How to Run a WooCommerce Giveaway (Without Paying Platform Fees)

In Raffle for WooCommerce, the price field decides what you’re running. Put a ticket price in it and you’re selling chances to win. Leave it at $0 and people enter for free, through the same checkout, and you still get their name, email and an account.

That one field is the line this whole post sits on. Charge people for a chance to win and in many places you’re running a lottery, with licenses and payment provider rules to match. Let people enter for free and you’re running a giveaway, a promotion most stores can run with clear rules and a fair draw.

This guide is about the free kind: a WooCommerce giveaway where entry costs nothing. If you want to sell entries, that’s a raffle, and I compared the plugins for it in 6 best WooCommerce raffle plugins.

You also don’t need a giveaway platform. Gleam wants $97/month for its Growth plan. Rafflecopter charges $84/month. RafflePress starts at $49.50/year but keeps the useful features for higher tiers. All of them embed a widget on your site that sends traffic and data to their platform, not yours.

Your WooCommerce store already has checkout, customer accounts, order management, coupons and email notifications. That’s most of what a giveaway needs. The missing piece is the giveaway logic: entry tracking, entry numbers, countdowns and winner selection.

A WooCommerce raffle plugin adds that. We build one, Raffle for WooCommerce, free on WordPress.org, so this guide uses it for the walkthrough. Factor in that bias. The general approach works with any WooCommerce raffle plugin.

TLDR

A WooCommerce giveaway is a free-to-enter draw run through your own checkout. Create a raffle product priced at $0, limit it to one entry per customer, set a 7 to 14 day window, and pick the winner with a random draw. Promote it to your email list first, give away your own products, and follow up with everyone who didn’t win. If people pay to enter, you’re running a raffle, and the legal rules change.

What is a WooCommerce giveaway?#

A WooCommerce giveaway is a promotional draw run through your store’s checkout. Customers enter by “buying” a giveaway product for $0, and you pick a winner when the promotion ends. Entries, customer data and the draw all stay in your WooCommerce dashboard. No external platform, no per-entry fees, no widget embeds.

Giveaway, raffle, contest: the legal difference#

People use these words as if they meant the same thing. Legally they don’t, and mixing them up can cause real problems.

Giveaway (sweepstakes): People enter for free, and the winner is picked at random. If you require a purchase to enter, most US states and Canadian provinces require a free way to enter too. “No purchase necessary” is a legal requirement in many places, not a slogan.

Raffle: People buy numbered tickets, and the winner is drawn from ticket holders. Many places treat this as a lottery and require a license, with exemptions for charities. My guide to running charity raffles online covers that legal side.

Contest: The winner is chosen by skill or by judges. Fewer legal restrictions, because it isn’t random chance.

What I’d do: stick with the free-entry giveaway for a store promotion. It keeps the rules simple and the entry easy.

How to set up a free WooCommerce giveaway#

This walkthrough uses Raffle for WooCommerce. It’s our plugin. The steps apply to most WooCommerce raffle plugins.

Install the plugin#

Go to Plugins > Add New, search for “Raffle for WooCommerce”, install and activate. Or get it from WordPress.org.

After activation, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Raffle > Modules and turn on what you need. Some modules, like Instant Win, are off by default so nothing changes on existing stores.

Create the giveaway product#

Go to Products > Add New and set the product type to Raffle in the product data dropdown.

The fields that matter:

• Title: Be specific about the prize. “Win a $500 store credit” tells people what they get. “Spring Giveaway 2026” tells them nothing.
• Price: $0. That’s what makes it a giveaway. Customers still go through your normal WooCommerce checkout, so you get their name, email and an account, but nobody pays. If you’re tempted to charge $1 to $10 for entries, stop and read the raffle guide first, because that’s a raffle.
• Start date and end date: Your promotion window. 7 to 14 days works for most giveaways. Shorter than a week and you can’t promote it enough. Longer than two weeks and nobody feels any urgency.
• Total tickets: The total number of entries. Set it lower than you’d expect. “Only 200 spots left” works better than unlimited entries.
• Max per customer: Set this to 1 for a giveaway. One entry per person keeps it fair and gives you the most unique entrants.

Pick the draw method#

Two decisions: when to draw, and how.

When to draw:

• Manual draw: Go to the product edit page and click Draw Winners when you’re ready. Good when you want to control the timing.
• Automatic draw: Tick Automatic draw in the product’s raffle settings. The plugin draws through WP-Cron when the end date passes.

How to draw:

• Standard Random: Uses WordPress’s wp_rand(), which gets its number from PHP’s secure random_int() on modern servers. Fine for any giveaway.
• Cryptographically Secure: Calls PHP’s random_int() directly. It’s the default, and the one I’d use.
• Random.org: Numbers from atmospheric noise, made by an outside service. Use it when you’ve promised participants an outside source. It needs an API key from random.org, and their free key is meant for development and testing, so check their prize draw plans first.

