. Instead, we recommend promoting your campaign from a post in your Timeline. This will be way more visible and accessible to your audience. You can promote a campaign from your Timeline on any plan and also circumvent Facebook's promotion rules, etc. It's just a better way to go. Reach out to us for more questions on this as well.

AP
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Ankita P.

Cosmetics, 11-50 employees

Used monthly for 6-12 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8/10

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Awsome Customer Service

Reviewed 5 years ago
Pros

Using Short Stack has helped our campaigns as customers find it easy to use and enter the competitions we run from the platform. For the business, using Short Stack has also been beneficial as it has given us an easy and seamless way to engage with customers via competitions.

Cons

The only drawback of the platform is that it takes a while to figure out how to use it and sometimes can be hard to navigate. It would also be ideal if they would allow for more than one person to be on the account at once to make it easier for teams to work together on competitions.

Vendor response

Hi Ankita! Thank you so much for your fabulous feedback! Our ShortStack for Teams feature allows you to invite others to collaborate on campaigns and other assets within a ShortStack account. If you'd like more info on ShortStack for Teams, just give us a shout at theteam@shortstacklab.com. Thanks again!

JS
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Janel S.

Consumer Services, 501-1,000 employees

Used daily for less than 6 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Great Option for Contests

Reviewed 5 years ago

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.

IJ
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Ian J.

Hospitality, 201-500 employees

Used weekly for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend3/10

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I'm not happy

Reviewed 5 years ago

The chat support is awful. Get a phone number and show people respect.

Pros

It works and does what it needs to do but I'm still not happy.

Cons

The support you over is terrible. You need a phone number. You also need to adjust the way you do billing it's terrible how people are automatically upgraded and expected to pay for it. Far to many emails that are useless and feel like spam. I only want emails if they are important to me and directly related to my account.

Vendor response

Hi Ian! I'm sorry you had a bad experience! We feel phone support is not the best fit for helping customers use our platform because we often need to send screenshots or links to tutorials. Email and chat also make it easy for users to go back and reference instructions and troubleshooting steps we discussed during the conversation. However, we really appreciate your feedback and will work to improve our processes.

JE
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Jamie E.

Retail, self-employed

Used other for 6-12 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend7/10

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Fun and easy to use

Reviewed 6 years ago
Pros

ShortStack helped us grow our email list and improved our social media engagement. It is easy to use once you set up your first campaign and become more familiar with the software. Transferring the email list to our email service was a breeze.

Cons

I found it difficult to set up the background and header exactly the way I wanted it. I wish there were more templates included with the basic package.

Vendor response

This is great news, Jamie! We're so glad ShortStack was able to help your business find success. We're always adding new templates so stay tuned for more of those to come.

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Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising, 11-50 employees

Used monthly for 6-12 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8/10

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Super versatile tool

Reviewed 6 years ago
Pros

What I appreciate about Shortstack is there are so many different applications---contests/polls/voting/etc.---all housed under one roof. This makes it really easy to run integrated, multi-faceted campaigns. The support team is also amazing and are always ready to help walk you through any questions or issues.

Cons

ShortStack is not always the most intuitive and it can be hard to navigate at times. The support team is great which helps when questions do arise and as you get more familiar with the tool, it does become much easier.

Vendor response

Thanks for this review! Make sure you check out our Resources Page (https://www.shortstack.com/resources/)and call on Support (theteam@shortstacklab.com) to help you with whatever you need. Thanks again!

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Verified reviewer

Media Production, 11-50 employees

Used weekly for 6-12 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend7/10

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Great software for a space with very limited options

Reviewed 6 years ago

Overall experience with ShortStack has been great. In a nutshell, the ability to fully customize your campaign to how you like - matching your brand identity, and prevention of looking like complete spam - has been easier and more robust than other platforms I have tested such as KingSumo for example.

