Questions worth answering.
Short answers to the questions we hear most — about integrating, fairness, claiming and what it costs. Anything missing is one email away.
Integrating
Where the API ends and your stack begins.
What is Drop Loop?
An API and hosted platform for running limited product releases ("drops") as fair, verifiable product drawings instead of first-come-first-served races. You model the drop, your customers enter during an open window, winners are drawn verifiably at random, and each winner gets a time-boxed option to purchase — with your systems told about every step.
Do I have to use your storefront?
No. The hosted storefront, white-labelled from your branding, is the fastest path. If you would rather own the experience, anonymous public endpoints serve every launched drop, its details, masked results and the verifier, and the generated TypeScript client covers the authenticated calls. Fully headless integrations use API keys and webhooks alone. All three paths hit the same API.
How do integrations authenticate?
With an API key sent in the X-Api-Key header. Keys are issued by a signed-in user and can hold only permissions that user holds in full, so a key can never do more than its owner. A key is shown once, stored only as a hash, revoked instantly and keeps its own usage history. Interactive sessions use short-lived JWT bearer tokens instead.
How do my systems learn about results?
Through webhooks. Register an https endpoint and subscribe to events such as lottery.drawn, lottery.win.claimed, lottery.win.promoted or order.fulfilled, or to any resource change. Deliveries are HMAC-SHA256 signed, retried with exponential backoff and carry a stable delivery id to de-duplicate on. There is also a live SignalR hub for in-app notifications.
Do you process payments?
No, by design. A claim creates an order carrying the winner’s fulfilment choice and decrements stock; payment, shipping and receipts stay in your systems. You learn about the claim by webhook and mark the order fulfilled through the API when it ships. Cancelling an order restores stock and releases the win to the next standby.
Does Drop Loop support multiple brands or storefronts?
Yes. Drop Loop is multi-tenant: separate brands or storefronts run isolated drops, catalogs, branding and staff permissions under one host, with fine-grained permission-based access control for your team. Webhook endpoints are scoped to a tenant and never receive another tenant’s events.
Fairness
How a result is proven rather than promised.
How do you prove a drawing was fair?
When a drop closes, a random seed is committed as a SHA-256 hash before the entrant list is known. The draw picks from a random source seeded with it and records the entrant snapshot and the random value behind each pick. Results reveal the seed, the entrant hash and the algorithm, and a public verification endpoint replays the drawing — so entrants can check the outcome rather than trust it.
How do you stop one person entering with ten accounts?
Entering a drop requires a phone number verified by a one-time SMS code, and each number can belong to exactly one account per host — a database-level guarantee, not a lookup that can race. Numbers are normalised before comparison, flagged accounts cannot enter or claim, and a blocklist refuses known identifiers at registration, entry and claim.
Can I favour loyal customers or an invite list?
Yes. Winner slots can be split into percentage pools with eligibility rules — a share reserved for people who entered similar drops but never won, for an invite list, for verified users or for a region — while the draw within each pool remains random. The same rules can gate who may enter at all.
Winning and claiming
What a win is, and what happens when one lapses.
What does a winner actually win?
The option to purchase the item at your price — not the item itself and not an obligation to buy. Each winner gets a claim window of your chosen length, with reminders before it closes. If they decline or let it lapse, the slot passes on.
What happens when a winner does not claim?
The next standby entrant is promoted automatically by rank and receives their own claim window, and your endpoint gets lottery.win.promoted. That continues until the inventory is claimed, with no manual re-draws.
Can one person win multiple units?
Only if you allow it. You set a per-person entry cap for each drop, and a person can win at most as many units as entries you allowed them. Bonus odds for loyal entrants improve their chances but never their maximum.
Plans
What it costs and what it never costs.
What does it cost?
Plans are usage-based — metered on drops drawn, entries, messages sent and storage, never on entry fees — with limits you can see from the console. Tell us what you are dropping and roughly how many entrants you expect, and we will set you up.
Is it gambling for my customers?
No. Entry is free, nothing is wagered, and winning grants only the option to buy at your price — which the winner can decline at no cost.
Ship your next drop on the API.
Get a host provisioned, an API key issued and a webhook pointed at your stack — then run a real draw end to end.