Choosing The Best Logo Design Contest – 99designs vs. 48hourslogo

Being an Internet entrepreneur and online marketer, I know the importance of building online brands. And thanks to logo contest websites such as 48hourslogo, I was able to get both brainstorm and custom logo design done for a relatively small cost.

Previously I have been using 99designs, but recently I started using 48hourslogo to save even more on my logo development cost. Being familiar with both platforms, let me compare both websites to show you which one is the best option for your online logo design needs.

Cost Comparison

Running a logo design contest is probably the most cost effective option for creating your business logo. Of course, there are other websites that offer custom logo design for just 50 bucks, but nothing compares to the variety of design entries you will receive when running a logo contest. Following chart compares the cost of launching your logo contest on 99designs vs. 48hourslogo

From above comparison, we can see a key advantage with 48hourslogo is the low cost. I have to admit that this is also the main reason I switch from 99designs to 48hourslogo.

The minimum total cost for running a logo design contest at 48hourslogo is just $99 prize plus $29 listing fee while the lowest logo design package offered at 99designs is for $299.

A simple comparison of minimum design cost certainly doesn’t tell much. We all know that the more you pay in a contest, more design entries you will receive. So I also collected the data from the most recent 50 contests from each site and computed the average.

Furthermore, I also collected the average number of design entries for each contest in order to compute the per design entry cost.

On average, it cost $4.9 to obtain a design concept at 99designs vs. only $3.5 at 48hourslogo. Therefore, in terms of getting the best bang for your buck, 48hourslogo is the preferred choice.

Feature Comparison

A set of standard features are offered by both websites. Based on my personal experience, I tend to stay away from ordering additional contest features because the feature fees I paid go entirely to the website; nothing goes to the actual designers participating in my contest.

Blind Contest

Both websites take the blind approach which means the participating designers cannot see other’s design entries; therefore, maximizing the overall design creativeness in a contest.

Private Contest

If for some reason you don’t want your business brand information to be publicly viewable online, this option is a must.

Featured Contest

Featured contests are usually listed at the top of the contest list to attract more designers.

Set Contest Duration

Allow you to control exactly how long (or how short) you want to run your contest for. 99designs will charge extra if you want to go beyond the standard 7 day contest whereas 48hourslogo offer this for free.

Invite Top Designers

I sometimes use this option to invite designers I worked with before to join my new contest at 48hourslogo. Unfortunately I can’t find similar feature at 99designs.

Highlight, Blog, etc…

Basically, it’s a variation of the “featured contest” upgrade. I seriously doubt that putting additional highlights or displaying it in the blog section will attract more designers to a contest. Putting this money towards the contest prize will probably offer a better return.

My recommendation is 48hourslogo

Not only 48hourslogo provides super lower cost for logo design contests, I also like the fact that they are transparent with the fees they charge. Their website design is very simple yet effective.

I have run multiple logo contests at 48hourslogo and the results are just as good. With 48hourslogo, it cost me less than $200 to get a top quality custom logo design. I still use 99designs for other graphic design jobs such as webpage and posters.

According to their blog, 48hourslogo recently expanded their contest offerings to include other graphic design categories. There aren’t much completed contests to judge on the design qualities, so I’ll probably wait a while before trying other designs types at 48hourslogo.