Nera Marketing vs RaffleX: Which Is Right for Your UK Competition Website?

The two agencies do fundamentally different things. Nera Marketing builds bespoke competition websites you own outright at delivery. RaffleX rents you a SaaS platform on an ongoing monthly subscription. Ownership, cost structure at scale, and what happens if the provider changes direction are the differences that matter most.

Nera Marketing vs RaffleX at a glance

	Nera Marketing	RaffleX
Business model	Bespoke agency build	SaaS platform rental
Site ownership	Client owns outright at delivery	RaffleX owns the platform, operator rents
Starting price	£2,995 (one-time fixed)	£89 per month (inc VAT) + £0.17 per order (ex VAT)
Cost at scale	Fixed regardless of order volume	Scales linearly with orders (£0.17 each)
Payment processors	Six UK-approved providers including Cashflows	Cashflows only
Design and customisation	Bespoke design, full code access	Closed-source templates, no code customisation
Entry games / mechanics	Custom built to spec, no per-feature limits	Built-in instant wins: Plinko, Spin Wheel, Scratch Cards, Slots, more
Compliance	Gambling Act 2005 architecture, DCMS Voluntary Code signatory	Closed-source security position, GLI badge, legal referrals
Post-launch support	Ongoing marketing, CRO, and growth partnership included	Platform support and feature updates
Migration risk	Client owns platform, can host or migrate freely	Full rebuild required to leave RaffleX
Time to launch	21 days typical deposit to live	Days to weeks (no-code setup)

Do I own my competition website with Nera or RaffleX?

With Nera Marketing you own your competition website outright at delivery. With RaffleX you do not. This is the single most important structural difference between the two options.

A Nera build is delivered on standard WordPress and WooCommerce with the operator holding the domain, the code, the theme, the plugins, the database, the media library, the customer list, the payment integrations, and the hosting account. Nothing is licensed back. We hand over admin access, transfer ownership documentation, and the operator is free to host wherever they choose, hire other developers to make changes, migrate to a different agency, or continue working with us. There is no monthly platform fee that must be paid to keep the site running.

A RaffleX site runs on RaffleX’s closed-source SaaS platform. The operator rents access to the platform in return for a monthly subscription. Data, customer records, and competition history sit inside RaffleX’s system. If the operator stops paying, they lose access. If they want to modify how the platform works beyond what the settings allow, they cannot: the code is closed-source. If they want to leave, migration means a full rebuild on a different stack because the RaffleX platform does not run outside RaffleX’s infrastructure.

Ownership matters most when three things happen: the platform provider changes pricing, the operator wants to add functionality the platform does not natively support, or the operator wants to sell the business. In all three scenarios, ownership gives Nera clients optionality. RaffleX clients depend on the platform’s continued cooperation.

How does RaffleX pricing compare to Nera Marketing over three years?

Nera Marketing is a fixed one-time build fee. RaffleX is an ongoing monthly subscription plus per-order fees. For any operator running competitions at meaningful volume, the Nera model becomes materially cheaper over the standard three-year horizon most competition businesses plan on. The math below uses ex-VAT figures for RaffleX where per-order fees apply, and the £89 monthly is quoted as RaffleX publishes it (inc VAT). Nera Marketing does not charge VAT.

Low-volume operator (500 orders per month, roughly a £5,000 per month revenue business). RaffleX DIY: £89 monthly platform fee (inc VAT) plus 500 orders at £0.17 each which is £85 per month in order fees (ex VAT). Over three years at roughly £174 per month blended, that is around £6,264. Nera Launch package at £2,995 plus £99 per month on Lite competition-grade hosting: £2,995 + £3,564 in hosting over three years = £6,559. At this volume the two are roughly comparable in total three-year cost, but RaffleX customers pay on subscription while Nera customers own the platform at the end.

Growth-stage operator (2,000 orders per month, roughly £20,000 per month revenue). RaffleX DIY: £89 monthly platform fee (inc VAT) plus 2,000 orders at £0.17 = £340 in order fees (ex VAT). Blended monthly cost roughly £497. Over three years that is around £17,892. Nera three-year cost remains £6,559 because our build fee is fixed and hosting does not scale with order volume. RaffleX costs 2.3 times more.

Scale operator (5,000 orders per month, roughly £50,000 per month revenue). RaffleX DIY: £89 monthly platform fee (inc VAT) plus 5,000 orders at £0.17 = £850 in order fees (ex VAT). Blended monthly cost roughly £1,109. Over three years that is around £39,924. Nera three-year cost remains £6,559. RaffleX costs 5 times more.

