Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Submittable

Submittable

Starting at $10,000 per year
View Pricing

Overview

What is Submittable?

Submittable offers tools to launch, measure, and grow social impact programs, locally and globally. From grants and scholarships to awards and CSR programs, Submittable partners with users to make a difference. The vendor states Submittable has supported over 95,000 social…

Read more
Recent Reviews

Use Submittable!

8 out of 10
March 01, 2024
Incentivized
Grant management: application submission and stage management, providing technical assistance, tracking reporting documents and forms, …
Continue reading

Two thumbs up!

9 out of 10
February 22, 2024
Incentivized
We use Submittable as an applicant platform for our grants program. it helps keeps the applications in an easy and clear folder and allows …
Continue reading

Choose Submittable!

9 out of 10
February 19, 2024
Incentivized
We use Submittable for scholarships, volunteer applications, and youth program planning. It supports scoring equitably and inclusively. It …
Continue reading

Positive Experience.

10 out of 10
February 19, 2024
Incentivized
We use Submittable to run our sub-grants program, all the way from eligibility screenings and applications to quarterly and final progress …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.submittable.com/pricing/?ut…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Starting price (does not include set up fee)

  • $10,000 per year
Return to navigation

Product Demos

Watch a Demo Video | Submittable

www.submittable.com
Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Submittable?

Submittable offers tools to launch, manage, measure, and grow social impact programs, locally and globally. Submittable partners with corporations, government, foundations, non-profits, and organizations of any size, supporting employee giving, volunteering, and corporate social responsibility programs to grants, awards and scholarships.

The platform offers features to make workflows more efficient, as well as reporting features.

Submittable has tools to support social impact programs, from community investment to employee engagement.

Submittable Features

  • Supported: Grantmaking
  • Supported: Grant Management
  • Supported: Corporate Social Responsibility
  • Supported: Employee Engagement
  • Supported: Employee Volunteering
  • Supported: Employee Giving
  • Supported: Employee Give and Match
  • Supported: Fraud Prevention
  • Supported: Government Grantmaking
  • Supported: Funds Distribution
  • Supported: Impact Reporting
  • Supported: Mobile Access
  • Supported: Grant Application Management
  • Supported: Administrative Reporting
  • Supported: Alerts/Notifications
  • Supported: API
  • Supported: Applicant Tracking
  • Supported: Budgeting/Forecasting
  • Supported: Compliance Management
  • Supported: Customizable Branding
  • Supported: Customizable Fields
  • Supported: Customizable Forms
  • Supported: Customizable Reports
  • Supported: Customizable Templates
  • Supported: Workflow Management
  • Supported: Third Party Integrations
  • Supported: Role-Based Permissions
  • Supported: Payment Tracking
  • Supported: Impact Measurement
  • Supported: Grant Discovery
  • Supported: Grant Award Tracking
  • Supported: Forms Management
  • Supported: Financial Reporting
  • Supported: Email Reminders
  • Supported: Document Management
  • Supported: Deadline Management
  • Supported: Collaboration Tools
  • Supported: Data Import/Export
  • Supported: Deadline Management
  • Supported: Credit Card Processing
  • Supported: Data Visualization
  • Supported: Audit Management
  • Supported: Multi-Currency
  • Supported: SSL Security
  • Supported: Single Sign On
  • Supported: Applicant Portal
  • Supported: Volunteer Recruiting
  • Supported: Scheduling

Submittable Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Submittable offers tools to launch, measure, and grow social impact programs, locally and globally. From grants and scholarships to awards and CSR programs, Submittable partners with users to make a difference. The vendor states Submittable has supported over 95,000 social impact programs, receiving nearly 20 million applications, and that teams save an average of 12 hours per week and launch in an average of 14 days.

Submittable starts at $10000.

Blackbaud Grantmaking, SurveyMonkey Apply, and WizeHive Zengine are common alternatives for Submittable.

Reviewers rate Implementation Rating highest, with a score of 10.

The most common users of Submittable are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(85)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 73)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 01, 2024

Use Submittable!

