99designs VS. Logo Tournament: The Ultimate Comparison

Many entrepreneurs and aspiring marketers in search of a high quality logo for their business stumble upon one of two well known websites that can assist:  99 Designs and LogoTournament.  Both offer a competition style format where a concept is presented and applicants enter their best work in hopes of winning the prize of submitting the logo that ultimately gets chosen to be used by the contest manager.  Today I’ll talk about how these two companies compare, and ultimately share with you my choice as the best online logo tournament.

99 Designs Compared to Logo Tournament

99designs VS. Logo Tournament

If you’re looking to get your business logo done and done well, you’re in the right place. I have done countless logos for websites and brands under my direction from 99designs and it was the best decision I’ve ever made.

 Just like 99 Designs, Logo Tournament is a logo contest website and it’s crowdsourced.  This means that you can post your unique requirements, i.e. your brief for whichever kind of logo you require online, and it’ll be open to the public. Designers from all over the globe who’ve signed up to the website will see the brief and start sending in their own submissions for your approval. At the end, you will pick one final design and use it as your final logo.

The Key Comparison

I will admit that Logo Tournament does have some massive advantages over 99designs. However, their one major issue is that they have a text-based logo design brief process. Think about this: if you’re looking to get a logo designed, you’d want to provide visual cues for prospective designers. Logo Tournament, on the other hand, will ask you to submit a text-based brief which isn’t inspiring for many designers. It’s also harder to understand. Comparatively, 99designs has a really visually exciting ordering process and you will enjoy it much more.

Continuing in this vein, when I tried the Logo Tournament order process myself, it took me around an hour to finish. And even when I was done, I felt confused and unable to properly communicate my design requirements since it was text-based. On the other hand, I was able to finish my brief on 99designs in an astonishing 15 minutes. I’m in the process of uploading a video explaining this entire process here in the near future.

Now that you have a better understanding of both design services, let’s go into their key similarities and differences!

Key Similarities Between 99 Designs and LogoTournament

Online Platforms

Both of these platforms are online. The advantage behind this is pretty self explanatory, but I will reiterate. You won’t have to reach out to various designers one by one and feel trapped by logistics.

Crowdsourced Platforms

Both of these websites are crowdsourced. This means you can get a whole plethora of creative logos for one design brief and a reasonable cost. You don’t have to restrict yourself to one designer or one visual direction, either.

Key Differences Between 99 Designs and LogoTournament

The Price

Logo Tournament is priced lower than 99designs, at $24 less than the cheapest package offered on the latter. The Bronze Logo package at 99designs is almost $300 whereas it costs approximately $275 at Logo Tournament.

However, this very slight price difference doesn’t make up for the fact that Logo Tournament has a smaller number of designers and creative artists. If you need a comparison, there are over one million designers at 99designs where there are only 100,000 at Logo Tournament.

Your Money Back

If you use Logo Tournament, you can get your money back or at least 30 designs in kind. However, you will not have the freedom to choose these designs, nor will you be able to pick a custom logo that you want. This means you could still end up wasting your money and be left with a logo you hate.

 99designs on the other hand, guarantees that you will receive the logo you originally wanted and love. If you don’t you can get a full refund for up to 60 days after the payment is made. This seems like a much better guarantee than Logo Tournament, considering you will still be getting the result you wanted in the first place.

The Company Size

99designs has over 350,000 happy and satisfied customers whereas Logo Tournament boasts only about 50,000. That’s 700% more customer satisfaction for 99designs!

The Design Quality

This is where it all comes to a showdown. If you look at side by side comparisons for both Logo Tournament and 99designs, the latter is the obvious winner. The logos made using Logo Tournament have unoriginal graphics, garish use of color and are not easy to print or use on various products like t-shirts and signs.

In my opinion, 99designs takes the design cake here, with Logo Tournament falling behind in terms of pricing options, money back guarantee and obviously, the logos themselves!