10+ Best Crowdsourcing Platforms (Websites) of 2023

A complete review of the most amazing Crowdsourcing Websites. Get to know about the best Crowdsourcing Platforms with comparisons:

Crowdsourcing refers to the process or technique of getting a task or project done with the help of numerous people.

Examples of crowdsourcing include seeking innovative ideas for a problem, votes, and surveys, and looking for workers to complete a task including writing, designing, etc.

Many people are unaware of the existence of crowdsourcing platforms. The websites that allow you to take advantage of the crowd (a large number of workers) associated with them prove to be highly beneficial for businesses of all types and sizes.

Crowdsourcing Websites – A Complete Review

You can just post your problem or challenge on these crowdsourcing sites and start getting innovative solutions from global workers associated with the platform. When you get your desired result, you can choose that one as the winner.

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In this article, you will find the features of top crowdsourcing software, their comparison, and expert advice, so that you can choose the best one for your needs.

FAQs on Crowdsourcing Sites

Q #1) What is an example of crowdsourcing?

Answer: Crowdsourcing is the process of taking help from a crowd (consisting of people from diversified fields), in order to get innovative results in a short span of time. Examples of crowdsourcing include voting and surveys, solving a challenge, hiring a worker, and more.

Q #2) Who uses crowdsourcing?

Answer: Businesses ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies are trusting crowdsourcing platforms today. NASA, Mastercard Foundation, PepsiCo, Microsoft, Starbucks, Pinterest, Airbnb, GoDaddy, BBC, Deloitte, Coca-Cola, and many other popular renowned names are clients of crowdsourcing companies.

Q #3) What are some crowdsourcing platforms?

Answer: InnoCentive, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Crowdspring, 99Designs, Openideo, Upwork, DesignHill, and DesignCrowd are some of the best crowdsourcing platforms.

Each of them is unique and beneficial in its own way. For example, InnoCentive and Openideo help you get innovative ideas for your challenges, and Amazon Mechanical Turk, Crowdspring, 99Designs, Upwork, DesignHill, and DesignCrowd help you get workers from all over the world, for doing your business tasks.

Q #4) What is the difference between crowdsourcing and crowdfunding?

Answer: Crowdsourcing is the process of getting a task done, with the help of a crowd/large number of people. On the other hand, Crowdfunding refers to seeking money from a group of people, mostly to tackle a social issue.

Q #5) Why has crowdsourcing become so popular?

Answer: The huge benefits you get from the process of crowdsourcing have made it a popular thing today.

For example, finding expert talents within hours, saving costs and time which would have been spent on the hiring and onboarding processes, and getting exceptional, innovative ideas from the general people, all contribute towards making these platforms a success.

Q #6) What are the challenges of crowdsourcing give examples.

Answer: The crowdsourcing industry faces the following problems:

1. Difficulties in gathering a diversified crowd.
2. Too much competition makes people leave the platforms (for example, only the winning idea gets a cash reward).
3. With these platforms, workers get low remuneration, because of the high fee they charge from the hirers.

List of the Best Crowdsourcing Platforms

Here is a popular list of companies for crowdsourcing:

1. Amazon Mechanical Turk
2. Crowdspring
3. 99Designs
4. InnoCentive
5. Openideo
6. Upwork
7. DesignHill
8. CrowdSource
9. DesignCrowd
10. MicroWorkers

Comparing the Top Crowdsourcing Software

Detailed Reviews:

#1) Amazon Mechanical Turk (Seattle, WA, United States)

Best for businesses requiring micro tasks to be performed quickly.

Amazon Mechanical Turk offers you a global workforce, available for you 24/7 to solve your problems, on demand. The platform offers you scalability and flexibility in a way that you can hire as many people at a time as you want. Plus, you save on the costs involved in the hiring and onboarding process.

The platform allows you to pay per completed task, thus improving efficiency and lowering your costs at the same time.

Founded in: 2005
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web
Customer Support: Support is available through email.
Languages Supported: English, Espanol, French, Italian, Bahasa Indonesia, Deutsch, and more.

Clients of Amazon Mechanical Turk: US Foods, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Pinterest, wikiHow, Maxar’s Radiant Solutions, and more.

Features:

• Global workforce, available 24/7.
• You can outsource manual microtasks, thus saving time.
• Get templates to create HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) and allow you to publish them.
• Tools that allow you to set rules/qualifications required on ‘Who can view or work on your specified task’.

Pros:

• 24/7 availability of global workforce.
• Templates to help you build several tasks easily and quickly.

Cons:

• The platform could have been more user-friendly.
• Some users (outside the USA) have faced problems in receiving payments.

Verdict: Amazon Mechanical Turk is one of the most popular crowdsourcing sites out there. The platform helps business owners (requesters) as well as workers. A worker can perform as many tasks as he wants and thus get paid accordingly. The pay given to the workers is reportedly very low.

