What’s the best alternative to 99designs?
Just hold-on a bit as we dive into the best platform (other than 99designs) for getting awesome graphics for your business and design projects.
Want to jump straight to the answer? The best 99designs alternative in the market currently is DesignCrowd.
You’ll agree with me that all businesses have a great need for designs, either when starting or years into the business.
From logos, business cards, flyers to packaging prints, and book covers. The demands are endless.
Needless to say, outsourcing the designs can be very expensive when using premium services like 99Design and we’re forced to look at some of the best and cheaper 99Design alternatives for websites and designers.
But that doesn’t mean it is a bad option. In fact, 99designs is awesome!
Although the list of 99Design alternatives that can solve your business design needs is few.
However, you need to evaluate your business design needs and choose which of the alternatives can solve this for you perfectly.
Definitely, if you’re looking for a custom-designed website theme, then you should look for a graphics designer that has experience in website design.
Likewise, if you need a logo, then you should seek a professional logo designer.
In the end, a professional designer will give your designs a dose of professionalism.
6 Best 99Designs Alternatives and Competitors
Here we’ve curated and ranked the 7 Best 99Design alternatives available in the market with the key features and starting price.
Feel free to navigate them below:
Let’s dive in.
#1. DesignCrowd (Overall Best 99design alternative)
DesignCrowd is the best alternative to 99Designs in terms of their offerings.
Founded in 2008, DesignCrowd is by far one of the best crowdsourcing design platforms available in the market right now.
Just as 99Designs lets you run a contest, receive design concepts from a range of designers, and choose the best. DesignCrowd allows you to do the same.
DesignCrowd houses professionals in different categories from graphics designers to web designers.
Other than running a contest, you can choose a graphics designer you’re willing to work with and get started with your project.
Features of DesignCrowd
- Large Community of Designers
DesignCrowd houses a community of over 700,000 designers from around the world and in different design fields.
While the number of designers in 99Designs is unknown, 700,000 designers are a large community to get your unending design needs satisfied.
- Advanced Search Filters
Selecting a designer to work with can be challenging if you have little experience in designing.
DesignCrowd provides a search filter that helps you filter your search results according to your taste. The advanced search filter enables you to search based on country and earnings too.
Selecting a designer from your country or a country with a lower currency can win you a premium design at a cheaper rate.
Likewise the earnings help you vet how well and long the designer has been on the platform.
- Designer Ranking
DesignCrowd ranks each designer based on the number of projects won, the payment received, and customer ratings in different categories.
- Multiple Payment and Currencies
DesignCrowd allows you to choose a payment option from the available payment gateway and methods like PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, American Express card, and many more.
DesignCrowd Pricing Plan
DesignCrowd offers five different pricing plans for its contest based service for customers.
The pricing plans differ majorly by the number of designs you get and the number of designers you work with.
The first pricing plan costs $109 and offers you 1-3 designs from 1 designer, a money-back guarantee, 3 revisions, and copyright of 1 design.
DesignCrowd’s second pricing plan costs $229 and offers you, 6 designers, from three designers alongside unlimited reviews and other features in the first pricing plan.
The third plan lets you receive above 50 designs from unlimited designers plus other features from the second plan at the price of $319.
The fourth pricing plan is the most popular plan offering over 100 plus designs from unlimited designers, highlighted projects, and 250 business cards alongside other basic features at a price of $499.
And finally, the fifth plan costs you $739 offering you over 150 designs from unlimited designers, highlighted project, featured project, and 500 business cards plus other basic features.
Get Started with DesignCrowd here.
#2. DesignHill
DesignHill is the next runner up 99Designs alternative or competitor in the market.
Offering a similar work process like 99Designs and Designcrowd – DesignHill allows you to hold contests and also work one-on-one with your favorite designer.
The one-to-one project allows you to work with your winning designer without many hassles and allows you to negotiate the price with your designer.
Designhill marketplace displays an array of different design services to choose from.
Other than logo design, business card, and web design, you can also find a t-shirt designer to help with customized designs.
Features of DesignHill
- Wide Category
A look at Designhill categories shows the wide range of categories offered by DesignHill. Although 99Designs has a wide category too as well.
Even the unexpected email designs and newspaper ad design is offered as a service by DesignHill.
Other offerings are newsletter design, calendar design, brochure design, billboard, signage, website & app design, illustration & art, among many others.
