Best Logo Design Services for 2023

I’m kidding, of course. I’m an adult, so I don’t take vacations until the week between Christmas and New Year’s. But seriously, this project took me a few months, and it puts me in a unique position: I have personally tried more different logo design services than most people ever will.

Once I was just a guy who’s been designing websites for over a decade, and writing about it, too. I am now a guy who has also sat around thinking, “Does this shade of pink look professional enough for our logo?” a lot. In all honesty, though, I’ve never had an experience quite like it in all of my years as a designer.

I’ve tested the limits of AI-based logo design and given a bunch of different designers more creative freedom than they actually knew what to do with. Tremble, Mortals, and pray that I put enough details in your design brief so you feel like you know what to do! And make the design “pop” more!

I do have to say that this whole process was pretty cool. I was given the task of testing a whole bunch of different logo makers and design services for two reasons:

1. To find out which ones are best, which ones are the worst, and write it all down for you. You know, the entire point of this site.
2. The top brass at Website Planet called for a new logo, so this isn’t just a collection of reviews; it’s a contest. The best logo wins, and will be the new logo here at Website Planet.

Read on to see the winning logo.

I dove into this project with my eyes and heart wide open, ready to experience the best logos that you can get really fast, and on a budget. You won’t find any 5,000 to 20,000 USD rebrands here; I did not have the time or the budget for that. These are logos you could get for as little as 5 USD (and one service is entirely free), and some might cost up to 400 USD.

If you need a good-looking logo that’s not going to completely break the bank, I probably tested the right service for you. It’s in here, somewhere.

Methodologies

All right, so how exactly did I test these services? That greatly depends, as each one is a little different, and some are a lot different. On the whole, these services fall into two main categories: DIY and DIFM. That’s “Do It Yourself” and “Do It For Me.”

Ah, there’s a joke in there somewhere. Don’t tell the kids.

DIY (Do It Yourself)

These are the services where you basically design your own logo with the tools provided. These tools usually include some sort of visual editor (a way to select your preferred icons, colors, and fonts, and change the layout), a big old library of icons and/or predesigned logo templates, and sometimes some artificial intelligence (henceforth referred to as AI for convenience).

I tested almost all of these services in pretty much the same way. I just followed the instructions on screen (and usually recorded this process on video), paid for the logo, and then wrote my review, evaluating the following main factors:

1. The quality of the AI, if it was present.
2. The quality of the icon/logo library.
3. How advanced the logo editor was, and how easy it was to use.
4. The available image formats.
5. Add-ons, such as images scaled for social media, or personal attention from a real designer.
6. Extra services, such as printing and web design.
7. The site’s ease of use overall.
8. The customer support offered by the service.
9. The pricing plans/packages.

I contacted support three times for each service, trying out as many different support options as I could, including phone support, email support, ticket systems, and live chat. That’s right, I got out of my comfort zone and actually talked to people, and I did it all for you, dear readers. It was all for you.

DIFM (Do It For Me)

As the name implies, these are the services where you hire someone else to do all the heavy lifting. You tell the designers what you want, as clearly as you can manage, and they do their best to give it to you. Most of these services allow you to run a contest, or hire individual designers as you see fit.

In order to get the widest possible range of design examples, we ran contests whenever we had the option. We evaluated these services based on the following factors:

1. How easy it was to run a contest.
2. The quality and quantity of designs submitted to our contests.
3. How easy it was to manage and organize submitted designs.
4. How easy it was to communicate with the designer/s you chose.
5. How long it takes to get your logo.
6. How easy it is to browse designer profiles and work history, in case you want to hire one individually.
7. Add-on services, such as having your contest featured by the site, or having a guaranteed number of “top designers” participating in your contest.
8. The other services offered by some of these community-based sites, like web design, print design, and more.
9. The personal support offered by the service.
10. The pricing plans/packages.

Again, I made three support requests to each service, via as many different means as they offered. There was a lot more “talking to other people” in general when reviewing these services, so I hope you appreciate my dedication. (Please note: I’m being a little hyperbolic with the whole “I’m asocial” thing.)

The Exceptions

Two of the DIFM services I tested do not give you the option of running contests, and so I had to test them a little bit differently.

In Fiverr’s case, you just browse for designers, pick the one you want to work with, and hope you picked the right one. In order to get a range of designs, we chose to work with three designers: one whose prices started at 5 USD, one whose prices started at 40 USD, and one whose prices started at 400 USD. The 400 dollar designer was verified and vetted by Fiverr’s “Pro” program.