Pros

Generally speaking, the software is easy to use. Setting up a campaign, connecting an optional autoresponder is quick and painless. Exporting the data collected from entrants and selecting custom fields for forms are some of the most liked features across the board here. It is also nice to have the option to publish as a standalone landing page, or on your site - a feature we haven't found much success with on other platforms.

Cons

The design features are clunky and difficult to use unless you have a skilled designer who also knows how to code.

Vendor response

Thanks so much! We're glad ShortStack is working well for you.

CH
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Candice H.

Apparel & Fashion, 501-1,000 employees

Used daily for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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You'll fall in love with ShortStack

Reviewed 6 years ago

I've been using ShortStack for at least eight years. I've used ShortStack on my own as a blogger, and with four different companies I've worked for. I've had to write proposals on why I need the platform and it's always immediately approved. Beyond the platform - one of my favorite things about ShortStack is their customer service. I come up with crazy ideas and whenever I need help I can just chat or email them and I get an almost immediate response thoroughly explaining how to solve my problem. Special shout out to the support staff whom I've been working with for years and always manages to exceed my expectations.

Pros

ShortStack is the most customizable platform you'll ever use. From contests to landing pages to interactive quizzes - you name it - it can be built within the platform. There are even features you didn't know you needed - like autoresponder emails and entry hosting - even pop ups!

Cons

I have a really hard time trying to come up with a con for ShortStack. The one thing I can think of is if you are on a lower level subscription - you will have their 'ShortStack' branding at the bottom of your campaign. It's not a big deal, but if you are working for a very corporate company - you'll want to pay more so their branding isn't on your campaigns.

Vendor response

Wow, Candice! We're absolutely blushing. Thanks for this fabulous review!

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Verified reviewer

Computer Software, 11-50 employees

Used other for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Self-serve social apps made easy

Reviewed 6 years ago

I have built a variety of sweepstakes and contests in Shortstack for clients ranging from no-budget non-profits to large CPG brands, with happy clients and successful promotions.

Pros

Flexibility, ease of setup, high level of customizability.

Cons

Some of the design tools (wysiwyg) can be a little twitchy.

Vendor response

Wow! Thank you so much!

TC
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Tracy C.

Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

Used other for 1-2 years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend6/10

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Easy to use but limited features

Reviewed 6 years ago

Quick development of Facebook tabs for lead generation, contests, and giveaways.

Pros

Ease of use with existing templates. Quick drop and edit feature, simple even for non-developers

Cons

Limited features, limited templates, unable to add multiple tabs or pages.

KO
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Kate O.

Business Supplies and Equipment, 51-200 employees

Used monthly for 1-2 years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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Stacks up to the hype

Reviewed 6 years ago

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.

Vendor response

Thanks so much for your thoughtful review! I wanted to let you know about our option to pause your account. You can pause an account for up to 90 days, during which time, you won't be charged the monthly subscription fee. It's a way to keep the data in your account without having to pay for the full 12 months. I hope that helps you out! If you have any more questions, we can be reached at theteam@shortstacklab.com.

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Verified reviewer

Financial Services, 201-500 employees

Used weekly for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8/10

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Great Way to Get in the Giveaway Game

Reviewed 6 years ago
Pros

Easy to start, learn and implement in an hour or less. Intuitive interface with a small learning curve.

Cons

The updates are often excessive leaving the user wondering if they should pause the campaign, and update, or leave alone...

Vendor response

Thanks so much for your feedback! We're so glad you are loving the ShortStack platform. In the future, you can push an update(s) in the middle of running a campaign - no need to pause it.

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Verified reviewer

Internet, 51-200 employees

Used other for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend10/10

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Plug & Play - Mostly. Enjoyed the Features

Reviewed 6 years ago

I used Shortstack multiple times to run contests around email collection and was pleased with the results. It was easy to implement and after a few rough starts, was fairly easy to construct a campaign.

Pros

After creating everything at Shortstack, it was really easy to implement on my side. I implemented a campaign on both Magento and Shopify with absolutely no problem. It worked well the entire time it was live.