- Design Tools
While hiring designers will add doses of professionalism to your designs, you can cut your spendings by using a design tool.
Designhill offers a range of design tools that enable you to create wonderful fair designs and still keep to your slim budget.
Logo maker, business card maker, banner maker, letterhead maker, Twitter header maker, Facebook cover photo maker, and email signature generator among many other tools.
- Paid Invite Feature
The paid invite feature enables you to send a paid invite to your favorite designers to join a contest.
The paid invite starts from $20 per invite and the designer only gets paid after accepting the invite and submitting a design within the specified time.
The paid invite is a great way of encouraging top designers to join your contest and also submit different concepts.
- NDA protection
Designhill lets you protect your contest with NDA (Non-disclosure agreement), which requires designers to sign the agreement before viewing the design brief.
DesignHill Pricing Plan
To start with, Designhill does not offer a fixed pricing plan or package. Their pricing plan depends on the category.
They basically offer four different pricing plans: fast track, standard, executive, and premium plans.
The fast track plan costs $249 offering over 20 designs from unlimited designers with a Max of 4 designs from one designer and a 100% money-back guarantee.
The Standard plan costs $399 offer over 40 designs from unlimited designers, social media promotion, newsletter promotion, and a money-back guarantee.
The executive plan offers you 60+ designers from expert designers, blog promotion, and other features on the standard plan at $699.
For the DesignHill premium plan which is the most expensive, you get over 80 designs from Designhill’s exceptional designers, highlighted contest with 1 free paid invite alongside other features on the executive plan.
#3. Fiverr
Fiverr is a global marketplace for freelancers in different sections you can think of.
Not just for finding great designers, you can also solve your business content needs with Fiverr.
Where Fiverr beats the competition is it’s insanely cheap services that start from $5. However, you can expect a lower quality in the works you get at $5.
Fiverr is a mix of high quality and low quality because you have to select a designer yourself. What Fiverr does is to protect your money through escrow until you’re satisfied with the work.
And you’ve to depend on the mercy of others reviews to vet the best designer for your job.
And unlike 99Designs, Designcrowd, and DesignHill – Fiverr does not allow you to host contests and invite designers to join the contest.
Key Features of Fiverr
- Wide Category
Fiverr is a marketplace covering all possible freelance services you can think of.
From writing blog posts, eBooks, Novels, logo design, flyer designs, web designers, app designs, language translation, and many more.
Ultimately, the Fiverr marketplace offers more than just design services. And definitely, a place to get many of your business needs solved too.
- Advanced Search Filter
Fiverr offers a more advanced search filter to filter your searches by their country, language, type of service, and availability of freelancers.
Interestingly, the search filter is customized based on the service you’re looking for.
If you’re looking for logo designers, Fiverr lets you filter the search result by the logo style (minimalist, freestyle, 3D, vintage, signature, and many more).
The file format you need is also a search filter that you can use to filter your search result.
You can also filter your search result based on the seller’s level. From the new sellers, level one, level two, and finally to the top-level seller.
Plus, you can filter your search by entering your budget range into the filter. The budget filter lets you set your minimum budget and maximum expectation.
- Private Communication
After choosing a designer that fits your business design needs, then you can proceed and have a private chat with the designer.
The private chat can help you get a better negotiation with the freelancer and also ask for more samples that you can glance through.
- Fiverr PRO
The Fiverr Pro feature allows you to glance through professional designers and pick the best out of the best.
When you turn on the pro feature, your searches are limited to only professional designers.
However, most of the pro services are more expensive than the average service offered on Fiverr. But are fair enough when compared to their other counterparts.
Fiverr Pricing Plan
Fiverr is a custom platform that gives its freelancers freedom on the pricing of their services.
But the least pricing starts from $5 and increases based on the designer but has little to do with the quality of the designer.
Though highly-priced designs are of high quality, not all low priced designs are of low quality. Some designers might not charge high based on their living expenses and can do better than your premium designer.
#4. Designbro
Designbro is a crowdsourcing graphics design community that allows you to post a contest and have exceptional designers submit their design ideas while you select the winner.
You get the best from a contest like this because you have to choose the best that suits your business before having the designer make some edits.
However, Designbro does not give you the option of working one-on-one with a designer. So the only option you have is running a contest.
