Create high quality UGC - Try Showcase for free
Are you looking for a UGC platform to help you manage your online content?
We’ve compiled a list of the best UGC platforms to help you make the most of user-generated content.
These platforms offer unique features and benefits that can help you boost your online presence and engagement.
So which platform is right for you?
Check out our breakdown of each platform and find the one that fits your needs best.
With so many options available, there’s no reason not to jump on the UGC bandwagon and start benefiting from all that user-generated content offers.
The Power of UGC
Did you know that user-generated content (UGC) is more trusted than other forms of advertising?
The glamorous era of traditional advertising that started in the 1950s will forever be remembered.
But that glam was a world of smoke and mirrors.
People appreciate a good show, but, at the end of the day, they want the real thing.
That’s what UGC is in the world of marketing strategies.
UGC allows companies to engage with customers and create an authentic connection.
When customers see real people using and loving a product, they’re more likely to want to try it for themselves.
Therefore, UGC can increase sales and encourage customer loyalty.
UGC also helps companies learn essential customer-related insights.
That way, companies can improve people’s experience with their products.
Here are the numbers to prove it:
- UGC-based ads have a 4x higher click-through rate than traditional ads and cost half as much.
- 69% of people share UGC about specific companies because they believe doing so makes a difference to the world.
- UGC influences the purchasing decisions of 90% of people.
- 81% of respondents are willing to fork out more money for brands using UGC.
- 61% of people say that brands using UGC encourage increased engagement on their part.
- 4% of respondents read customer reviews, while 50% find out about new products from their loved ones.
- UGC has been shown to improve the open rates for 95% of marketing e-mails.
Of course, this has to be authentic user-generated content that appeals to people and drives genuine customer engagement.
Best 10 UGC Platforms
UGC is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.
Sometimes you’ll get a delicious treat, and other times you’ll end up with candy corn.
That’s why you have to pick the right box of chocolates.
Or, in this case, the right UGC platform.
We’ve reviewed ten of the best ones below:
1. Showcase: Premier UGC Marketplace
Showcase connects brands with a curated network of top-performing content creators.
This platform is known for its clear, transparent pricing and versatile UGC options, fitting various marketing channels.
You can use Showcase to:
- Explore diverse creator profiles: Delve into the profiles of content creators to ensure they align perfectly with your brand's image and marketing goals.
- Refine creator selection: Apply advanced filters to find creators that precisely match your campaign's specific needs and objectives.
- Manage campaigns efficiently: Use Showcase's marketplace for streamlined campaign management, from initiation to completion.
- Ensure quality control: Leverage the platform's mechanisms to maintain high standards of content quality and relevance.
- Access global talent: Connect with content creators from various countries, expanding the reach and diversity of your UGC.
Showcas promotes direct, efficient communication with creators, ensuring seamless collaboration.
With a secure payment system prioritizing client satisfaction, Showcase stands out for its commitment to quality and authenticity in UGC ads and campaigns.
Ideal for brands seeking quality UGC, Showcase's customizable pricing plans cater to specific campaign needs and creator rates.
2. Stackla: Best Overall
Stackla promises to provide inspirational and genuine content that performs.
The platform does that through its wide range of comprehensive actions:
- Discovery
- Curation
- Managing rights
- Displaying visual UGC in various marketing channels
As such, you have access to a comprehensive service package that helps organize a UGC-based campaign from start to finish.
Stackla stands out from the crowd through its visual UGC solutions.
And since 85% of shoppers believe that visual UGC is more effective than traditional brand-created visuals, you’ve won the jackpot.
Stackla is the home of excellent UGC, and the platform will help integrate that content into various campaigns according to your goals, types of user, and social channels used.
Another unique selling point for Stackla is leveraging machine learning to assess content patterns.
This AI helps you get more effective UGC content for your goals.
You will also benefit from more accurate analyses to optimize your campaigns and create more relatable content.
You can also use Stackla to:
- Engage and reward content creators
- Build UGC libraries
- Get the right content from over 25 sources
- Combine that content based on a slew of variables, such as keywords, hashtags, geolocation, etc.
As result, your conversion rates will soar.
3. Taggbox: Best for Customer Service
Taggbox claims it’s the “#1 user-generated content platform to create and publish UGC campaigns across different marketing touchpoints.”
We don’t know about being #1, but it’s certainly among the best according to customer reviews.
Many companies using it claim that Taggbox has helped them increase interactions, sales, awareness, and trust among their customers.