Cons

Getting started for the first time was a little complicated/confusing. I wasn't sure what to do and had to restart my project a few times after not being sure what I was doing. After I figured it out though, no problem.

Vendor response

Thanks so much! We really appreciate your stellar review.

ML
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Mitch L.

Marketing and Advertising, 501-1,000 employees

Used monthly for 6-12 months

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend7/10

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Shortstack review

Reviewed 6 years ago

My overall experience with ShortStack has been positive. We have executed several online contests with voting as the winning metric. The interface was easy to use and allowed winners to be chosen quickly. I also like the way the campaign renders on various devices.

Pros

It was easy to figure out how to manipulate the forms. User interface is intuitive. The pre-made templates help to create a functional campaign quickly. I like the voting and the choose a random winner features.

Cons

I use it mainly for social media contests and it would be nice to have more variety in the choice of templates or perhaps more customization features.

Vendor response

Hey Mitch! Thank you so much for your feedback and your stellar review! If you're looking to customize something specific when setting up a template, please reach out to us at theteam@shortstacklab.com. We'll do our best to help you get things set up the way you'd like.

CL
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Christina L.

Marketing and Advertising, 51-200 employees

Used monthly for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend9/10

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Would Recommend Shortstack

Reviewed 6 years ago
Pros

It's extremely easy to use, even for non-developers and outside of the social team. Once you get the hang of how to edit the look, padding, etc., you can really make it your own without having to have creative team members generate this aspect.

Cons

There are still some struggles with the API integrations with Instagram (i.e. disconnects the feed almost daily). The fact that we have to fluctuate between membership levels to get the features needed from giveaway to giveaway. We're not able to pay annually, but rather have to work on a monthly schedule - not ideal for an agency.

Vendor response

Hi Christina! Thank you so much for your feedback and awesome review! I'm so happy to hear you found the platform easy to use - even for non-developers. I wanted to mention that we offer annual plan pricing. On an annual plan, you'll even get a bit of a discount over paying month to month. You can switch over to an annual plan from your account's profile, or send us an email to theteam@shortstacklab.com and we'll be happy to help you out. Thanks again!

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Verified reviewer

Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees

Used monthly for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend8/10

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If only fb would make it easier ...

Reviewed 6 years ago

Been using it for years! The minor cons that I have come accross are by far outweighed by the pros!

Pros

- Great software. - Not the easiest to use but it does cover everything giving multiple options to users and designers! - Excellent customer service!

Cons

- Facebook intergration couyld be better. I know that Facebook changes things often but the instructions and integration process is not ammended so fast. - Not enough premade themes and not updated for too long! It is ok ig you have a designer to make your own theme but the premade ones that are great help are very few!

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Verified reviewer

11-50 employees

Used monthly for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support
  • Likelihood to recommend7/10

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Overall good. Easy to use and implement campaigns.

Reviewed 6 years ago
Pros

Shortstack makes it easy to set up campaigns and lists. There are a lot of templates to choose from. Integrates seamlessly with Facebook. Easy to export lists (entries).

Cons

Customer support - they only offer chat support with no number to call. Hard to use when you don't know how to explain what you are looking to do with a campaign.

Vendor response

Thanks for leaving us a review! We appreciate the compliments. If you ever have ideas you need to talk through, please get in touch with us via our demo page and you can schedule a time to talk with our team: https://www.shortstack.com/demos/

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Verified reviewer

Used weekly for 2+ years

Review source

Overall Rating
  • Value for money
  • Ease of use
  • Features
  • Customer support

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The best way to quickly build and execute digital campaigns & landing pages!

Reviewed 6 years ago
Pros

The easy to use campaign builder is so flexible, we have yet to run into anything we can't do with it!

Cons

I'm not sure I can come up with anything negative to say about ShortStack. I've been a user for a long time now, and haven't looked back.

Vendor response

Thanks for your kind words!