The Logo Company operates more like a traditional design agency, but apparently has lots of designers. You provide your project brief, and someone chooses the designers most likely to suit your needs. You get five initial concepts and unlimited redraws/revisions for one single payment. There’s not a lot to say about the methodology here, other than that I followed their process, and got myself a logo.

My Personal Experience with 10 Different Logo Services

Here’s the part where I try to condense an estimated 24,000 words (this is a rather haphazard estimate at best) into a list of ten logo design services, with a couple of paragraphs each. These are not all of the services I tested, nor will they be the last. If you don’t see the one you’re looking for, use the search bar at the top of this page. There’s a decent chance that you’ll find a full review.

Here goes, and may Sir Terry Pratchett (my favorite author) guide me.

99designs (DIFM – Contest)

99designs has been running contests for a long time, and they’ve been refining their process all along. That refinement shows; of all the DIFM-type services on this list, this may well be the easiest one to use.

In about five days, I had over 40 design submissions to look through, and 99designs made organizing all of this quite easy. I had a little trouble deciding which logo I wanted, so I sent a poll around the office for feedback (there’s built-in functionality for this). Communication with the designer was smooth, and overall I enjoyed my experience.

Here were some of the logos that made it to the “semifinals”:

The final logo was chosen for its colorful style, and overall aesthetic. Despite its minimalist simplicity, it just feels like it has a lot of personality, fits the overall theme of our website, and looks gorgeous. You can’t ask for a lot more.

DesignCrowd (DIFM – Contest… Sort Of… Not Really)

DesignCrowd has a large community with some great designers, but the user experience leaves something to be desired. There are far too many calls to action and general distractions from whatever task you want to complete at any given time.

We tried to start a contest, but what we started was a “project,” which turned out to be a catch-all term for both single-designer jobs and contests. And contests are more expensive. Basically, we hired one single designer by accident, and someone from DesignCrowd picked them out for us. Fortunately, we also paid extra for access to their top designers, so we got a good one.

Here are some of their concepts after one round of refinements:

The final logo was one of several based on a “websites and space” theme that the designer provided us with. To their credit, this designer went above and beyond to provide lots of different options in a very short time frame. This logo fits our layout needs, existing color scheme, theme of the site, and even if it is a little cliche… it looks good.

DesignEvo (DIY)

DesignEvo has a big library of premade logos and no AI, so they don’t ask you a lot of questions about what sort of logo you want. Some of these logos are quite good, and some look like they’re from the ‘90s.  Aside from the premade logos, though, there’s also another large library of more basic icons and shapes so you can build your own logo design with their logo editor.

And what an editor it is! It’s the most flexible, most useful app in this space I’ve encountered so far. It’s not a full image editor, of course, but if you put the time in, you can absolutely create a unique-looking logo.

The one I made could be a lot more unique-looking, I’ll admit. But hey, I had limited time, and wanted to show off the quality of their premade logos and icons in any case.

Fiverr (DIFM)

Fiverr, of course, is not a “design site” exactly. It’s a site where you can hire people from all over the world to do pretty much anything, and that includes a logo design. You can pick the designer you want based on their past work, their prices, the services they offer, and the deadline they promise to meet. Fiverr is one of the more slickly-designed marketplaces overall, and it’s fairly easy to filter out designers based on your criteria to find one you’ll like.

They even have a quick and easy wizard to help you get started with the designer-filtering:

Communicating with the designers you’ve chosen is fairly easy, although the actual design process will vary a lot. Every designer there works differently, and their process is not dictated to them by the platform. Here are the logos we got:

The $5 USD logo from designer ei8htz isn’t exactly inspiring, but it is functional and decent-looking for the price. If five dollars is all you have, you could do a lot worse. These logo concepts from designer juancharles (the 40 USD designer) are fun, and I love the mini-mascot. I personally prefer the type and general design of the first option, but I wish it had the white outline of the second, for contrast. Either way, they’re both adorable. And lastly, we have the design from the 400-dollar “Pro” seller, animteam. It’s sleek, it’s stylish, and it’s a gorgeous concept. This wasn’t the winner in the end, but it was a strong contender in my opinion, and in my heart.

LogoMaker (DIY)

LogoMaker is, frankly, not a logo maker that I can recommend. It’s library-based, has a lot of good ideas, but the implementation is flawed, and the whole experience is dated. Worse, pretty much all of the logo designs are quite dated as well, and the logo editor is clunky. This is a service that could be quite good if it got some real updates, but it hasn’t had that.