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Grant management: application submission and stage management, providing technical assistance, tracking reporting documents and forms, communication with grantee, Dept. of Social Services, and other LIIF team members, data reports.
  • Database of our child care providers and their grants
  • Managing communications from email, notes section, ability to pull up review while on calls, attaching necessary documents
  • Segmenting the data by project
  • Labels! Please allow us to segment these out by project and not have a complete running list of all labels ever used...the scrolling is getting out of hand!
  • Better document retrieval and storage - documents uploaded to the application are not easily viewed and I often have to download them, making this time-consuming.
  • When closing out a document, the submission returns you to the top of the page instead of anchoring to your location.
  • Make it easier to pull data!
This has worked well for most of our grant management. We do not use it for record-keeping or tracking employee data, such as technical assistance hours.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization uses Submittable for grants and funding opportunities. We post between 4 and 6 funding opportunities each year, accept grant applications, and have panelists review applications to select our final roster of grantees. Applicants can fill out the grant questionnaire and submit corresponding documents. Additionally, we can communicate to applicants through the portal should information/documents be missing.
  • Great customer service.
  • Reviewers are able to see all documents on one screen instead of opening multiple windows in order to review the application.
  • Applications are easy to build and edit.
  • The review portions is user friendly.
  • Applicants find the forms easy to use.
  • The CRM functionality is new and not user-friendly for those not using UEIs to track applicants.
  • There doesn't seem to be an easy or cost effective way to use an outside CRM source.
  • Limited functionality with multiple languages - we need to build one application in English and another in Spanish to meet the needs of our users.
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.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My organization uses Submittable to accept applications to competitive arts awards and grants. It helps us organize and adjudicate all applications (often hundreds per program). It also helps us communicate with applicants.
  • Application Organization.
  • Flexible review systems.
  • Easy Communication with applicants and reviewers.
  • I'd love to be able to bulk send attachments that are specific to each applicant.
  • I wish there were support you could chat live with on the site instead of email (though email is pretty swift, sometimes the question needs to be reiterated through a few emails).
Submittable is an amazing platform for accepting arts applications since the upload capability is very in-depth. I don't really like how the conceal feature automatically hides some fields from reviewers that I don't want to be hidden.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable primarily for facilitating our grants management process and managing our calls for artist opportunities. This platform streamlines the submission and review processes, enabling us to efficiently handle a wide array of applications and submissions.
  • Streamlining the review process
  • Verifying application information
  • Automating processes
  • Easy form builders
  • Inclusion of the ability to rank preferences in an application form response, i.e., rank the following in order of preference.
  • Easier way to navigate between applications within a project
Submittable addresses several key challenges for us, including the simplification of receiving, organizing, and reviewing grant applications. However, for smaller, simpler tasks, like managing a straightforward call for entries, it can feel like we're using a Ferrari to take your grandma to bingo- a great experience with friendly UX, but not fully utilizing the capabilities of the software and expensive for the use case.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Submittable is used for our applicants to submit their requests for funding through our grant opportunities. Internally, we can review and adapt our applications to best-fit the organizations we are working with. Submittable takes out the organization load that comes along with one-by-one application requests and allows us to categorize and project manage various applications at one time. We use this product for all our applications and also for data gathering.
  • Project Management: Review Processes between internal users are great. You can allow for different permissions based on their requirements for each project.
  • Reducing Barriers: With Submittable you can make questions as simple or as complex as you want. It's also great that you can allow applicants to invite colleagues to assist their efforts in filling the application.
  • Labels: This is a great tool to use internally as you can apply as many labels as you wish to each application that comes through - then later, sort by each.
  • Lack of CRM: At this time, there is a surface-level CRM that allows us access to the history of applications through one organization (if everything was set up correctly). But, unless you put the work into your own methods, this tool is just 'ok' as is.
  • Limited Customization: Specifically for the labels, you cannot customize the color. Small, but very important detail.
  • Automation: Requires using third party platforms.
Submittable does a great job at allowing organizations to create their own application process from publish to review. I think the ability to assure all details can be exported into an excel allows the reviewing process to be even better when extracting data for future reporting or reflecting on any impact.
February 22, 2024

Two thumbs up!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable as an applicant platform for our grants program. it helps keeps the applications in an easy and clear folder and allows the review team to look them over equitably and in their own time.
  • user friendly
  • intuitive interface
  • good communication
  • Ability to work with additional inboxes
  • more accessible financially
  • more frequent updates on product changes
Submittable is great if you have a manageably-sized program that you're looking to manage submissions for. They gave us a discount as a non-profit and were always personable in their interactions. If you have a program with a very large volume of submissions, it may be more difficult to use, especially if you need to manage a lot of different programs at once.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use submittable to gather applications for our paid internship and study abroad scholarship opportunities for university students in Montana. We get around 100 applications annually, and expect this to grow significantly in the next 5 years.
  • Duplicate applications from year to year.
  • Assign reviewers.
  • Track the submissions process.
  • I could use a reminder to update the automatic reply when duplicating new application forms from year to year. By the time 365 days have passed, I've forgotten to update this.
Submittable has worked great for us. It seems to work less great for the university's faculty review process. Then again, I think the people designing that process just overcomplicated it.
February 19, 2024

