Crowdspring Review

Is Crowdspring Worth Your Money?

Crowdspring is a crowdsourced graphic design service and the third-largest marketplace. It is similar to our all-time favorite 99designs but comparatively lacks in every aspect. So, given a choice, we would pick 99designs every day of the week.

In our experience, it was worth our money to design a logo, even when picking the smallest package. If you do not tick any add-ons, you can get a logo for as low as $264 when you use our $35 discount. If you don’t like the designs you get, the refund process is reasonably quick and simple.

Crowdspring Pricing

Crowdspring pricing reminds us of 99designs pricing—the pricing tiers have similar names, are similarly priced, and offer similar benefits. The pricing is divided into four tiers: Silver, Gold, Elite, and Platinum which differ in cost and what you get for your money. The pricing of each tier also depends on the type of design you pick. For example, a logo costs between $299 and $1,199, while a blog theme costs between $799 and $1,249.

In the following table, we provide a comprehensive Crowdspring pricing overview:

	Silver	Gold	Elite	Platinum
Best for	Individuals and new small businesses	Startups and growing businesses	Businesses, agencies & marketers	All-inclusive businesses, agencies & marketers
Cost	$299+	$699+	$999+	$1,199+
Designs	40	50	20 Elite	40 Premium
Property rights	Full	Full	Full	Full
Promotion	Optional	Yes	Yes	Yes
Project privacy	Optional	Optional	Yes	Yes
Only top-level designers	–	Optional	Elite designers only	Platinum + Elite designers
Personal project consultant	Optional	Optional	–	–
Dedicated manager	–	–	Yes	Yes
Priority customer support	–	–	Yes	Yes
Team collaboration	–	Optional	Optional	Yes
Unlimited presentations	–	Optional	Optional	Yes

Crowdspring payment options include PayPal or credit and debit cards.

Can you get a discount?

Yes, Crowdspring offers discounts but not coupon codes. We managed to get a $35 discount on Crowdspring for all Photutorial readers. The discount is not linked to a coupon code but to a link. You can get it here.

Refunds

Crowdspring offers a 100% refund guarantee for design projects if customers notify them within 30 days of the project closing if they don’t find an entry they like. For naming projects, clients will receive at least 100 names, and projects with more than 100 names are ineligible for a refund to protect the intellectual property of the creative community. Clients are encouraged to give feedback and work with the namers to get the best results.

What do you get for your money?

When you submit a Crowdspring design, a certain number of designers will be invited to submit their ideas or concepts. The number of concepts you receive and the quality of designers invited depend on the package tier you choose. Yet all tiers will grant you full intellectual property rights and at least 20 concepts.

In addition to the basics, you can pick other features which are either optional for your package, unavailable or included. These range from the quality of service to the number of designs you get. A promotion, which is included in Gold and higher but optional in Silver, gives you content more exposure and attracts better creatives.

You can also select to have a private project, meaning it won’t be visible in search engines and to other viewers. This way, it will be visible only to your and your team. This is a good option for projects you want to hide from your competition. However, more paperwork is included since it requires signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA).

Higher tier packages also include better support from Crowdspring, such as having a personal project consultant, dedicated manager, and priority customer support, which ensures you get an answer within one hour.

How Does Crowdspring Work?

If you’re familiar with crowdsourcing, you’ll feel at home at Crowdspring. Although the platform isn’t as polished as 99designs, the workflow is almost identical—it’s just not as well-guided. For this tutorial, we will create a logo, the most requested design project, but the process is almost identical for all the other projects.

You start by telling Crowdspring more about yourself and your company, including your industry, your target audience, how you will use the logo, and the styles you prefer (image + text, text only, image only). You will also answer which adjectives best describe your perfect logo, such as modern vs. classic, minimal vs. complex, feminine vs. masculine, and more.

You will also have to choose your color, the name of the logo (which should be your company’s name), describe how you want other people to perceive your brand, and any additional info. If you have a logo from another company you like, you can add it as a sample, so the designers know what you’re looking for.