The logo I made with this is one of the worst I made during this entire experiment/project. I’m sorry.

Looka (DIY)

Looka is an AI-based logo maker that makes fantastic-looking logos. Now, it does use a lot of the same icons that you might find on other services, such as Wix Logo Maker, but it has an edge: beautiful defaults. They’ve done the math, and figured out how to lay out their logos so they look great almost every time.

The downside to this dedication to aesthetics is that I felt a bit limited in what I could do. You can’t just drag and drop elements around the page. The size and position of your icons and text are managed by sliders, and they have limits. This is all to try to make sure that the user can’t accidentally make their logo look too bad.

This time, the logo I made was, frankly, made to look less like all the other logos. It’s not perfect, but it’s a good example of how even logos with slightly clunky icons can look decent if the layout is spaced out (heh) correctly.

Squarespace Logo Maker (DIY)

The Squarespace Logo Maker is an interesting one in that it is completely free. It also doesn’t have any premade logos, as such. You get an editor, the ability to add text, and a library of icons from The Noun Project, at least some of which are also used by Looka and Wix Logo Maker.

The editor is a bit basic, and you can’t pick specific sizes for your text or icons. You have to eyeball everything except the actual layout. There’s a handy grid, and objects sort of “snap” to each other, so I was able to create a fairly decent, if very basic, logo quickly.

With my hands tied by the limitations of this editor, I picked an icon that felt a tiny bit less minimalist than the rest, chose a color I liked, and downloaded it.

Tailor Brands (DIY)

Tailor Brands is AI-based, and they have one of my favorite logo creation processes. They offer icon-based logos, pure text logos, and logos with randomized abstract shapes. They certainly create some of the more interesting AI-based logos. I just don’t particularly like their pricing model, which is a monthly subscription.

That is, you only have to pay for one month if you want the logo. Paying for more months gets you some ongoing support, but does not allow you to make further edits to your logo after purchase.

Overall, I enjoyed my experience, and I ended up going with a rather retro logo icon. It’s simple, but I think it looks alright, for the price.

The Logo Company (DIFM)

As previously mentioned, The Logo Company works more like a classic design agency. You provide the brief, someone picks five designers for you, and you get five initial concepts from them. And here’s something definitely worth mentioning again: free revisions.

They run all of their projects on Basecamp (it’s very simple project management software), so they didn’t exactly design most of their client experience. Well, at least they didn’t design the interface. Even so, everything was made very simple, and they took great pains to explain their entire design process. They gave me logo concepts, I picked the one I like, and they made revisions until I was happy. That simple.

Out of all the logo concepts, I liked this one best because it fits our site the best. It’s that simple. It looks great at small sizes, the layout is just right, and I particularly liked that bit of sci-fi feel on the type.

Wix Logo Maker (DIY)

Lastly, we have Wix Logo Maker, which (as you might imagine) comes from the people who make the Wix website builder. It’s got a big library of logos, but they’re not as inspiring as others. Wix’s real strength lies in its editor, which—while not quite as advanced as DesignEvo’s—is absolutely fantastic.

If you want to get the most out of Wix Logo Maker, you’re going to need to put in some time. Most of my time mostly went to find an icon that I liked and hadn’t used already in one of the other logo makers that share the same library. I rather like how it turned out, even if it could be better.

So, that was a whole lot of information to read all at once, so let’s break it down. I’ve created a couple of simple tables to help make your decision a little bit easier:

DIY Logo Makers: How Do They Compare?

Logo Design Services: How Do They Compare?

How Our New Logo Was Chosen

In the end, here’s our new logo: A vote was held amongst the Website Planet staff, and it was decided that the logo from DesignCrowd was best. There was some stiff competition (particularly from the logo from 99designs), but this design won out for a few reasons:

• It perfectly fits the “Website Planet” theme.
• It looks great at really small sizes.
• As minimalist as it is, it still has personality and a little bit of flair.
• I personally love how the type looks fairly straightforward and business-friendly, but has that little bit of sci-fi flair. And yeah, a capital “A” without the line in the middle is officially “sci-fi” now.

Want to know more about DesignCrowd? Read more about my experiences in the in-depth review.

