Guaranteed
Guaranteed contests are the safest bet for designers to enter, and receive the most designers and best quality work.
When a contest holder upgrades to a guaranteed contest, they formally guarantee a winner will be chosen and the prize money will be awarded. These contests have had the prize money prepaid to 99designs, who awards the prize to the winning designer at the end of the contest.
Guaranteed contests cannot be withdrawn and are non-refundable.
Prepaid
This is the standard contest model, where contest holders pre-pay their prize money to 99designs. 99designs then awards the prize to the winning designer at the end of the contest.
Contest holders have the option of withdrawing and refunding their prepaid contest if they don't find a result they are happy with.
The standard contest length is 7 days, after which the contest holder has a further 7 days to award a prize or withdraw the contest.
Pay-on-Win
Pay-on-Win was the first contest model 99designs launched with. In these contests, contest holders would manually arrange payment of the prize money with the winning designer—after the contest had ended.
This contest type is no longer available.
Popular
A popular contest is any contest considered really active—by that, we mean the contest has received lots of entries, along with a healthy level of contest holder feedback, etc.
Check out the latest popular design contests listed on the 99designs front page.
Want to hold a popular contest? Set a good prize, write a reasonable and detailed brief, regularly give constructive feedback, make it fun, and—chances are—your contest will be popular with our designers, too!
Fast Track
Fast-tracked contests run for a shorter period of time, ranging between 1-3 days. These contests are run by contest holders who want results fast, and generally have a higher prize. Contest holders are expected to be very responsive with feedback in these contests.
Contest holders can purchase an upgrade during the launch process to create a fast-tracked contest.
Contests cannot be fast-tracked after launch.
Extended
Some contests require more time than normal. Extended contests are an upgrade selected after a contest has launched. These contests typically offer higher prize incentives for designers—depending on the number of days the contest is extended by.
Contests may be extended up to a maximum total of 14 days.
Private
Private contests are only visible to people logged-in to 99designs. Shortly after ending, they disappear from non-participants. They are also not included in the site search or feeds, and are hidden from search engines, such as Google.
Designs submitted to private contests may not be added to designer folios, and do not appear on designer profile pages unless negotiated otherwise.
Higher prize amounts are encouraged for private contests.
Blind
Blind contests promote creativity and fair competition by hiding each designers’ work from other designers until the contest has ended—only the contest holder can see all entries. As a result, blind contests attract the best designers and higher quality entries.
Once the contest has ended, all entries will be visible to everyone.