Key Features of Designbro
- Top-notch designers
Top-notch would be an understatement when referring to Designbro designers.
The working model Designbro uses has forced many mediocre designers out of the platform.
If you’re not constantly upgrading your skills, you won’t be competitive enough to win a project. So they’re forced to upgrade their skills.
Plus, DesignBro does not accept a large flow of designers like other platforms. They only take in experts and competitive designers that can strive in their community.
- Unlimited Revisions
Designbro lets you make unlimited revisions to the design works that designers submit. However, there’s a limit on the amount of time you have to make a decision.
- Blind Project & NDA
The blind project allows you to host a contest where designers cannot see each other’s work and do encourage creativity among them.
And for more secrecy for your work, you can have the designers sign a Non-disclosure agreement. Designers need to agree to a confidentiality agreement before they can view your briefings.
DesignBro Pricing Plan
For starters, Designbro offers a money-back guarantee if by chance you’re not satisfied which is nearly impossible.
Pricing plan starts from $199 offering 3 designs from top designers alongside a blind project feature added to it.
You can increase the number of submitted designs you want from the default three to as many as you want at $55 per one design. The price drops as the number increases.
And for keeping your project a secret using NDA, this comes at a fixed price of $35.
#5. CrowdSpring
Crowdspring is a crowdsourcing designing platform that provides a wide range of designing services from logo designing to marketing products.
According to Wikipedia:
Crowdspring is an online marketplace for crowdsourced creative services
Launched in May 2007, Crowdspring has gradually moved up the chain to stand up to par with 99Designs and many others.
Boasting of over 220,000 professional creatives.
Just like 99Designs, Crowdspring specializes in crowdsourcing and 1-on-1 project; allowing creatives to submit their ideas and stand a chance of winning the project or you selecting a designer to work with without going through the contest.
And by far this is the best method for clients as it helps get the best result, but very competitive for designers.
Key Features of Crowdspring
Here are some of the amazing features that make Crowdspring attractive.
- Free Design Consultation
Crowdspring offers free design consultation to help you come up with amazing ideas at no extra cost to you. Plus, the support team responds fast to all inquiries.
Also on the platinum plan, you are given a dedicated account manager that helps you with handling and managing your designers and your design works.
Your account manager can go as far as helping you choose the best designer to work with on a 1-on-1 project.
- Project Management tool
Hiring a designer is hard enough not to talk about managing them. With Crowdspring, that isn’t a problem.
Crowdspring is equipped with a project management tool that helps you to manage and collaborate with your designers perfectly well and get a result above expectations.
- NDA protection
Keeping a design project confidential is optimum because content and designs are getting more valuable and are needed to be protected.
Crowdspring integrates the Non-disclosure agreement into their plans that require designers to sign a confidentiality agreement before viewing the briefings.
Pricing Plan
Crowdspring pricing differs according to your chosen category. Like Logo, Banner, Book cover, illustrations, etc.
No matter the design type – Crowdspring offers four different pricing plans; silver, gold, elite, and platinum.
The silver plan is the least and costs $299 (including $200 award) offering approximately 60 designs to choose from with full copyright ownership of the winning design.
While the gold plan costs $499 (including $300 award) offering all the features on the silver plan plus 90 designs to choose from and promotion to attract more creatives.
Best for businesses and agencies, the Elite plan selects 5 elite designers to submit up to 20 elite designs that you can choose from plus a dedicated manager and support.
All of that for $899.
Finally, the Platinum plan costs $1199 ($725 award) letting you choose from 75 premium designs by unlimited designers plus team collaboration and unlimited presentations; all other features from the elite plan are added to it.
#6. DesignEvo
DesignEvo isn’t a Crowdspring platform or a freelance marketplace; it’s a logo maker app that lets you make a logo choosing out of the 10000 templates available.
DesignEvo is the cheapest alternative to 99designs.
Mainly for slim budget solo entrepreneurs, bloggers, and small businesses looking for something to get started with.
Definitely, you can get started by designing your business logo yourself and getting a custom design as you progress on.
However, getting a custom design as you progress on isn’t a must; many businesses and entrepreneurs stick to the DesignEvo logo even after growing their revenue.
Key Features of DesignEvo
- Logo Templates
DesignEvo offers you over 10,000 logo templates to choose from and also use as inspirations for new ideas.