That’s why Taggbox is the right chocolate box to choose from and add to your marketing stack.
Here’s how the platform keeps its customers happy:
- It collects UGC from 15+ sources, such as reviews and social media platforms.
- It curates that content from social platforms, filtering and customizing it with special tools.
- It embeds that UGC on companies’:
- Web pages
- Digital displays
- Ecommerce stores
- Hashtag campaigns
- E-mail campaigns
- Social campaigns
- It can deal with the legal aspects of repurposing the content created by social media influencers or regular people on other channels.
- It monitors and analyzes the UGC campaigns thus created so that companies can optimize their endeavors.
But the genuinely unique selling point compared to other platforms is the ability to create shoppable content.
You can tag the products presented in a specific piece of user-generated content, and your customers can shop directly by clicking on that tag.
That feature streamlines your sales funnel, helping people make buying decisions faster.
Bonus: Taggbox offers 24/7 customer support.
4. Trend: Best for Control
Trend certainly has the edge over its competitors because the UGC it offers comes with a twist:
It’s not actual UGC but influencer-created content.
Trend understands that sometimes, the content created by regular people (e.g., customer photos and video content) may be lacking in image quality.
That’s why the platform allows brands to take the reins of the entire creative process.
How?
It connects companies with the best influencers in the field. That’s you.
These content creators receive invites to join Trend.
Next, companies can select individual influencers that align with their company’s values and goals.
You can then:
- Ensure your influencers follow the agreed guidelines to create specific content for your brand, and:
- Share that content with your mutual audience, but:
- Yield you the content rights to the content they created.
The advantages for brands are multifold:
- You get the right content according to the guidelines you created, thus saving time and additional resources spent on brand-related content.
- You get access to a pool of vetted influencers likelier to stick to their deadlines and obligations than other creators.
- You have all the management tools to conduct your campaign on one platform, from sourcing content creators to paying them.
5. Yotpo: Best for E-commerce Companies
Yotpo is one of the best choices for e-commerce companies.
Although Yotpo was a platform for sourcing online reviews and testimonials at its origins, it is now a complex UGC website for brand-related content.
As such, you can source the right social proof you need right here.
Then, you can leverage it to your advantage.
Here’s what Yotpo can do for you:
- The content platform can help more users discover your brand by helping you build shoppable galleries. Once you post these galleries on your homepage, users will have more products at their fingertips – to browse and, more importantly, to buy.
- You can insert UGC galleries on your product pages too. That way, the website visitors who get to a specific product page can see how their peers use these items. The result is your prospective customers’ worries, skepticism, and questions are dispelled. Therefore, they’re more likely to finalize that purchase.
- You can add UGC on your checkout pages. That strategy further decreases customers’ worries and creates desire, making them less likely to abandon their carts. Consequently, you will see a corresponding increase in your sales rate.
6. Olapic: Best for Video Content
Olapic is your best choice if your campaign is based on visual marketing.
Side note: That’s an excellent strategy because visual content is extremely persuasive.
An image can inspire emotions, suspend criticism, educate, or offer rational arguments.
That’s why almost 60% of companies rely almost exclusively on visuals for their campaigns.
That’s where Olapic comes in.
The platform differentiates itself from its competitors because it can animate static UGC images. The result is creating short videos that:
- Attract more attention
- Are more memorable
- Create more desire
Better yet, these videos are shoppable.
That means you can tag your products, and prospective customers will click on those tags to get to them faster.
That’s a definite plus for e-commerce companies selling a wide variety of products.
Olapic is also a practical platform if you want to leverage more strategies into your campaign.
Apart from UGC, you can also implement influencer marketing and short-form video using Olapic.
Unsure what would fit?
Olapic’s AI algorithm helps you choose the most effective visual content for your goals and social media channels.
7. Bazaarvoice: Best for Reviews
Bazaarvoice is a tech company that provides retailers with customer-generated rating and review software.
The company collects and displays customer feedback across the web, giving shoppers insights into which products to buy and where to buy them.
Bazaarvoice offers a suite of services that helps you:
- Collect
- Manage
- Display
customer feedback across the web.
Therefore, shoppers see what other customers think about your products before buying them.
Bazaarvoice also offers several tools to help retailers manage and analyze customer feedback.
These tools allow you to:
- Track customer satisfaction
- Identify product issues
- Improve your overall customer experience
You can also use Bazaarvoice to optimize your customer feedback programs through services like consultation, training, and support.
