Designhill

Designhill is a crowdsourced design marketplace with dedicated Book cover and eBook cover contest categories. You write a brief, pick a fixed-price package, and designers submit concepts you can give feedback on until you declare a winner. The platform is operated by Reliable E Solutions Private Limited out of New Delhi, with the Designhill product owned by Designhill Inc. in Wilmington, Delaware.

How It Works#

You choose a submission window — anywhere from 24 hours to 10 days — and a package. The "7 days" in the site's headline is a default submission period, not a delivery date. If the window closes without a winner, Designhill may grant an additional 7-day Selecting Winner Period at its discretion, during which no new entries are accepted; once that lapses the contest locks to "Contest Held" and you can no longer award anyone. Budget against the calendar, not the headline.

Unlike most contest platforms, there is no cheap entry tier here. Designhill's package ladder is set per design category, and book covers have no Fast Track tier — the ladder starts at Standard and adds a Platinum tier that the logo and T-shirt categories do not have.

What You Get#

• Pricing (book cover): Standard $299, Executive $449 (flagged "Popular"), Premium $749, Platinum $1,149. The eBook cover ladder is identical except Platinum, which is $1,049.
• Nothing is added on top: Designhill states that packages "include the prize for your winning designer, all fees and commissions." There is no posting fee, project-management fee or transaction fee — the rare contest platform where the headline number is the number. The one genuine add-on is tax: the terms make all fees "exclusive of all applicable taxes."
• Design concepts: Each package states a minimum — 10+ at Standard, 15+ at Executive, 20+ at Premium, 25+ at Platinum — and real contests routinely blow past it. A small sample of published book and eBook cover contests drew 32 to 142 designs: $299 contests pulled 102 and 32, $449 contests pulled 94 and 142, and a $749 contest pulled 109. The site-wide "70+ designs" headline is a fair midpoint of that spread, but the contractual floor at the $299 entry tier is ten.
• File formats: .ai, .psd, .pdf, .png and .jpg — print files in CMYK, web files in RGB. Editable source files transfer with the win by default, which most of this category either withholds or sells separately.
• Copyright: Full copyright and ownership pass to you when you declare a winner, via a Design Transfer Agreement.
• Revisions: Unlimited, at no extra charge, from every participating designer for the duration of the contest.

Who It's For#

• Authors who want many directions before committing: A hundred-odd concepts from dozens of designers is a genuinely different proposition from a studio's single first draft.
• Authors who want the option to walk away late: Designhill's guarantee stays alive until you actually pick a winner — materially later than 99designs, which voids its refund the moment you narrow to finalists.
• Not for authors who need a cover specialist: Pro status is earned in any category. The designer competing on your romance cover may have qualified by winning five logo contests, and nothing filters for people who know your shelf's conventions.

Strengths#

• Every book cover tier is designer-gated. Contests above $150 are "Pro contests," open only to designers Designhill hand-picks — qualification requires winning at least 5 contests in any category or ranking in the platform's top 100, plus a portfolio of 10+ designs, and the status is revocable for poor quality, brief inattention or slow responsiveness. Because the book cover ladder starts at $299, the entire ladder is Pro-only. 99designs, by contrast, only restricts its pool at the Gold and Platinum tiers. Platinum narrows further, to "the top 150 designers."
• The refund milestone is later than the competition's. It survives until you select a winner. 99designs' dies when the contest enters the Final round, and DesignCrowd's dies at launch if you tick "Committed" — so of the three, Designhill lets you see the most work before the exit closes.
• All-in pricing. No posting fee, no percentage skim at checkout. Both 99designs and DesignCrowd bury at least one fee somewhere in the flow; Designhill does not.
• Source files as standard. The layered .ai/.psd ships with the win, which is what makes later text tweaks, series matching and animated-cover work possible without re-hiring.

Limitations#

• The $299 floor is no longer a discount. Designhill's entry tier now matches 99designs Bronze exactly at $299, and its Platinum undercuts 99designs Platinum by only $50. Whatever case there is for Designhill, it is no longer price. Authors whose real constraint is budget should look at DesignCrowd's $120–$300 realistic band or a premade marketplace.
• The refund terms contradict each other. The help centre says the full contest budget is returned; the terms promise a "full 100% refund" in one clause (5.7.3) but say the budget comes back "subject to the deduction of the Company Commission" in another (5.4). A third clause makes every refund discretionary — the company "may process any refunds... at its discretion" — and puts bank charges on you. Add-ons, upgrades and paid designer invites are non-refundable regardless. Independent reviewers report refunds promised and then not arriving for months.
• Taking the refund costs you every design. You must sign a Non-Use and Indemnity Certificate: you legally cannot use any design submitted to the contest, and cannot work with any Designhill designer on the same project afterwards. Guaranteed-prize contests are excluded from the guarantee entirely. The 60-day clock is also stated two ways — from payment in the help centre and on the book cover FAQ, from contest launch in the terms.
• Stock imagery is permitted on your cover, and the liability is unenforceable. Designhill's Stock Image and Clip Art Policy bans stock outright only for "a logo, illustration, button or icon." Book covers fall in the "other contests" bucket, where stock is allowed provided the designer declares it. The policy assigns all consequences to the designer — "in case one uses stock photo and the client gets into legal hearing, the designer has to bear the entire cost and damaged incurred" — which is cold comfort when it is your book KDP pulls and your winning designer is in another jurisdiction. Nothing audits submissions, the terms contain no stock clause at all, and one recent reviewer reports a delivered logo matching a Shutterstock icon. Get licences documented in your name before you publish.
• There is no published AI policy for contest entries. Not in the terms, not in the help centre, not on the contest pages. Designhill sells its own AI logo generator as a separate product, but what a competing designer may submit to your cover contest is simply unaddressed. Authors who need a no-AI cover must write it into the brief.
• Independent scores diverge sharply from the on-site badge. Designhill's own testimonials page claims 4.98/5 from 42,927 ratings. Trustpilot reads 4.5/5 from about 3,460 reviews (90% five-star, 2% one-star), which the book cover page renders as "4.7 out of 5 based on 3461 reviews." SmartCustomer (formerly Sitejabber) reads 2.8/5 from 481, with recent entries clustering on unpaid refunds and support that stops replying. Read the on-site 4.98 as marketing, not third-party validation.
• The platform's own designer count is unreliable. The book cover page claims "330K+ Book cover Designers," the pricing page's feature block says 152,334, the site footer says 150K+, and the help centre's quality-standards article says "more than 100,000+." No figure here should be quoted as fact.

Alternatives#

99designs is the direct comparison at the same $299 floor — fewer gated tiers but a longer-established book cover vertical and a published two-round structure. DesignCrowd is the cheaper contest option at a realistic $120–$300, though it gates nothing and hides fees inside the package. Authors who want a vetted book cover specialist in a one-to-one relationship should use Reedsy Designers instead of any contest; authors whose constraint is purely budget will do better at a budget custom studio such as GetCovers ($10–$35) or on a premade marketplace such as BookCovers.com.