Price: You will decide how much you are going to pay the worker. Plus, you have to pay 20% of the reward as a fee to MTurk. The fee structure is as follows:

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Website: Amazon Mechanical Turk

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#2) Crowdspring (Chicago, USA)

Best for designing tasks.

Crowdspring is a community of more than 200,000 talented, creative people from 195 countries. You can get work done on Logo Designing, Business Names, Business Card Designing, Website Designing, Product Designing, Packaging Designing, and much more.

The platform offers transparent, flexible pricing and a 100% money-back guarantee, in case you are not satisfied with the results.

Founded in: 2008
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web, Mac/Windows Desktop
Customer Support: 24/7 customer support is available through email, phone, and chat.
Languages Supported: English
Clients of Crowdspring: Amazon, LG, Starbucks, Grolsch, and more.

Features:

• Get access to unlimited workers from 195 countries.
• Get work done on designing and naming.
• SSAE16 and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 certified, and Tier III Standards are compliant with data centers and SSL encryption of all data.
• A legal contract to protect your intellectual property.

Pros:

• Appreciable customer support services.
• Money-back guarantee.

Cons:

• Some creatives have faced delays in payments after winning the contests.

Verdict: Trusted by over 60,000 organizations from all across the globe, Crowdspring is a top crowdsourcing platform that has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and more.

Their customer support services have a 99% satisfaction rate and they guarantee you will love the work you get done from their site.

Price: Prices start at $199.

Website: Crowdspring

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#3) 99designs (Richmond, Australia)

Best for getting access to designers from all around the world in simple steps.

99designs offers you Graphic Design services. The platform gives you access to creative, professional designers from all over the world. Through this platform, you can get Logo Designs, Branding Designs, Website Designs, Product Packaging Designs, Book Cover Designs, T-shirt designs, and more.

99designs has featured with leading publishers like The New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and more.

Founded in: 2008
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web
Customer Support: 24/7 Customer Support is available.
Languages Supported: German, English, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish.
Clients of 99designs: Optimizely, Univision, Draft Kings, and more.

Features:

• You just need to start a contest, get the results and pick the best one and pay.
• Get designs for over 90 design skill sets, including designers for Logos, Book Covers, Websites, Business Cards, and more.
• GDPR, LGPD, and the UK Data Protection Act comply with data privacy.
• You can ask the designer to sign a ‘No Disclosure Agreement’, thus keeping your project private.

Pros:

• Comparatively affordable platform.
• Allows you to get copyrights of the design once you select the best one.

Cons:

• Too much competition forces the expert designers to lower their prices, thus leading to an eventual reduction in the number of expert designers on the platform.

Verdict: 99designs is a recommended crowdsourcing platform. This is one of the best crowdsourcing companies, having 4.8 out of 5-star ratings, as per the reviews given by 37,496 customers. The main plus point of the platform is the access to world-class freelancers, 24/7, for getting designs made in more than 90 categories.

Price: Packages start at $79.

Website: 99designs

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#4) InnoCentive (Now Wazoku) (Waltham, USA)

Best for being a large community of challenge solvers.

InnoCentive is a community of around 500,000 Solvers from all over the world, is running more than 2,500 innovation challenges, has captured 2,00,000 innovations, and has helped people win over $60,000,000 in Innovation Awards to date.

In 2020, InnoCentive was acquired by Wazoku, an 11-year-old SaaS business that aims at providing ideas for innovation.

Founded in: 2001
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web
Customer Support: 24/7 live support is available.
Languages Supported: English, Espanol
Clients of InnoCentive: NASA, Lumina Foundation, The SUDEP Institute, Thomson Reuters, Mastercard Foundation, and more.

Features:

• Find a number of innovative solutions for any challenges that you come across
• You can register as a Solver, anytime
• Win cash rewards as your solution gets approved by the seeker organization.
• 500,000+ Solvers help you in getting the most innovative solution.

Pros:

• Appreciable customer support.
• Compatible with all devices.

Cons:

• There should be more pictures available to create a challenge, so the solvers can understand his challenge.

Verdict: InnoCentive is an award-winning online crowdsourcing ideas platform, which has a more than 80% success rate.

The platform is highly beneficial for solution seekers as well as solvers. The platform helps the solvers in getting an average of $20,000 in cash awards, once their solution gets accepted, which eventually helps in attracting a diverse range of talents from all over the world.

Price: Contact directly for prices.

Website: InnoCentive

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#5) Openideo (San Francisco, USA)

Best for the vision of making the whole habitat a better place to live.

Openideo is a crowdsourcing platform that works to develop collective ideas and accelerate social innovation. The website is a source of ideas for tackling problems like food waste, girl education, and much more. Openideo is a company of 10-50 employees and the idea behind the platform is beneficial for the whole world.