Choose Submittable!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable for scholarships, volunteer applications, and youth program planning. It supports scoring equitably and inclusively. It allows for collaboration when it comes to teams working with different teachers, school districts, and professionals. As for our scholarships, this is the first program that has met all our needs to ensure we are leading with equity and anti-bias.
  • Scoring
  • Collaboration on forms.
  • Tags for extra layers of organizing.
  • Flexibility for form creation - including branching!
  • Continue to support more form design flexibility.
  • Ability to hide a form question without deleting it from the existing form - for example, once a shift is filled - it'd be helpful to hide it so other shifts are shown as high need but without changing already entered responses.
  • It would be great to see more auto-label style functions for exporting and reports and ease of data organization.
I think of all the programs available when it comes to having multiple types of forms as a non-profit organization, and this is at the top of the list! Scoring, Auto-Labels, and Branching are AWESOME!
Josh Koller | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Submittable to manage a portfolio of grant programs and projects that are used to fund innovative programming across Tennessee. These projects are focused on increasing student success and enhancing innovative practices in higher education. The projects have varying terms, objectives, scopes, and funding amounts. The Submittable platform allows for management, review, tracking, and archiving of these projects.
  • Drag and drop form creation.
  • Customer services.
  • Quest to update and provide the best experience.
  • Attentiveness to my perspective as a customer.
  • Ease of use and easy to adopt/learn the system.
  • Allowing of sharing of project across users.
  • The internal role differentiation could be more robust.
  • Changing/updating original submissions are not as intuitive as initial creation.
For tracking projects over time, Submittable is fantastic. There are lots of types of forms that can be created to match and fit any situation. Submittable is great at customizing a project to fit the needs of the customer. This platform might not be so good if there is something that doesn't need to be tracked over time. For instance, a survey or scholarship application. Submittable is good for allowing multiple users to interact with a submission. However, if this doesn't need to be looked at in the future, this tool might be too powerful. With all the features, something simpler could work more efficiently. However, when more eyes need to be on a document, Submittable is useful and up to the task.
February 19, 2024

Positive Experience.

