How PrizeBot works
A plain-English tour of everything PrizeBot does inside Slack, and every setting you actually control: recognition, send limits, spin tickets, the wheel, raffles, and celebrations.
PrizeBot turns Slack into a recognition and rewards program you fully control. You pick the reward emoji and the send limits, decide who can hand out the big-win spin tickets, stock the prize shop yourself, and switch the wheel and raffles on or off. There is no new app for your team to learn, recognition happens right where they already work.
PrizeBot lives inside Slack. People recognize each other with an emoji in any public channel PrizeBot has been added to, the reward lands in a balance, and that balance buys real prizes you choose. Almost everything below is a setting rather than a fixed rule, so you can make the program strict or loose, playful or low-key, and change your mind later. Here is how each piece works.
Recognition runs on an emoji you choose
Out of the box, the reward is a Star, but the emoji and the name are yours, including your workspace's own custom Slack emoji. Run it on tacos, gems, kudos, points, coins, or anything that fits your team. You can also run several reward types at once, each with its own emoji and its own send limits, say an everyday Star alongside a rarer Gem.
Giving recognition looks like a normal Slack message. Someone mentions a coworker with the reward emoji in any public channel PrizeBot is in, for example @Jordan ⭐⭐ great work on the launch, and the points land in Jordan's balance instantly. No form, no separate app, no context switch.
To keep points meaningful, every reward type has a per-person send limit so nobody can hand out an unlimited supply. You set the number and choose the window it covers:
- Per day, week, month, or year. Pick whichever cadence matches how often you want people giving recognition.
- Different limits per currency. Because each reward type carries its own limit, a common everyday currency and a rarer one can live side by side.
Balances turn into prizes you stock
Points add up to a balance each person spends in the prize shop. You decide what goes in it: gift cards, swag, a team lunch, extra PTO, a half day off, a charity donation, whatever your team actually wants. There is no locked catalog and no markup.
One thing worth being clear about: PrizeBot does not buy or ship anything. When someone redeems, PrizeBot notifies your admins and drops the request in a queue, and an admin fulfills it by hand, buying the gift card, handing over the swag, booking the day off, then marks it done. PrizeBot handles the recognition, the balances, and the bookkeeping, it never sits between you and the reward or takes a cut.
Spin tickets are the big-win reward
A spin ticket is a shot at the prize wheel, the reward you save for standout wins so it stays special. A granter hands one out the same way anyone gives a star: they mention a teammate with the ticket emoji in a channel, for example @Jamie :ticket:, right where the work happened. Because tickets are meant to be rare, PrizeBot gives you tight control over who can give them and how many.
- You choose who can grant. Admins can always give spin tickets. To let anyone else, flip the Can grant spin tickets toggle on their profile: they pick up a Granter badge, and everyone without it simply cannot.
- Set how many they can hand out. Pick a limit that refreshes on a schedule, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, and every granter gets that many tickets to give per period.
- Or switch to Manual. Instead of a schedule, you give each granter a stock of tickets to hand out, added right on their profile. It goes down as they award them to teammates and does not refill on its own, so you top it back up when they run low. It never quietly resets behind your back.
- Automatic tickets. PrizeBot can also award spin tickets on their own for birthdays and work anniversaries, so milestones come with a little luck attached.
The spin wheel, and turning it off
The wheel is where spin tickets get spent. You set the prizes on it and how rare each one is, so the best rewards stay genuinely hard to land while smaller ones come up more often. A win drops straight into the same fulfillment queue as everything else.
Rarity runs on fixed tier odds: Common 84%, Uncommon 10%, Rare 5%, Very Rare 0.9%, and Ultra Rare 0.1%. When a tier holds more than one prize, that tier's odds split evenly among them, so two Rare prizes come up 2.5% of the time each, and ten Ultra Rare prizes share the same 0.1%. If a higher tier has no prizes, its odds fall back to Common. You control how special a win feels without doing any of the math yourself.
And if a prize wheel is not your style, you can switch it off completely. PrizeBot will run on recognition, the prize shop, and celebrations alone. Nothing about the wheel is mandatory, it is there when you want it and gone when you do not. The same is true of raffles, covered next. For the fuller picture, see our guide on running a raffle or spin wheel in Slack.
Automated raffles
Raffles add a little luck on a schedule. When raffles are on, giving a reward to a teammate enters you in the next draw, one entry per person. Everyone who gives has an equal shot, and because it is one entry each, nobody can farm the raffle by handing out a flurry of low-effort recognition. On the cadence you set, weekly or monthly, PrizeBot draws one winner automatically, awards the raffle prize you have configured, announces it in Slack, and drops it in your fulfillment queue. It is a recurring draw rather than a one-off, and the prize stays whatever you set until you change it. Raffles are optional and easy to switch on or off, a light touch on top of recognition rather than the main event.
Celebrations run themselves
PrizeBot posts birthdays and work anniversaries automatically in the channel you choose, so nobody has to keep a spreadsheet or remember the date. You can attach a bonus reward or one or more spin tickets to the moment, customize the message, and bulk-import dates by CSV to get set up in one pass.
What you control as an admin
Put together, here is the full set of dials in your hands:
- Reward types: run a single currency like Star, or several at once, each with its own emoji and name.
- Send limits: how many points people can give, and whether that is capped per day, week, month, or year.
- The prize shop: every prize in it, and every redemption, from one central queue.
- Spin tickets: who can grant them, how many, and how often the cap refreshes, or a Manual allowance per person.
- The wheel and raffles: whether they run at all, plus the prizes and rarity on the wheel.
- Celebrations: birthday and anniversary announcements and any bonus attached.
What it costs, and where to go next
Everything above is included at a flat $2 per active user per month, billed monthly. There are no separate tiers to unlock the wheel, raffles, or extra reward types, the whole program is one price. To see how that stacks up against other Slack recognition tools, read our roundup of 10 Slack recognition apps, or if your recognition channel keeps going quiet, our guide on why recognition programs fizzle.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change the reward emoji, or is it always a star?
You can change it. A star is only the default. You set the emoji and the name your team gives recognition with, tacos, gems, kudos, points, or your own custom Slack emoji, and you can run more than one reward type at once, each with its own emoji and its own limits.
Can I limit how many points people give out?
Yes. Every reward type has a per-person send limit so nobody hands out unlimited points. You set the number and the window: per day, week, month, or year, and each reward type can have its own.
Who can give out spin tickets, and how?
A granter gives one in any channel by mentioning a teammate with the ticket emoji, like @Jamie :ticket:, exactly like giving a star. Admins can always grant; to let anyone else, flip the Can grant spin tickets toggle on their profile. Everyone without it cannot.
How do spin-ticket limits work?
Pick a limit that refreshes weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, and every granter gets that many tickets to hand out each period. Or choose Manual, where you assign each granter an amount on their own profile that goes down as they give and does not refill on its own, so you top it up when they run low.
Can I turn off the spin wheel?
Yes, completely. The spin wheel and raffles are both optional. Switch the wheel off and PrizeBot runs on recognition, the prize shop, and celebrations alone.
Does PrizeBot buy or ship the prizes?
No. You choose every prize and you fulfill it your way. When someone redeems, the request lands in your admin queue and you handle it. There is no locked catalog and no markup.
How much does PrizeBot cost?
A flat $2 per active user per month, billed monthly. Recognition, the prize shop, spin tickets, the wheel, raffles, and celebrations are all included.