48HoursLogo.com is a crowdsourced marketplace for custom logo, web, and print graphic design services. The company began in 2010, is headquartered in Shanghai, and has hosted more than 15000 design contests so far.
The target clientele is small business owners and startups in need of affordable graphic design work. Designers have contributed more than a million concepts for review, with more added each day.
Table of Contents
How it Works
With 48HoursLogo, an invisible global army of freelance design talent works to fulfill customer requests.
If you need a logo created for example, you can put your request up on the site and start a design contest. Within 48 hours — hence the name — you’ll have a variety of design concepts to choose from from designers all around the world.
You pick the winner and they get the prize money.
Plans and Pricing
Pricing for 48HoursLogo.com is a little misleading because they prominently display the promo text “starting at $29” on their homepage and marketing material. However, the minimum contest prize is $99, and they tack on a 15% fee for facilitating the contest, bringing the true minimum cost up to $114.
The “starting at $29” is just their minimum “down payment.” Even though you’ll eventually be paying at least the $114, you can technically get started for just $29 — and only pay the balance if and when you’re happy with the results.
The higher your award, naturally the higher number of entrants you can expect to receive. A $99 prize will typically attract around 10 participants, according to the company.
If you pre-pay for the contest, instead of waiting until the end, you can also attract more entries because the designers will know you’re more serious.
Customers can also contract with pre-vetted designers through the site for an hourly rate.
48HoursLogo Alternatives
The best known competitor is 99designs, which runs a very similar crowdsourced, contest-driven business model. The differentiating factor with 48HoursLogo is the speed and the pricing.
Customers and designers like the quick turnaround time because they’re not waiting around for days and days to find out which design won.
With 99designs, your minimum investment for a design contest is $299, and those contests reportedly receive an average of 30 submissions. For turnaround time, their contests stay open for about a week.
Other alternatives to consider include Fiverr, Crowdspring, and LogoGarden.
Your Turn
Have you hosted a design contest on 48HoursLogo? What did you think? Please consider leaving a quick review of your experience below to help others with their decision.
Hello,
I created my logo in less than 48 hours. My logo is perfect! The team understood my request immediately. I recommend very good return.
It appears a lot of contradictory criticism I do not know what to think
My company attempted to have a logo done with 48 Hour Logo recently and not only did they not fully understand what we were asking of them, when we attempted to move forward with revisions, they went in the opposite direction of what we were asking. When I asked for a refund, it took days before I got a response from “Chris”, who after a while told me that it was hard to understand what “teen” meant, and also that he would only refund me $50. On their website it states that you only pay the $29 contest start fee and when you chose a logo then you pay the rest. This was not the case, our company card was charged $128 right away. Beware!
I don’t know much about it, but when I applied as a designer here, my revisions got disapproved all the time even though my designs were up to the mark. I thought they would need something unique and out of the box and I exactly complied their rules. I’m still taken aback by their lazy and arrogant support and the number of revisions I made during this month. It’s not that I’m a novice in this field, I have won many contents and knew how to design a logo the way it may sell. At least they should reply to their users. However, Thanks for this article.
No Man!!!
Admin with name Chris is REALLY AROGANT!
He NEVER HEAR a complain from designer…
And He BANNED all account that give complain or negative review on their FORUM!!!
BEWARE!!!!!!!
sorry to say, but the owner is lack of people realtionship skill.
I’m a designer there, and i won a contest, and there is a little problem, and when i ask for my money for 6 month, he banned me and run away with it.
Hi, I have used this website for a project and I have a very good return.
The customer service was very understanding. In my listening.
I received a lot of proposals. Not all necessarily good qualities but some were well worked. Then it comes to explain what you want from the beginning, follow the project to record the interesting proposals and thus guide future proposals and take the one that pleases us most to evolve (2nd stage) with finalist. This can be very interesting to have 50 proposals even if they are not all quality.
You can trust this site.
Do you have a contact for their customer service I can use. I’m not getting any response so far.
I am in the middle of selecting a design, very happy with all of the options shown. I need help to eliminate the 200+ options. Going thru and clicking “not interested” then “ok” to confirm that, one by one, is really slow and cumbersome.
Thanks
This is great – I am actually relieved to read this – I tried crowd sourcing a logo project through 48 Hours Logo, and while there was some good talent, there was an apparent breakdown of communication – none of the artists seemed able to understand the feedback and revision requests my team were offering. I tried to contact a manager/owner at 48HrsLogo via phone & email. Sadly, I couldn’t get anyone on the phone, & I kept getting form/scripted emails from the owner(I guess?). After spinning our collective wheels, we wound up canceling the contest and going with one of the competitors mentioned above. Long story short, they were personable, fast, and the pool of talent blew us away. It took us longer to choose a final logo than it did to actually receive the artwork. We’ll continue to use the chosen competitor for future projects.