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable to run our sub-grants program, all the way from eligibility screenings and applications to quarterly and final progress reports. The submittable platform allows us to keep all grantee information in one place while being able to assign scoring sheets to our board members. Submittable will enable us to determine what projects we would like to fund based on their alignment with our organization's mission and vision and oversee the progress of those projects.
  • Data collection.
  • Reports
  • Rating submissions.
  • The functions could be organized in a more user friendly way.
Submittable is great for determining awards for grant programs as well as reporting on the progress of the awarded projects. Although it makes these processes easier, it is not appropriate for less technologically inclined users. To manually download and print out applications and assessments for less tech-savvy users is quite cumbersome.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We run many scholarship and prize applications. Submittable allows us to collect responses all in one place to be reviewed. At any given time we're managing 10+ applications and this platform helps to make sure that we don't drop any entries or make over sighted mistakes. It's nice to allow users to upload documents here instead of copying into an email as sometimes used to happen.
  • keeping things in one place
  • allowing for multiple projects at once
  • downloading submissions option
  • user friendly interface for our clients
  • un-intuitive layout for backend users like me
  • hard to set up automated replies
  • unable to turn off status read or not which freaks our clients out
  • Hard to get to the actual submission
It's great for programs like us that use it for scholarships, writing contests. I think it would be great for use in arts submissions. I'm not sure how it would look for job applications etc. It's great for specific time period applications. It's less great for rolling applications because there's no way to hide old submissions. I work by project not by all submissions total and I feel that Submittable is built for looking at all submissions at once.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable to run multiple grant programs that range significantly in size and application pool. We don't know of another platform out there that creates great online applications and then application review and scoring mechanisms that are also easily assigned to other partners/reviewers. Not only is it an efficient way to handle applications, it's secure -- since we ask for financial data with some programs, and there are also lots of reporting options with the platform that serve us well, especially for reporting to our funders.
  • User friendly interface for building grant applications and application review forms
  • Easy to securely involve partners in building and scoring applications
  • Helpful and responsive customer service representatives
  • I hope they are developing a feature where correspondance to applicants can come from our organization's website and not Submittable's
  • We'd like a more robust integration with DocuSign where forms can be populated with a range of fields and executed documents can easily be saved to the appropriate application file
Submittable is especially well-suited for any organization doing granting or subgranting to applicants.
Amanda Baez | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use submittables for several projects including but not limted to the following applications
  1. general artist call application
  2. Project-based artist calls and selection
  3. Ongoing program applicants
  4. Committee applications
  5. Vendor applications
  • Review system provides first steps in the process
  • interface is very user friendly
  • Reports are very easy to pull specific information
  • The features for the forms have many options
  • Submissions page can get clunky if multiple programs are going on at the same time
  • The ability to change the look and feel of specific programs
  • Easier fund functionality
It is best well suited to create applications, and rating individual submissions.It is less appropriate if trying to collect general information.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Submittable was purchased to help our office streamline the way internship and fellowship applications are promoted, received, and reviewed. At the time of purchase, our office administered 50+ different opportunities annually and the process was managed manually. We were a small team - 3 people - with one person assigned to manage the applications (we received approx 1500-3000 applications annually with 75-100 reviewers across the 50 applications).
  • Saves time (thousands of hours)
  • Efficient and easy for making/collecting/reviewing applications
  • Very little training needed to get started and maintain
  • Easy to use, excellent customer service
  • Pricing and the pricing structure
I highly recommend Submittable if your office manages applications. It saved us thousands of hours annually, it’s easy to learn, straightforward to setup applications, including unique applications, and easy for applicants to submit and track their applications (applicants can even save and return to their apps later, get automatic deadlines reminders, and track their app status). For reviewers, it’s easy even for non-tech savvy folks to review and rate app synchronously and asynchronously.
Emily (Wong Loi Sing) Fuder | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable to run grant projects with funding provided by our corporate sponsors. We needed a platform to distribute over $2m in funds in 2021, and Submittable was secure, organized, and easy to use for our needs. We wanted to have reviews be fair and impartial by concealing specific applicant information and having applicants submit forms to submittable instead of emailing our team repeatedly helped us orchestrate the grants seamlessly.
  • List sorting of winners/labeled groups.
  • Ease of application creation/question creation.
  • Template building for quick responses to applicants.
  • Labels shouldn't be an option for all reviewers, we had a reviewer for our Florida applicants create labels like "1" "2" "3" which confused my reviewers in California.
  • Running reports across multiple grant projects is tedious and clumsy. Our grant project had 15 regions but it was the same application, we had to compare applications across regions, but could only have a set amount of winners for each area. It would've been easier to create 1 application and 1 opportunity but have filters for the # of applications for each region instead of creating 15 separate applications.
  • Reviewers also found the review forms difficult. There should be an easier way to run a report on their pending reviews in an excel format, or just a better functionality to review. Even with onboarding, our reviewers were confused and didn't use the review function.