Founded in: 2010
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web, Android/iOS mobile
Customer Support: Email support is available.
Languages Supported: English

Features:

• People from all over the world come together to think about ideas for social betterment.
• Get access to case studies on topics like sustainability, global equity, health, food, education, and more.
• Get access to resources, innovators, experts, and funders to develop your ideas.
• ESRB Privacy Certified platform.
• Aims at bringing about awareness and social change with the help of art.

Pros:

• The platform is beneficial for the whole of mankind
• Mobile application (named Medium) for Android as well as iOS users.

Cons:

• Your ideas are open to everyone. You do not have a copyright to the idea you share.

Verdict: Having an estimated revenue of more than $1 Million, and an innovative, highly beneficial vision behind its work, Openideo is a civic and social organization. The challenge winners get prize money and additional financial support in order to scale their efforts.

Price: Contact directly for prices.

Website: Openideo

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#6) Upwork (Campbell, CA, USA)

Best for highly useful talent management tools.

Upwork is a popular crowdsourcing software, which is used widely for the purpose of hiring talents from all over the world. The platform lets you hire workers with more than 8,000 skills. With Upwork, you can post jobs, shortlist candidates, schedule a chat, pay globally, send or receive files, get invoicing and reporting tools, and much more.

Founded in: 2015
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web, Android/iOS mobile.
Customer Support: 24/7 Customer Support is available.
Languages Supported: English
Clients of Upwork: Microsoft, GoDaddy, Airbnb, Nasdaq, and more.

Features:

• Find talents from the field of Designing, Development & IT, Sales & Marketing, Writing, Finance & Accounting, and more.
• Post a job and get suggestions to hire a pro.
• Allows you to find and buy projects including Social Media Design, Video Editing, and more.
• Tools for talent management, onboarding, and payroll.
• TLS AND SSL encryption of all your data.

Pros:

• Mobile applications for iOS and Android users.
• Find talents for 8,000+ skills.

Cons:

• We researched the users’ experience with Upwork. Many of them had to face fraudsters/scammers in the hiring process.

Verdict: Upwork has won the G2’s 2021 Best Software Award, it claims to fill 85% of the open roles, is trusted by 1 in every 3 Fortune 500 companies, and delivers 85% enterprise customer satisfaction. Customer support is nice and the platform is user-friendly.

Price: 20% commission fee is charged by the freelancers.

Website: Upwork

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#7) Designhill (Delhi, India)

Best for offering beautiful templates that can be used to build graphic designs.

Designhill is recommended as one of the best crowdsourcing websites. This leading platform allows you to find designers for the creative needs of your business.

They also offer templates that can be used to build movies, wedding invitations, and more. More than 1 million businesses from all over the world trust Designhill for their graphic design requirements.

Founded in: 2014
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web
Customer Support: 24/7 live support is available.
Languages Supported: English
Clients of Designhill: BBC, Deloitte, Microsoft, SAP, Ticketmaster, and more.

Features:

• Get designs for logos, websites, packaging, labels, letterheads, envelopes, books, magazines, clothing, and more.
• The platform promotes the contests on social media, thus giving promotion to your brand
• Get unlimited revisions for your designs.
• Tools to give real-time feedback to the designers.
• The final files are in .png, .jpeg, .ai, and .psd file formats.

Pros:

• 100% money-back guarantee.
• Compatible with desktop, mobile, and tablet.

Cons:

• UI can be more appealing and user-friendly.

Verdict: The platform has created more than 10 Million designs to date. It is a community of 152,334 designers from all over the world and has 116,543 satisfied clients.

Designhill has an average of 4.95 out of 5-star ratings, based on 35,779 customer ratings, which proves that the platform is highly recommended for designing purposes.

Price: Prices start at $69.

Website: Designhill

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#8) CrowdSource (Swansea, Illinois, USA)

Best for offering 8 million+ freelancers from 180 countries.

CrowdSource is a OneSpace company that offers you scalable workforce solutions in the field of copywriting, data tasks, moderation, transcription, marketing, and more. The workers/freelancers can work as per their suitable timings.

Founded in: 2004
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web
Customer Support: 24/7 support through email and phone.
Languages Supported: English
Clients of CrowdSource: Citysearch, Bed Bath & Beyond, eBay, Coca-Cola, Elle Canada, and more.

Features:

• Get a managed team of workers for your project.
• Get access to expert writers, subject matter experts, and enthusiasts.
• Professional writers write to promote your brand while keeping in mind to put keyword phrases in articles to boost visibility on your website.
• Writers that help you create delicious recipes, create product descriptions, buying guides, and more.
• Sentiment analysis solutions to help you gain real-time insights into the feelings of your customers.
• Audio and video transcription, image and video tagging tools, and more.

