Of all the design sites available, Crowdspring offers one of the bigger designer pools for crowdsourced design. While they also have the option of following a more traditional system and hiring a single designer outright, their competition function allows you to receive multiple options for about the same price, increasing the chances that you will get exactly what you’re looking for. Working in multiple design domains—from logos to illustrations to websites and more—this site offers a solid option with lots of choices for your design needs.

Background

Crowdspring was launched in 2008 as a way of democratizing the design process. Since previous models had given clients limited choices and designers limited access to possible clients, the site’s goal was to connect the two groups in a way that offered the most possibilities for successful matches. In the decade since its inception, Crowdspring has allowed over 206,000 creatives from 195 countries to work with 52,000 clients to create great designs for their logos, websites, products, and names.

Process

For this Crowdspring review, we walked through the process of getting a design through the site, and it is pretty straightforward.

• First off, you have the option between choosing to hire a one-on-one designer or doing a design contest. One-to-one hires require you to negotiate directly with the designer, but they advertise them starting as low as $149. The design contests are the core of the company, and you start the process by choosing your package (prices from $299 for logo competitions).
• The second step is creating your project brief, in which you will answer some simple questions, offer a description, and select color palettes to guide designers. You are encouraged to include as much details as possible.
• Once you publish your contest, designers will start responding with submissions, and you can offer feedback throughout this time.
• Finally, when you find the perfect design (or within seven days of the close of your project), you choose your winner, make any final tweaks, and approve the final design. At that point, your designer will receive the prize, and you will be given full rights to the design.

Advantages

• High ratings (10/10 stars from customers)
• Free design consultation to help you get started
• Very thorough brief process which gives designers a lot of information to work with
• Over 200,000 designers from around the world offers a big talent pool and more diversity
• 24/7 live chat support on the site 
• Moneyback guarantee (unless waived in a “guaranteed contest”)

Disadvantages

• Not the cheapest service—packages for a single logo start at just under $300 with the prize and fees included

Bottom line

The conclusion of our Crowdspring review was that this is a solid contender when it comes to online design sites. While the brief process doesn’t have you choose other designs that appeal to you like most sites, it is very thorough and asks a lot of probing questions to really give your designers a good idea of what you’re looking for.

There are also a host of extra options you can add to increase your response rate, speed things up, or otherwise customize your experience. Really, the only sticking point may be the prices, as they are a bit higher than you will pay on some of the other sites. Still, if you can afford it, the number of designers on Crowdspring and the overall quality of the site are pretty tempting.

Also, at the time of writing this Crowdspring review, they are offering a special deal to The Crowder visitors which will allow you to get $25 off your purchase and add advanced promotion (worth $99) for free!