Each and every template can be customized and edited to suit your brand and your design needs.
- User-friendly Interface
DesignEvo user Interface is friendly and easy to understand. Getting started with a design is easy upon installing the app.
In addition, you do not need any design skills to get simple good-looking designs from the app.
- Logo Fonts & Background
DesignEvo has a library of over 100 logo Fonts to choose from and also houses different logo backgrounds. You can make a logo with a transparent background, solid, and gradient color background.
- Compatibility
DesignEvo is compatible with most browsers for Marc, windows, and Linux computers. Also, DesignEvo offers mobile apps for both Android devices and iOS devices.
DesignEvo Pricing Plan
DesignEvo app offers three different pricing plans; free, basic, and plus plans.
For starters, DesignEvo offers a forever free plan that includes a design credit to DesignEvo, and logos are limited to low-resolution files.
The basic plan is a one-time payment of $24.99 offering logo designs with no credit. Includes low resolution and high-resolution files with up to 5000 px, transparent png, lifetime support, and print-ready logos.
Ultimately, the plus plan costs a one-time payment of $49.99 offering all basic plan features plus copyright ownership.
Having gone through the best alternatives of 99Designs, you should be asking why we need an alternative. right?
What Is 99design & Why an Alternative?
99Designs is a freelance community of graphic designers.
Founded in 2008, 99Designs has been in the business of connecting businesses and individuals with design needs to top-notch designers around the world.
99Designs is not just another freelance community of designers, they provide an agency type of service which makes them safer to work with.
Other than a 1-on-1 work system, they allow clients to hold contests for designers to submit their own design and they get to pick the best.
Here are some of the great features of 99Designs:
What Are Some Great Features of 99designs?
99Designs is one of the best graphics and web designer communities that provide top-notch service to businesses and individual clients.
To start with, 99Design provides logo design service, business cards, web design, app design, brand design, landing page, and product labels among many other categories.
Just like many other competitors, 99Design allows you to find a designer and work together.
But unlike other platforms, 99Design allows you to hold contests and engage great minds to submit their ideas for your design needs. And you get to choose which you love best.
However, setting up a contest for your designs comes at a higher cost and can be expensive for individuals.
The pro service for agencies helps you leverage 99Design for running your own graphics design agency or digital marketing agency.
You get to enjoy the benefits of an account manager that works hand-in-hand with you in giving you the best.
99Design offers a money-back guarantee for all plans and pricing.
Notably, they offer top-notch customer service to their paying customers.
You get an option of running a blind contest in which designers can see the others that applied for the contest and likewise cannot see the designs that you have rated.
99designs Pricing & Cost?
99Design offers four different pro plans for you to choose from; the bronze, silver, gold, and platinum plan.
The bronze plan costs $299 offering 30 design concepts, 100% money-back guarantee, and full copyright ownership.
The silver plan costs $499 offering 60 design concepts, 100% money-back guarantee, and full copyright ownership.
And the gold plan goes for $899 offering all silver plan features plus 90 design concepts from mid & top-level designers.
Finally, the platinum plan costs $1299 offering all gold plan features apart from limiting the contest to top-level designers only alongside a dedicated manager and prioritized support.
Who’s 99Designs Best For?
99Designs offers premium graphics design services using two work models.
Notably, the 99Designs contest model that allows a crowd of designers to submit their design idea while you pick the best is great.
As good as it sounds, 99Designs service is very expensive and can be over the board for a solo entrepreneur and small business.
Absolutely, you need an alternative if you have a tight budget. In that view, 99Designs is best for agencies and businesses that do a lot of designs; as the quantity beats the price down for you.
Otherwise, get yourself a better alternative.
Final Thoughts on 99design alternatives
Designing your business logo is essential when starting a business. It comes at no surprise that the big companies are spending well over $100,000 to design a custom design.
While we cannot afford that, we can look at platforms like 99Designs and the best 99Design alternatives as listed in this post.
While for entrepreneurs and small businesses with a very slim budget; you can get started with the cheap $5 gigs on Fiverr or the DIY DesignEvo app.
When it comes to overall choice – I highly recommend DesignCrowd as the best 99Design alternative and competitor that can replace 999Designs.
In addition, it offers a cheaper pricing plan with similar features to 99Designs.
Definitely, DesignCrowd is the best runner up 99Designs competitor to give a trial today!