Submittable is wonderful for running large-scale grant programs where you're collecting sensitive data, need to have reviewers, and sort through data. It would be less appropriate for a very small grant opportunity and maybe not worth the money if you're only accepting, say, 50 applications. But for one grant we had 1,500 applicants and 196 winners, and the other grant had 252 applications received for our 27 grants. Communication was wonderful, but some applicants reported being locked out of the accounts and very confused on how to get back in/hear if they'd won or not. Sometimes, Submittable was blocked/sent to their spam emails.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Submittable to read through submissions of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction our literary journal housed at a university. Submittable helps our team of editors to keep track of how many submissions we have, who the authors are, as well as assign these submissions to the various readers. I read through the unsolicited submissions pile and decide which one are worth passing forward as well as which submissions to reject outright. I've found Submittable to be a very valuable tool and reasonably intuitive to use for my purposes as a reader for a literary journal. In addition to being intuitive, I've found Submittable to be excellent in its precision as well. I can use the various filters to see what other readers at the journal are reading and what comments they've made. Submittable is great for efficient collaboration and is a strong tool that I would recommend to any organization, especially in the literary editing world.
  • Intuitive interface
  • Extensive search filters
  • Great for collaboration with my team
  • The interface be a little confusing at first
  • Potentially too easy to accidentally accept submissions without meaning to
Submittable is well-suited for our organization's purposes. As a literary journal, I've found that Submittable works well for receiving submissions for literary contests, as well as just for our regular publication purposes. It works extremely smoothly and fluidly if you need to receive and vet thousands of submissions. In terms of scenarios where not so appropriate, I would guess that if you aren't having to go through as many submissions as we do, it might not be as cost-effective, although I don't handle the financial side of our organization, so I cannot speak to this point with certainty.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable to manage our research Grant process. This includes accepting Grant applications and assigning grants to be reviewed by a review panel. Submittable also helps us in collecting, organizing, tracking, and archiving Grant information.
  • Submission collecting
  • Review assigning
  • Comparing and compiling information
  • Reporting
  • Customizing the review process
  • Cost and package flexibility
Submittable helps to keep everything streamlined and organized so that you are not working from various different folders with many people involved that could lead to confusion. Submittable also helps to ensure that all data is collected consistently and easily accessible to the review panel.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable to facilitate our scholarship application for the Bob and Marion Wilson Teacher Institute. Submittable allows us to collect applications, have them reviewed by both volunteers and staff, and notify the applicants all in one system. In addition to the application process, we are able to use Submittable to host our donor stewardship form where teachers can upload comments and thank you notes. Using Submittable for this process has saved our interns hours of typing up hand written comments from teachers.
  • User Friendly
  • Multi Tier Review
  • Customer Service
  • Adding New Features
  • The multiple notifications on the multi tier review was confusing for our volunteers
  • The automatic labels keep changing between the full state name and the initials
  • I would love to have a feature where if the applicant checks a box an email would automatically go out
Submittable is well suited for the application process. We have a grant program for professional development opportunities and I am currently working on convincing the committee to abandon the paper application and make the switch to Submittable. My department is currently contemplating using Submittable as a volunteer application but are running into some stumbling blocks
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable for manuscript submission and evaluation. It helps us to organize submissions, easily interact with the authors, and send responses once a decision has been made.
  • Organizes manuscript submissions
  • Allow easy interaction with authors
  • Generic reply templates can easily be edited and make decision responses more streamlined
  • Larger file downloads would be helpful. As is, I have to create smaller versions of the submissions to review in some cases.
  • I would like to see a customized list template that users can create to add additional processes unique to their company.
  • If submissions are active, once they are reassigned as accepted/declined/etc., it would be nice if they would automatically go into a folder labeled with those same headings.
I appreciate the ability to use a system that helps me organize complex projects easily. Submittable has been very useful to me as I manage hundreds of new submissions on a regular basis, keep track of where I left off with each submission, and follow up as needed. I would recommend it to anyone who has the same challenges in their business.
Ana Lourdes Cooper | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use submittable to manage the blog pitch and draft submissions of my fellow Pearson Campus Ambassadors. This helps me to filer all submissions as well as message the author for any issues. I love that I can preset responses which streamlines my work and makes me more efficient and precise. Submittable is extremely easy to use. We ususally operate on teams but it was difficult to find ways to have students submit blog drafts with bios, headshots, thumbnails, and editable word documents all in one place. Submittable makes this all easy. I use it ever day and can get so much done for our program for a whole semester in just a few hours per week.
  • Create filters
  • preset automated responses
  • archive submissions
  • add publication dates
  • I wish I could pick the colors of the filters instead of Subimttable automatically picking them for me
  • I wish there was a way to see what blogs are being published on what days and have the info of the author and title of blog
  • I wish there was a way to log blog publications within submittable and have a calendar link I could synch to my microsoft account.
I defintiely enjoy submittable for managing written publications. I do not have experience with Submittable's payment features.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Each year my organization receives a great deal of applications, and Submittable makes it much easier to compile everything in one place, require answers to specific questions, and sort through the data once everything is submitted. The messaging platform is an especially helpful tool during the application process.
  • Quick and easy report generation
  • Customized applications
  • Clean interface
  • Messages are sometimes not delivered
  • Better customization of mass messages (often the user's name is not inputted correctly)