The pattern is structural, not incidental. Nera Marketing charges once for the build. RaffleX charges per order forever. The larger the business grows, the wider the cost gap gets. An operator who launches on RaffleX and succeeds ends up paying for the platform’s success as well as their own. An operator who launches with Nera Marketing keeps every additional pound of margin as the business scales.

The clearest analogy is renting a home versus buying it outright with no mortgage. With Nera Marketing you pay the build fee once and own the site indefinitely. There is no ongoing platform fee to keep it running. With RaffleX you pay every month for as long as the business exists. A growth-stage operator pays the equivalent of a Nera Launch build every six months in RaffleX fees. After three years they have spent around £17,892 and still do not own the site. The Nera operator paid £2,995 once and owns the asset.

What payment processors do Nera and RaffleX support?

Both platforms support Cashflows. The difference is what happens if Cashflows will not underwrite the operator’s account or is not the best fit for the business.

Nera Marketing is partnered with six UK-approved payment providers active in the prize competition category, including Cashflows. When we onboard an operator, we survey the market for the best rate and fit given projected volume, prize categories, and cash-flow profile. Operators receive preferential rates through our partnership terms rather than list rates. If one provider is slow with underwriting or does not fit the profile, we move to another. This is a real advantage in UK prize competition merchant categories where underwriting can take weeks and a single decline can delay launch.

RaffleX integrates with Cashflows only. Their pricing page confirms this, and a £500 one-time security fee is charged to new operators. If a RaffleX operator is declined by Cashflows or wants preferential rates by comparing quotes, RaffleX does not offer an alternative. Their platform does not route payments through Stripe, PayPal, Adyen, Worldpay, or any of the other UK-approved providers Nera is partnered with.

For most operators this matters less than the ownership difference, because Cashflows is a strong choice for UK competition operators. But when it matters, it matters absolutely. A payment stack with one provider is a single point of failure for the business.

What happens if RaffleX shuts down, changes pricing, or removes features?

A RaffleX customer whose platform provider changes direction has three options: accept the change, migrate to a different platform (which requires a full rebuild), or wind down operations. The platform provider holds asymmetric leverage because they control the operator’s customer database, competition history, payment integration, and user-facing site all in one system.

This is not a hypothetical concern. SaaS competition platforms have raised prices, retired features, and in some cases exited the UK market. Operators on those platforms found out through a pricing email, not through advance consultation. Because the platform was closed-source and the code did not run outside the provider’s infrastructure, the only meaningful response was to rebuild the site on a different stack. That means paying for a second build, migrating customer data manually, communicating the transition to entrants mid-competition, and accepting the disruption to marketing spend and SEO rankings.

Nera Marketing operators do not have this exposure. Because the platform is built on standard WordPress and WooCommerce and delivered fully owned, the operator can continue running the site indefinitely regardless of what happens to Nera, to any theme provider, or to any plugin developer. WordPress and WooCommerce are supported by tens of thousands of developers globally and are not going anywhere. Payment processors, hosting providers, and email systems can all be swapped without touching the underlying platform. The operator is exposed to their own business risk, not to a third party’s business risk.

Can I customise my competition website with RaffleX or Nera Marketing?

Nera Marketing builds every site to spec. RaffleX offers configuration within a fixed template system. The distinction is significant for operators who care about brand differentiation.

A Nera build starts with the operator’s brand, positioning, and target customer, then designs the site around those specifics. Colour, typography, layout, checkout flow, product page structure, home page hero, entry mechanics, and any custom functionality the business needs are all built to order. Because the underlying stack is WordPress with WooCommerce, our developers can add anything the platform can technically do, from custom loyalty schemes to bespoke referral flows to unique instant-win mechanics tailored to the operator’s niche.

RaffleX operates on a closed-source template system. Operators pick from the platform’s available layouts and configure the settings the platform exposes. Where RaffleX does have real strength is in their built-in instant-win games: Plinko, Spin The Wheel, Scratch Cards, Slots, Treasure Gems, Piñata, and Whack-a-Mole are pre-built. If an operator specifically wants a game-heavy competition experience and does not want to commission custom development, RaffleX provides that out of the box. Nera builds instant-win mechanics too, but as bespoke development against the operator’s brief rather than pre-packaged games.

The trade-off is clear. RaffleX gets an operator live faster on a competent template with polished games. Nera Marketing takes longer upfront but delivers a site nothing else on the market looks like, with any mechanic the business can imagine, entirely on the operator’s brand rather than the platform’s.

