Running a raffle on WordPress is straightforward once the pieces are in place. The part that trips people up is not technical — it is that the word "raffle" covers three legally distinct things, and which one you are running decides what you are allowed to do.
Start there, because it changes everything downstream.
Raffle, lottery, or prize competition?
In the UK the distinction matters a great deal.
A lottery is any arrangement where you pay to enter and prizes are allocated wholly by chance. Running one commercially generally requires a licence, and most online operators do not have one.
A prize competition allocates prizes by an element of skill, knowledge or judgement sufficient to deter a significant proportion of people from entering. In practice this is why competition sites ask a question.
A free draw has a genuine free entry route running alongside the paid one, on equal terms.
Most WordPress "raffles" are legally prize competitions or free draws. If yours takes payment and allocates purely by chance with no free route, you should take advice before launching. This is background, not legal advice — the basics are here.
The build
Assuming you have settled the legal shape:
- WooCommerce for the store and payments.
- A competition engine to issue ticket numbers, cap entries and handle the draw. On WooCommerce that is Giveaway for WooCommerce by Flintop.
- Your entry question, if you are running as a prize competition. It must be real. A question anybody can answer by guessing does not do the job it exists to do.
- Terms, published before you sell a single ticket. Promoter, closing date, draw method, how winners are notified, what happens if you do not sell out.
Decide the sell-out question now
What happens if you do not sell all the tickets? There are two honest answers and you must pick one before launch and put it in your terms:
- Draw anyway. Simple, generous, and it costs you when it goes wrong.
- Extend or refund. Safer for you, and only acceptable if you said so upfront.
Deciding this after ticket sales disappoint is how competition sites destroy their reputation in a weekend.
Draw day
Whatever method you use, it needs to be verifiable by somebody who does not trust you. Live video of the draw, a third-party random number service with the result published, or a documented process people can check.
Announce quickly. A draw that goes quiet for three days after closing reads as a problem even when it is not.
The gap most raffles leave
A classic raffle has one moment of drama, on draw day, for one person. Everybody else bought a ticket and then waited a fortnight to be told no.
That is why so many sites now run instant-win prizes alongside the main draw. Every entrant gets something to experience on the day they buy, rather than a receipt and a wait — and the main draw still has its moment.
If you go that way, the reveal is worth attention. A ticket number appearing as text is not an experience. That is the problem we build for.