Pros:

• Highly useful tools for site development.
• XML and JSON APIs.
• Solutions for improving the quality of each task.

Cons:

• The platform pays very little money to freelancers.

Verdict: CrowdSource is a community of 8 million+ freelancers, and 200,000+ workers from 180 countries. It is one of the best online crowdsourcing platforms that serve small to enterprise-scale organizations, including many Fortune 500 companies.

Price: Contact us directly for a price quote.

Website: CrowdSource

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#9) DesignCrowd (New South Wales, Australia)

Best for offering 25-100+ designs per project.

Trusted by more than 100,000+ businesses, DesignCrowd has 4.9 out of 5-star ratings, up from 3,060 customer reviews. 27.8 Million designs have been uploaded to DesignCrowd to date. The platform is known for delivering budget-friendly designs in a very short span of time.

Founded in: 2007
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web
Customer Support: Available through email and phone.
Languages supported: French, Spanish, Dutch
Clients of DesignCrowd: Hi-Tec, Pentamery, Deli Radio, Healing Nature, and more.

Features:

• Get designs for logos, business cards, websites, flyers, billboards, banners, book covers, mobile apps, T-shirts, 3-D designs, and much more.
• Get the designs within a few hours.
• Money-back guarantee.
• Choose a 3, 5, or 10-day deadline for your project.
• 128-bit encryption, GDPR compliance.

Pros:

• 1 Million+ designers from all over the world are at your service.
• 25-100 designs per project.

Cons:

• A freelancer’s score gets impacted if the client does not like any of his designs, thus leading to average reviews in the future.

Verdict: 1,044,638 designers are part of DesignCrowd. The platform has completed 428,826 projects to date and guarantees 25-100+ designs per project, thus making it a highly popular and recommended platform.

Price: Starts at $99

Website: DesignCrowd

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#10) MicroWorkers (Dallas, TX, USA)

Best for pre-built templates.

MicroWorkers is a highly recommended platform for those who want to work and earn or those who have a job to offer. The platform offers some nice features like auto refilling positions, task rating, position visibility delay feature, and more.

Founded in: 2009
Deployment: On Cloud, SaaS, Web
Customer Support: Email support is available.
Languages supported: English, Spanish, Japanese and more.

Features:

• A worker can accept as many jobs as he wants.
• An employer can create and run campaigns for his preferred group of workers.
• Use pre-built or external templates to build a campaign.
• Tools to get recurring jobs done.

Pros:

• A community of 2,879,974 workers from all over the world.
• 90,968,449 completed tasks.

Cons:

• We researched the customer reviews of this online crowdsourcing platform; many of the users are unhappy with the customer service.

Verdict: The best part of the platform is the templates that it offers, for campaign and project designing purposes. Being a community of more than 2 million freelancers, MicroWorkers offers you design solutions for different requirements, from a diverse range of talents.

Price: 7.5% fee for tasks you are satisfied with. Plus, $0.75 is the campaign approval fee.

Website: MicroWorkers

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Other Notable Crowdsourcing Platform

#11) HeroX (New York, USA)

Best for finding innovative solutions for complex needs.

HeroX is represented by members from 175 countries. The platform has powered 350+ challenges and has awarded $40 million+ in prizes to the winners.

Trusted by companies like Facebook and Forbes, HeroX is an innovative crowdsourcing platform that aims at solving complex problems.

Price: Contact directly to get a price quote.

Website: HeroX

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#12) Cad Crowd (Glendale, CA, USA)

Best for CAD design, engineering, 3D modeling & drafting services.

Cad Crowd offers you tools to get work done for CAD design, engineering, 3D modeling, and drafting services.

Trusted by KPMG, Tiffany & Co., and many other big brands, Cad Crowd has delivered its services to more than 1500 satisfied clients to date, with the help of its 46,875 expert designers.

Price: Contact directly to get a price quote.

Website: Cad Crowd

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Conclusion

The idea of online crowdsourcing sites is amazing. Through a crowdsourcing ideas platform, you can get unique, unimaginable, innovative ideas for any complexity, hurdle, or growth prospect.

Some of the crowdsourcing platforms help you in finding innovative solutions to your problems and some help you find the best talents from all over the world. These platforms offer you comparatively cheap labor, 24/7, plus, they are time and cost-efficient as they save you money from lengthy hiring and onboarding processes.

Some popular crowdsourcing platforms examples include InnoCentive, Amazon Mechanical Turk, 99Designs, CrowdSpring, Openideo, Upwork, and DesignHill.

Research Process:

• Time Taken to Research this Article: We spent 10 hours researching and writing this article so you can get a useful summarized list of Crowdsourcing Platforms with a comparison of each for your quick review.
• Total Crowdsourcing Platforms Researched Online: 18
• Top Crowdsourcing Platforms Shortlisted for Review: 12