How do Nera Marketing and RaffleX handle Gambling Act 2005 compliance?

UK prize competitions occupy an unusual regulatory position. They are legally distinct from gambling under the Gambling Act 2005, provided the site includes either a genuine skill question under Section 14 or a properly implemented free entry route under Section 339. Failure to meet the exemption requirements means the site is operating an unlicensed lottery, whether the operator realises it or not.

Nera Marketing builds the compliance structure into every site’s architecture. The skill question or free entry route is baked into the checkout flow, not added later as a fix during legal review. The Terms and Conditions, privacy policy, and cookie policy are written specifically to reflect the operator’s actual mechanics. We are a signatory to the DCMS Voluntary Code of Good Practice for prize draw operators, which came into effect in May 2026. Every Nera build meets or exceeds the Voluntary Code requirements out of the box, including the transparency obligations around odds disclosure, prize sourcing, and winner communication.

RaffleX positions their closed-source platform as a security advantage over WordPress plugins and displays a GLI verification badge. Legal document specialists are available through referral. The compliance layer that comes with the platform is comparable to what most operators need to run a basic UK prize competition. What RaffleX does not do is take responsibility for the site-specific compliance work required to align with each operator’s actual mechanics. If the operator wants Section 14 skill-question wording that matches their prize profile, or a free entry route implementation that fits their checkout flow, or Voluntary Code alignment on odds disclosure, that work sits with the operator or their legal counsel rather than with the platform.

The practical difference: with Nera Marketing, compliance is designed for the operator’s specific business. With RaffleX, compliance is a set of platform-wide features the operator inherits and must confirm meet their specific requirements through their own legal review.

What launch timeline can I expect with Nera Marketing versus RaffleX?

RaffleX is faster to first launch. Nera Marketing is faster to first serious business.

An operator who signs up for RaffleX DIY today can theoretically have a live competition site within days. Configure a template, connect Cashflows (subject to their underwriting), add competitions, publish. The platform is designed to remove technical decisions and get an operator running quickly. For someone testing whether the competition business model works before committing serious capital, that speed has value.

Nera Marketing typically takes 21 days from deposit to live for a bespoke build. During those 21 days we design the site to the operator’s brand, write the compliance architecture around their specific mechanics, integrate the chosen payment provider, set up Meta Pixel and GA4 tracking, configure the RMG Licence application, connect Klaviyo and Cashflows, and stage the launch marketing. On launch day the operator has a bespoke competition website ready to run at scale with growth infrastructure already wired in.

The trade-off is investment horizon. If the operator wants to be running in 5 days on a subscription and can accept template-level design, RaffleX wins on speed. If the operator is building a business they plan to run for years, the extra 16 days it takes Nera to deliver a bespoke owned platform pays back many times over during year two and beyond.

How does post-launch support and growth partnership work with each?

RaffleX provides platform support and shipping feature updates. Nera Marketing provides platform support plus active marketing and growth partnership.

RaffleX customer support handles platform issues, bug reports, and how-to questions. The team ships feature updates weekly and communicates them via the platform’s changelog. What the RaffleX subscription does not include is competitive marketing support: no ad account management, no conversion rate optimisation on the operator’s specific funnel, no growth advice specific to that operator’s niche, no direct access to the developers who built the platform.

Nera Marketing includes ongoing marketing, conversion rate optimisation, ad account management, and profitability guidance as part of the standard build package. Support is delivered by the same specialist team that built the site: developers, marketers, and compliance leads. When an operator’s ad CPP is climbing or their checkout is leaking entries or the Voluntary Code is updated, that operator picks up the phone (or opens an email) with the person who actually knows their build. This is the difference between renting a platform and hiring a partner.

For operators serious about growing their competition business, the ongoing partnership is where the real Nera Marketing value compounds. The build fee is a one-time cost. The growth support is a long-term relationship. An operator who launches with us in month one is still working with us at month twenty-four, refining their offers, optimising ad spend, and scaling into new prize categories.

Which is right for my competition business, Nera Marketing or RaffleX?

The choice is not about which agency has better software. Both platforms will produce a running competition site. The choice is about what kind of business the operator is building.

RaffleX makes sense in a narrow set of cases. An operator wanting to test whether the competition business model works before committing capital, using the £89 per month DIY tier as a low-risk pilot. An operator who specifically needs the platform’s built-in instant-win games and does not want to commission custom development. An operator running very low order volume for whom the per-order fees stay small and the monthly subscription is affordable indefinitely.