While DesignCrowd is an excellent option for large businesses and enterprises, it might be overkill for smaller businesses and freelancers who need a great logo, but don’t want to invest a lot of time and money in it. If that’s you, I highly recommend you hop over to Fiverr to search for the logo designer of your dreams.

With prices starting at only $5, you could even try out a few different designers before you make your final decision – like holding a little logo design contest of your own.

Frequently Asked Questions

🎨 What’s the difference between a logo generator and a logo design service?

A logo generator is a type of logo design software, accessible through a website or mobile app. Typically, you will have to answer a few short questions about your business. Then, a variety of logo styles will be generated for you to choose from, based on the platform’s logo design templates.

If you don’t have a high budget to invest in your logo or you just like doing things on your own, one of these online logo makers can be an excellent solution for you. If you’ve never tried your hand at design before, you’ll be glad to know many platforms provide logo design guidelines.

A logo design service provides various methods for collaborating with skilled designers to create your logo. These platforms offer the flexibility to choose between working closely with a preferred designer or hosting a logo design contest to select from a range of options.

Unlike using a logo maker, this logo design process can be lengthy and more complex, but it’s also the best way to get a unique, custom logo tailored to your needs.

🎨 What logo file format do I need? What should be my logo’s dimensions? And what about logo resolution?

It all depends on where you’re going to use your logo. If you only need it for your website or other online use such as social media, a smaller resolution (such as 72dpi) will work great and a PNG logo might be all you need. If you need a transparent logo, you’ll be glad to know the PNG format supports transparency.

If you’re planning on using your logo in print, a hi-res (300dpi and up) PDF logo could work, but you might need a scalable vector logo format – that’s why it’s always a good idea to get an SVG logo as well.

If you need an editable file that you or a graphic designer can make changes to later, be sure to get a logo PSD or AI.

As for your logo’s aspect ratio – again, it all depends on your plans for your logo. A square ratio will give you the most flexibility, while a horizontal logo will still be pretty easy to fit in website headers, social media cover images, and more. A vertical logo might be harder to work with.

🎨 When I use one of these services, who owns my logo copyright?

It depends on the service, but in most cases, once you purchase a logo, the copyright is yours. In some cases, you can even file for logo trademark.

🎨 Where can I find logo ideas?

We’re glad you asked! Logo inspiration is everywhere. Whether you need a new logo or you’re planning a logo redesign, keep your eyes open as you’re walking down the street or browsing the web. What logos catch your eye? Try to figure out what makes them appeal to you. Is it the icon? The color scheme? The typography? The logo layout?

Sometimes you can find inspiration in the most unexpected places, like a birthday card or even a walk through nature. You’ll find that some natural shapes are particularly pleasing to the eye, and some typefaces just look “right.”

🎨 How do I choose a color palette for my logo?

Color choices for your logo depend on many things. As color is very subjective, you might want to put your own personal preferences aside and choose a color scheme that reflects your brand identity.

Ask yourself:

– What do I want my brand to reflect and which colors can get that message across?

– Who is my target audience and what colors would most appeal to them?

– Where am I going to be using my logo? Will its colors contrast well with different backgrounds?

Color psychology also plays an important role here. Dark blues and grays, for instance, evoke a feeling of security, so they can make a good choice for logos with a corporate feel.

Bright reds and yellows can really help your logo stand out from the crowd but use them cautiously because they are also the colors we tend to associate with danger.

Some shades of green, or a combination of greens and blues, will often remind us of nature, while a logo in bright neon green may appear “young” or even futuristic.

It’s always a good idea to familiarize yourself with the color wheel. Complementary colors – colors on opposite sides of the color wheel, such as red and green or blue and orange – can create a nice, harmonious color scheme for your logo, with good contrast. Adjacent colors – colors that are near each other on the wheel, such as red and orange or blue and purple – can also be a good base for your color palette.

🎨 How do I choose my logo font?

There’s no doubt the font is one of the most important elements of your logo. Some logos rely on typography alone to get their message across. These are known as logotypes or wordmarks, or even letter logos if they consist of a monogram.

Choose a font that reflects your brand identity. While a serif font can give your logo a classic, trustworthy look, sleek sans-serif fonts can look more contemporary.

It’s always a good idea to keep things simple. Stick with a clear, crisp font that is easily readable even at smaller sizes. Avoid overly decorative fonts, as they can come across as tacky.

A mix of too many fonts is never a good thing, but if you have a logo tagline, you might want to make it in a different font that complements the main font.

Don’t miss our list of the top 70+ free fonts.