But Bazaarvoice isn’t just best for reviews.
Its “influensters” community is a definite plus because they can do other things besides writing said reviews.
They can also:
- Share visual content, such as videos and images.
- Post questions or answer them.
- Engage with brands.
That means you can develop your campaign in several directions using just one platform.
8. Emplifi: Best for Multiple Sources
Emplifi doesn’t seem all that different from other UGC platforms when you first look at it.
Just like its competitors, it enables UGC:
- Creation
- Collection
- Curation
- Content discovery tools
However, one difference is that you can find that UGC is gathered automatically from several sources.
Emplifi will scan your social media but also posts made by:
- Potential and actual customers
- Employees
- Content creators
Then, it integrates all that content in one single feed that appears in your dashboard.
Other useful features include:
- Making your UGC shoppable to ensure your website’s visitors purchase faster, within a couple of clicks.
- Using AI-based search filters that allow you to source the right visual content for your needs faster.
- Integrating social scheduling tools for companies that use Buffer and Hootsuite. That means you can organize your social media posts in advance instead of manually tracking the date/time and adding them to your feed.
- Integrating interactive options so that you can reply to comments from your dashboard. That feature streamlines your communication with potential shoppers, helping you build a more engaged community faster.
Emplifi also helps you design marketing e-mails with effective UGC for people who’ve abandoned their carts before finishing their purchase.
This personalized UGC content will get more people back to your website to finalize their purchases or choose new products they can buy.
9. Billo: Best Affordable UGC Videos
Billo stars an enticing promise on their website:
Companies using this platform can save $400 for every UGC video they create on Billo.
That is the equivalent of an 80% discount, considering that agency-produced videos amount to around $500 (according to Billo).
The platform is quick to dispel your worries:
Their videos are on par with agency-created content in terms of quality.
They’re cheaper because they have eliminated the middle man (aka the agency) that comes with many other costs.
And they immediately state that 15,000+ e-commerce brands trust Billo.
Their customers include Harry’s, Warby Parker, Burst, and Adoreme.
Here’s how the platform works:
- Sign up.
- Create a brief and a task, telling creators specific info about your product and the video you want to be done. Billo promises this whole brief will take you less than one minute.
- Vet and approve the creators that fit your goals.
- These influencers start working on your content. On Billo, you can get authentic content including:
- Video ads
- Customer testimonials
- How-to videos
- Unboxing videos
- 360 showcase
- Review the results and ask for edits if you need them. Otherwise, you’re good to go.
10. Shortstack: Best for Comprehensive Campaigns
Shortstack allows you to create different campaigns and other products, such as:
- Social media contests
- Giveaways
- Coupon codes
- Landing pages
- Micro-websites
- Marketing e-mails
Shortstack claims that thousands of Fortune 500 businesses already use their services, so you’ll be in excellent company.
Besides, they offer a free trial that’s almost impossible to refuse.
Shortstack is also a practical platform if you want to save some resources you’d otherwise spend for a developer team.
That’s because you can add the content created directly to your website without hassle.
Then there’s the UGC part.
Shortstack allows you to collect relevant user-generated content that woos your website visitors, so they end up spending more time on your website.
Shortstack will also help you use that UGC to create contests and voting on your social networks.
These features increase engagement and memorability, helping your prospective customers feel included.
The result is increasing their chances of purchasing from you in the future and recommending you to their loved ones.
Weighing the Options
We’ve reviewed some of the best user-generated platforms on the market, but there are many other choices to consider.
And with so many options, picking the right one for your business is challenging.
To streamline your decision, consider the variables below:
1. What type of social content do you want to collect?
The first step is to decide what type of content you want to collect from your existing and potential customers.
Do you need customer reviews? Product photos? Video testimonials? All of the above?
Of course, you will have to pick the right form of content for your social media channels.
Once you know what type of content you want, you can start narrowing down your options.
2. What features do you need?
Next, you’ll want to consider what features are important to you. S
ome platforms offer basic features like collecting and displaying a customer review or two. Others provide more advanced features like analytics and integrations with additional software.
3. What’s your budget?
Finally, you’ll need to consider your budget. UGC platforms can range in price from free to several hundred dollars per month.
So it’s important to know how much you’re willing to spend before you start your search.
Once you’ve weighed all these factors, you should have a good idea of which UGC platform is right for your business.