In the following step, you’ll select the package we described earlier. The Silver package is the best for those on a tighter budget because it costs only $299 (or $264 with our discount). With a higher budget, you can get better results with the Gold and Elite packages, while we only recommend the Platinum package to organizations. Before confirming the purchase, you can use optional add-ons that increase the number of concepts you get.

• Assure Your Reward (free): get 50% more designs, but you won’t be eligible for a refund.
• Increase the reward (up to $200): increase the award designers get.
• Add more awards: if you select this, more designers will get the award.

You can also pay extra if you need the project finished sooner than in 7 days, costing $39 to $79 for 1- to 3-day delivery. For $129, you can also hire a personal project consultant to help you review and improve your project brief, share insights, and help you choose the right design. Crowdspring also offers extra promotions:

• Basic Promotion ($49): highlighted listing, resulting in 25% more designers.
• Start Promotion ($69): announce your project on Twitter.
• Advanced Promotion ($99): an email is sent to 100,000+ designers, only top designers are invited. As a result, you get 80% more designs.
• Ultimate Promotion ($139): Do all three promotions combines but 18% cheaper.

Reviewing Submissions

If you didn’t choose a faster turnaround option during the brief submission, your contest would run for 7 days. During this time, you will receive around 30 to 50 concepts, depending on the package tier you picked.

After you submit the project, you can expect to get the first submissions within a couple of hours. In our experience, we got the first logo concept just 8 hours after submitting the brief. And while it’s exciting watching the new concepts coming in, you should wait until the end to decide because some of the best submissions come last. However, this shouldn’t hold you back from providing feedback to those who already submitted their concepts.

Although looking outdated, the Crowdspring interface is easy to navigate. Within your current project, you will have a menu with several options like BRIEF, where you can edit the brief, and most important, ENTRIES. Here, you can review all submissions you have received so far.

You can browse, rate, and filter the submissions using this high-level overview or click on any of them to see them in more detail and talk to the designer. We like that you can talk to the designer and ask them for revisions. You can also add internal notes that are visible only to you. This is particularly useful for taking the notes you do not want to share.

What Other Customers Think

As always, we read customer reviews because we know that our reviews won’t resonate with everyone. Crowdspring has a consumer rating of 3.73 out of 5 from 264 reviews, indicating that most customers are satisfied with Crowdspring. Customers who like Crowdspring mention the high number of designs, while those who don’t like it mention the low-quality designs.

For example, here’s a Crowdspring review on Trustpilot by a user named FUNR, “60+ responses for the project was a staggering amount. The selection process is then made easy with the ability to rate and sort. I narrowed it down to a top 10, showed a few people and then picked the winner“. Another review by a returning user Brittney White says, “This is my 2nd time using Crowdspring and I absolutely love it. For the same cost it would be to work with 1 designed on a logo, I can get design options for various artists with different takes on what I have in mind. It’s easy to work with creatives to make the changes I need, and customer support is the best I’ve ever seen in a company if I have questions or concerns about the process. I’ll definitely be back again!“.

Negative reviews from customers are scarce and mostly mention not getting a refund. However, there are plenty of negative reviews from designers working at Crowdspring, saying that they are not getting paid, “As a creative, I’m sorry to say that I’m very disappointed about this platform. I always wait for my payment, sometimes for more than 3-4 months, how is that possible?“.

Our verdict based on customer reviews: Will you like Crowdspring as a customer? Probably yes. Will you like Crowdspring as a designer? Also, probably yes. If no one were getting paid, then the platform would die out—but since it’s doing well, we assume that designers are getting paid for their work.

People Also Ask

How We Tested and Reviewed Crowdspring

We conducted a thorough review of Crowdspring by using the platform for an extended period before writing the review. To gather specific information for the review, we created a new logo contest and closely documented our experience, including observations, screenshots, and comparisons to other similar services. We selected a logo contest as it is the most popular contest type on the platform. Additionally, we reviewed over 100 customer and contributor reviews, read interviews and articles about the founder Ross Kimbarovsky, and consulted with other experts in the field. Our review follows our best practices and is an honest and unbiased evaluation of Crowdspring.