For any operator building a competition business at meaningful scale, Nera Marketing is the obvious choice. The cost math favours Nera by three to five times over three years at growth-stage volumes. Ownership eliminates the platform-risk exposure that comes with SaaS dependency. Bespoke design differentiates the operator’s brand from every other RaffleX site running on the same templates. Six payment provider options remove the single-provider fragility. And the ongoing growth partnership provides the marketing and CRO support that turns a live site into a profitable business.

An operator who launches with RaffleX and succeeds ends up paying the platform’s subscription forever, and eventually paying to rebuild on a stack they own. An operator who launches with Nera Marketing owns the platform from day one, pays a fixed cost regardless of scale, and gets specialist support from the team that built the site. That is the trade the numbers, the ownership model, and the growth support all point to.

Frequently asked questions

Am I contractually locked in with RaffleX?

The RaffleX subscription is month-to-month with no fixed contract length per their published terms, so an operator can cancel at any point. What creates the lock-in is not the contract but the platform architecture. Because the site runs on RaffleX’s closed-source infrastructure and the code does not run anywhere else, cancelling the subscription means the site stops working. Leaving RaffleX requires rebuilding the site on a different stack, migrating customer data manually, and accepting the cutover disruption. In practical terms, once an operator has built momentum on RaffleX, the switching cost is high even when the subscription is technically flexible.

Can I migrate from RaffleX to Nera Marketing?

Yes. Nera Marketing has migrated operators off SaaS competition platforms including RaffleX. The migration involves designing and building a new bespoke WordPress and WooCommerce site under the operator’s brand, exporting customer records and competition history from the RaffleX platform via CSV, importing into the new site, connecting the chosen payment provider, redirecting the domain, and communicating the platform change to entrants. Typical migration timeline is 21 to 30 days depending on data volume and design complexity. The operator ends the process owning the platform outright with no further subscription liability.

Does RaffleX include marketing and growth support?

RaffleX customer support covers platform questions, technical issues, and how-to guidance. It does not include marketing support such as ad account management, conversion rate optimisation on the operator’s checkout, growth strategy specific to the operator’s niche, or Meta Ads setup. Operators wanting marketing support alongside a RaffleX subscription need to source that separately from a marketing agency or freelancer. With Nera Marketing, marketing and growth support are included as part of the standard package delivered by the team that built the site.

What is Nera Marketing’s cost advantage for high-volume operators?

Because Nera’s build fee is a one-time fixed cost and hosting scales far more slowly than per-order fees, the Nera model becomes dramatically cheaper as order volume grows. At 500 orders per month the two are roughly comparable in total three-year cost (RaffleX around £6,264, Nera around £6,559). At 2,000 orders per month Nera is around 2.7 times cheaper (£6,559 vs £17,892). At 5,000 orders per month Nera is around 6 times cheaper (£6,559 vs £39,924). The pattern accelerates: every additional order under RaffleX adds £0.17 of platform cost forever, while under the Nera model that additional order is pure margin to the operator.

Which platform is faster to first launch?

RaffleX is faster to first launch, typically days rather than weeks. This is because the DIY tier is a template-based self-service configuration rather than a bespoke build. An operator willing to accept template-level design and platform-standard mechanics can be live in a working configuration in under a week. Nera Marketing takes 21 days typical from deposit to live because the build is bespoke, and the extra time buys design, mechanics, and compliance architecture tailored to the specific operator’s business rather than the platform’s defaults.

What happens to my customer data if I leave the platform?

With Nera Marketing the operator owns the database and customer records at all times, hosted on the operator’s own hosting account. Leaving Nera Marketing means the operator continues to control their data without needing to export or migrate. With RaffleX, customer data sits inside the RaffleX platform and is accessible via CSV export while the subscription is active. Operators considering RaffleX should confirm export terms directly with them and ensure regular exports are part of their operational routine, because the practical experience of leaving a SaaS platform depends heavily on the completeness of the last export before cancellation.

Does Nera Marketing offer instant-win games similar to RaffleX?

Yes, but as bespoke development rather than pre-packaged games. RaffleX ships with Plinko, Spin The Wheel, Scratch Cards, Slots, and other instant-win mechanics built into the platform. Nera Marketing builds instant-win mechanics to spec, tailored to the operator’s brand and prize profile. For operators who want an instant-win experience and prefer the RaffleX-style off-the-shelf game library, RaffleX is the faster route. For operators who want an instant-win mechanic nobody else has and that ties into their specific niche, Nera Marketing builds it to order as part of the build package.

See our other UK competition website agency comparisons