Likelihood to Recommend We love using Submittable for our grant applications. Sometimes, we've run into issues with filters inside the system not clearing -- and we lose access to some of our information. Submittable Customer Service is quick to respond and assist us in solving our problems quickly to get back up and running. We find their training videos to help us learn new ways to use the system.
Read full review I highly recommend this software, as it has allowed us to be much more transparent with the delivery of benefits and their applications, also the hours of work in this regard are less, allowing staff to devote to other tasks. A very useful and necessary software.
Inés Prieto R&D / Product Development Engineer - Quality
Read full review Pros Applicant (submitter) experience is positive, user-friendly. The ability to message directly with submitters within the portal in relation to their submission is a great feature. Application creation is very easy. Adding labels to submissions makes filtering simple and customizable to our needs. Read full review It has made the application, which is almost identical to the application questions previously displayed by our old service, seem less daunting and more user friendly to grant applicants. The grant review team has exclaimed that the side-by-side review option is the best feature ever invented and has saved them loads of paper. Internally, I appreciate the ease of use of the back end system. Being able to easily assign grants to reviews both in and outside the organization, easily create queries for the stats I need, and the ability to move application through the steps of the system seamlessly make this my top choice since I'm the only staff member dedicated to the Foundation which leaves me with lots on my plate to balance. Read full review Cons Advanced reporting is far from advanced. There are SO many limitations and the need to manually do so many things in order to get the report structure you want, and it is not intuitive. The reporting is by far the most frustrating thing about Submittable and actually adds on staff time instead of cutting it down. PDFs of submissions should include all supplemental files uploaded in the submission. You should not have to do massive exports with zip files and then merge everything manually to get one PDF of submitted content for simplified records or sharing. We should be able to see the account emails and names of individuals who have started a draft submission. In our former system (GIFTS online via Blackbaud), we could see that information and could reach out personally to applicants to ensure they didn't miss deadlines and could remove emails from our reminder communications from those we knew already submitted and simply opened up an accidental additional draft. When we send reminders in Submittable to draft submissions, without fail, we get 5-10 people who reach out and are upset because they already submitted but think this means they didn't, regardless of how we word the email and tell them they may have an extra draft if they think they already submitted. You should be able to simply build one report in whatever format you need and be able to switch between different projects that use the same exact form fields. My team has the same exact form used for nine different grant programs because they are the same programs, just for different local communities, but we have to build out the same report manually each cycle for each community. Read full review It's messy- we can only apply a question to a certain amount of applications so we have 2-3 of a lot of questions The affiliate directors can't export an excel file from their dashboard If a question changes or becomes required or not required it impacts all past applications Read full review Likelihood to Renew We use this software annually to help with our grant processes. Without it, I'd be so lost! Our team relies on the data from our past years to sift applications and we try to prioritize those who have applied and been a finalist but perhaps didn't win in years prior
Read full review We are so happy with the service that we just signed the contract for another year.
Read full review Usability Submittable is very user friendly. Even our less tech-savvy team members were able to navigate Submittable and achieve what was necessary. The single limitation is that it is not easy to move information/documents/applications from the Submittable platform into other platforms, or even to download documents from Submittable into a separate storage system
Read full review The platform is very basic. On the other and, our staff does not take advantage of its full capabilities because such features did not work well for us/fit our needs
Read full review Reliability and Availability We have thankfully never experienced an outage nor been affected by a technology issue on Submittable's side that has delayed our grant process. We have instead been able to distribute over $6M in donated dollars to AAPI small business owners because Submittable is trustworthy and available
Read full review Performance We've had a quick and efficient submittable experience that has always been easy to use. When we need a report it downloads within seconds, even the larger reports are 30 seconds or less to download. Pages are quick to load and reports complete in a more than reasonable time frame
Read full review Support Rating I think that they are good at answering our questions and solving our problems. We occasionally get reports from applicants about problems the Submittable team has not solved, but I do not know what the applicant has done to get the problem solved.
Read full review We didn’t really use their support. I wish they would have told us more about the fact they were changing to get rid of the flash player as that was the main reason we left.
Read full review In-Person Training We did not receive in-person training technically, it was virtual but it was one on one with a specialist. They were very patient and skilled - she knew everything about the program and honed in on features that would help make our jobs easier. We are so grateful for the training!
Read full review Online Training 10/10 because we were able to meet virtually and still get all of our questions answered! Online was effective too because we could easily record the sessions and review them later. Since we had to onboard our reviewers virtually, it was actually convenient that this was the same method we learned how to use the entire program virtually too.
Read full review Implementation Rating I would say, provide Submittable as much detailed information on your planned use of the platform and your desires with the platform as possible, and the implementation will be tailored to accommodate your organization with minimal lag time and issues/problems.
Read full review Their design team gave us the option to save some money by creating the forms ourselves for both the submission and review portals. This also allowed us to get to a point where we felt very comfortable in any future changes that would need to be made to forms since we were so immersed in creating them.
Read full review Alternatives Considered When it comes to collecting applications, no one beats Submittable in terms of features and functionality. With other software we used, there were far too many limitations, including having to manually download data, inability to use logic for fields, and no analytics. The other products we used for application collection could not compare to Submittable.
Read full review SurveyMonkey and
SurveyGizmo are great to use for other programs and events that require collecting fairly basic responses and feedback, however, these don't provide the level of information and data that is needed for our grants processes. WizeHive provides a number of tools and other benefits that are just beyond these products' capabilities
Read full review Contract Terms and Pricing Model Pricing is fair for the product and support received, and we are content with the billing being annual in order to save overall. Contract terms are fair, and don't seem inflated for any reason. Pricing per application is also fair, and you can actually have the applicant absorb the cost if necessary
Read full review Scalability We were happy to use this for many projects, but sometimes it can be hard to filter for a specific applicant and see how many of our projects and grants they have applied to without filtering by project. We're also hoping to have the feature added where reviewers can only see one project at a time if they don't have clearance to view all of the projects
Read full review Return on Investment Ease of training new employees with the system, simple interface and similar to other CRMs, etc. We can launch a new grant fairly quickly now that we have the processes down and templates created Ability to respond quickly to provider questions/needs Read full review Zengine is definitely a time-saver, but there are a myriad of grant management software platforms on the market that save just as much time, some even more time-saving. But if you have a basic need to offer an application process of any sort (grant, scholarship, etc.) to the public, Zengine can be very helpful in saving time and keeping everything related to the grant handy in one location, and all connected (application, reviews, final reports, etc.). Read full review ScreenShots WizeHive Zengine Screenshots