Set the default method for automatic draws in WooCommerce > Settings > Raffle.

Add urgency#

The product page shows a countdown timer to the end of the giveaway, and on shop and raffle cards it switches to an urgent style in the last three days. The free plugin includes a clean default style. If you want something closer to your brand, Pro includes 17 countdown styles and 9 badge styles, from minimal to bold.

If you’ve set a total entry limit, the progress bar shows entries taken and entries left. When people see 150 of 200 spots gone, they stop thinking about it and enter. With no limit, it shows a count of entries instead of a bar.

Handle the legal side#

A free giveaway already gives everyone a free way in, so you don’t need the separate free entry route that paid raffles use. You still need official rules: who can enter, the dates, the prize, how the winner is picked, and where the giveaway isn’t valid.

If you run giveaways in Canada, turn on Skill-Testing Questions in WooCommerce > Settings > Raffle > Compliance. It adds a simple math or multiple choice question, the standard way Canadian promotions stay clear of the rule against awarding prizes purely by chance.

This isn’t legal advice. Talk to a lawyer if you’re unsure about your own situation.

Publish and promote#

Click publish. The product page is live. Now comes the part most people get wrong.

How to get entries (most stores skip this)#

Most WooCommerce giveaways fail at promotion, not setup. You create the product, share it once on social media, and wonder why only 12 people entered.

Email your list first: Your existing customers are the easiest audience. Don’t bury the giveaway in a newsletter next to three other announcements. Send a dedicated email where the giveaway is the whole message. Subject line: “You could win [specific prize], enter now.” Link straight to the giveaway product page.

Put a banner on your store: Every visitor on any page should know the giveaway exists. A simple notification bar works: “Win a $500 store credit. Enter our giveaway.” The people browsing your products today are exactly who you want entering.

Share the numbers as entries come in: “87 people have already entered, have you?” It works on social media because it shows real activity. The progress bar does this on the product page, but say it out loud on social too. People enter giveaways that look popular and ignore ones that look dead.

Count down on social media: Post updates as the end date gets close. “3 days left” catches everyone who saw the first post and thought “I’ll do that later”. They won’t, unless you remind them.

Partner if you can: If your prize includes products from other brands, ask them to share the giveaway with their audience. It’s the fastest way to reach people who’ve never heard of your store.

What to give away#

The prize decides who enters. Get it wrong and you attract people with no interest in what you sell.

Give away your own products: If you sell handmade leather bags, give away a leather bag. The people who enter want leather bags. That’s who you want on your email list.

Store credit works well: A $200 store credit means the winner shops in your store, so you get revenue either way, and every entrant just browsed your catalog to see what they’d buy.

Skip generic prizes: An iPhone giveaway gets thousands of entries from people who will never visit your store again. If the prize doesn’t filter for people who’d actually buy from you, you’re collecting emails you’ll never convert.

What to do after the draw#

Announce publicly#

Post the winner on your store (the winner announcement shortcode handles this), email everyone who entered, and share it on social media. People trust giveaways that actually announce winners, and it builds credibility for the next one.

If you want the announcement itself to be an event, Pro’s Winner Reveal page shows a live draw animation with confetti when the winner appears. Share the URL with your audience or stream it live.

For a prize worth real money, tell people before the draw which method you’ll use, and keep the draw record. Raffle for WooCommerce saves the method, the time and the ticket pool size with each winner, so you can show how the winner was picked if anyone asks.

Follow up with everyone who didn’t win#

This is where most stores leave money on the table. You just collected a list of people interested enough in your products to enter. They didn’t win, and they’re a little disappointed.

Send them a consolation offer. “You didn’t win this time, but here’s 15% off your next order, valid for 7 days.” They already have an account, they already know what you sell, and now they have a reason to buy.

If you don’t follow up, those accounts just sit there.

Giveaway formats, and where a raffle starts#

Free entry (lead generation)#

The main format in this guide. Price the product at $0. Customers go through your WooCommerce checkout for free, which captures their name and email and creates an account. You get contacts. They get a chance to win.

For something more visual than a checkout, the Lucky Wheel / Spin to Win in Pro puts a prize wheel on a page, gated behind an email signup. It works as a popup, an inline embed or a floating button.

Instant win#

Entrants find out right away whether they won, with no waiting for a draw date. Turn on Instant Win mode for probability-based wins (for example, a 1 in 50 chance per entry) or a guaranteed interval (one winner every N entries).

Results show on the thank-you page. Nothing in it depends on the entry price, so it works the same on a $0 giveaway.

Pro’s Advanced Instant Win lets you choose which entry numbers win and set up several prize tiers.

Spend-threshold entry#

“Spend $50 or more and get entered to win.” It nudges people to add more to their cart. But it’s a purchase requirement, so in many places you also need a free way to enter.

Raffle for WooCommerce doesn’t enter customers automatically when an order passes a threshold. If you already run a loyalty program with WooRewards, Pro can connect raffle entries to loyalty points, so customers redeem points for entries instead.

Paid entry is a raffle#

If customers pay $1 to $10 per entry, you’ve moved from a giveaway to a raffle, and the licensing rules for raffles apply. The charity raffle guide linked above covers those rules, and the raffle plugin comparison linked at the top covers the tools.

If you do go that way, the same plugin covers it. Bulk pricing tiers reward bigger purchases (“Buy 5 entries, get 10% off”).

Pro’s Pick Your Own Ticket grid lets buyers choose their numbers. You can send a PDF ticket by email after purchase, and bonus tickets can award extra entries for buying more, buying early, or belonging to a customer role like VIP members.

Mistakes that waste your time#

Running giveaways every month: You train customers to wait for the next giveaway instead of buying at full price. Quarterly or seasonal works. Monthly doesn’t.

Requiring too many steps: “Enter with your email” is one step. “Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok, share this post, tag two friends and sign up for our newsletter” is six steps, and most people quit after two. Keep it simple.

No tracking: If you don’t know how many entries you got and how many entrants bought something afterward, you can’t tell whether it worked. The free plugin tracks entries in the analytics dashboard. Pro adds a full entry/participant list with every entrant, their entry numbers and entry dates in one place.

Skipping the legal stuff: Giveaway laws vary by country, state and city. Many require official rules, age limits and a line saying where the giveaway isn’t valid. Talk to a lawyer if you’re doing anything bigger than a casual promotion.

Frequently asked questions#

What is the best WooCommerce giveaway plugin?#

It depends on the type of giveaway. For giveaways that run through your WooCommerce checkout, Raffle for WooCommerce is free and covers entries, winner selection (including Random.org), countdowns and progress bars.

For social media campaigns (“follow and share to enter”), RafflePress is built for that. I compared every option in my raffle plugin comparison, linked at the top of this post.

Can I run a free giveaway on WooCommerce?#

Yes. Create a raffle product priced at $0. Customers go through checkout for free, which captures their name, email and account. It works as a lead generation tool at no cost to participants.

How do I make a WooCommerce giveaway legally compliant?#

Laws vary by place. Usually that means official rules, a free way to enter if any purchase is involved, age limits, and a line about where the giveaway isn’t valid. Raffle for WooCommerce includes a built-in free entry route for paid draws, and skill-testing questions for Canadian provinces. Talk to a lawyer about your own situation.

How long should a WooCommerce giveaway run?#

7 to 14 days for most promotions. Under a week, you can’t promote it enough. Over two weeks, the urgency fades. For holiday promotions, match the window to the shopping season.

What’s the best prize for a WooCommerce giveaway?#

Your own products or store credit. A $200 store credit means the winner shops in your store. Generic prizes like electronics attract people who’ll never come back.

Can customers enter a giveaway for someone else?#

With Raffle for WooCommerce, yes. The gift ticket feature lets customers enter friends or family. The recipient’s name goes into the draw and they get an email with their entry details. I wrote a longer piece on why gift ticket purchasing matters, especially for charity raffles where many supporters can’t buy online themselves.

How do I pick a giveaway winner fairly?#

The plugin offers three methods: Standard Random, Cryptographically Secure (random_int()), and Random.org (numbers from atmospheric noise, made off your server). For almost every giveaway, Cryptographically Secure is plenty.

Random.org makes sense when you’ve promised an outside source, but our plugin doesn’t return a signed receipt participants can check on their own. My technical breakdown of Random.org vs built-in random explains the differences.

Should I require a purchase to enter?#

For a giveaway, no. That’s what makes it a giveaway. Paid entry turns it into a raffle, which brings licensing rules in many places. If you want a purchase to count, offer a free way to enter alongside it.

Before you publish#

Set the price to $0, set Max per customer to 1, write your official rules, and buy one entry yourself to see the whole flow, from checkout to the confirmation email. The getting started guide walks through every setting.

If you want the visual extras later (pick-your-own-number grids, lucky wheel popups for email capture, PDF tickets, winner reveal animations, bonus entries), they’re in the Pro addon for $69/year.

Running events alongside your giveaways? My guides on selling event tickets with WooCommerce and managing events in WooCommerce cover the setup. If you’re worried about bots flooding a free giveaway, I tested 7 CAPTCHA plugins for WooCommerce to find which ones work with Block Checkout.