Submittable is best for organizations with an ongoing application cycles. Customizing and building forms is quite easy. It saves me a lot of time in managing grant cycles. It does need to be better with message delivery as this is an ongoing issue for me.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Submittable for grant management, including the application portal, review process, and quarterly reports. Submittable makes it incredibly easy to access all of our grantees, review the applications accurately with a custom rubric, and send messages to everyone.
  • Organization
  • User-friendly interface
  • Customization
  • CSS Options
  • Pricing
  • Reporting
Any sort of application portal make Submittable necessary. We started with 1 grant program, and now have 4 grant programs and several calls for submissions available on our platform. We love that we can start up new programs on our own (included in our subscription price).
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Submittable helps us to receive, organize and review requests for grants to other non-profit organizations. We typically receive between one and two influxes of submissions each year. We have an advisory board who are geographically spread out across 4 time zones, who all use Submittable to conduct their reviews. We probably have reviewed close to 1,000 submissions through Submittable.
  • Easy submission for applicants
  • Useful functions for remote group discussion during review
  • Simple tools for categorizing, storing and organizing submissions
  • Once your Submittable subscription ends, you lose access to all stored information
  • It is not intuitive to move documents from Submittable into other software
  • The cost is high compared to some other data storage systems (Drive, Microsoft One)
Submittable is really great for the core service of what it is designed for: providing a platform for applications to be reviewed across time and distance. The fees are competitive when compared with some services. At the same time, for those organizations that only receive a few applications, or which are looking to save money, there are other methods of accomplishing the same goal. My recommendation to any group would turn on their specific needs and resources.
Seth Lennon Weiner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a philanthropic fund, so we accept applications for funding through Submittable. Our board reviews the applications, votes, and shares their perspectives with each other through the site. Submittable allows us to track, categorize and assign the applications that come in for review and also to store past applications for reference.
  • It is easy to search through submissions
  • It is easy to create and edit forms
  • It is easy for even non-tech savvy users to navigate
  • I am not sure how to transmit information in our applications into spreadsheets
  • Moving data out from Submittable is not especially easy
  • People with very low tech experience still require some coaching to use Submittable
It is great for philanthropic and giving circles! We have found Submittable especially useful with our all-remote team. We receive applications from groups all around the country, as well as some from abroad, and we are able to review those applications as a team- while sharing thoughts and critiques with each other. This helps us to share insights as a team, to understand the analysis of different team members and ultimately makes our decision making process faster and easier.
Score 4 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our organization uses Submittable as the primary submission portal for grant applications, reviews, award notifications, and reporting. Our company runs over 30 different grant programs/cycles a year.
  • Applications are easy to build.
  • It's very user-friendly for applicants and reviewers (most drawbacks are for internal staff).
  • Support is usually quick to respond and they are all very friendly. Their staff in general are always great to work with – which is (and was) a huge selling point.
  • Their blog posts and guides are informative and extremely on point with where philanthropy should be/is heading – human-centered, trust-based approaches.
  • The organization is clearly leaning into/improving/advocating for accessibility, equity, and inclusivity in the submission and review processes.
  • They are continually adding features or making small updates based on user feedback.
  • If wanting built-in CRM functionality for ongoing management of awards and applicant communications, this won't be the right fit. There are not umbrella profiles for applicant organizations with contacts and submissions housed underneath; each application is wholly freestanding.
  • Emails frequently get caught in spam/junk/quarantine folders, regardless of safelisting the domain. Because we can't 100% rely on all system communications reaching the submitter or reviewer, we often handle communications externally instead or have to do additional follow up, which is added time and something we anticipated the system would streamline.
  • The level of implementation support is unfortunately a place where we feel we were misled following the demos. We anticipated more hands-on and extensive assistance that would remove the bulk of the burden from our grant program managers, but this wasn't our experience. The indicated support was a major factor for our company that led to our selection of Submittable.
  • Advanced reporting unfortunately doesn't live up to the name. There are several limitations that require extensive manual manipulation to get the report structure where you want; and it's not as intuitive or simple as other parts of the backend (such as form creation). Transparently, the reporting is by far the biggest headache for our program managers.
  • The #1 advanced reporting drawback is the data delay. Data received through any type of form is not immediately available upon submission for advanced reports (but oddly is instantaneous for standard reports). Additionally, the delay is inconsistent – sometimes three hours, sometimes 18, sometimes more. This impedes administrative efficiency for program managers and affects internal processing timelines; we have to build in extra days to prepare materials for reviewer meetings or any meeting where we may need a report quickly following submission. As a fail-safe given the uncertainty of up-to-date data, we now manually check and/or edit data once we've pulled a report into Excel. I personally have switched to only using standard reports and then build in time for a manual overhaul in Excel to get what I need in our preferred format. Despite the time this takes, it's always faster for me than waiting for data and then adjusting advanced reports.
  • Branding customization is limited, especially for organizations running multiple programs. Within our company, we support many clients who have their own brand and/or look; since they don't use our organization's branding, it can be confusing for applicants to have our company's logo anywhere near other applications. It would be nice to offer our clients their own branded landing page without paying for an entirely new account, considering we don't usually need a separate back end system.
  • The additional instructions for form fields appear under the response box rather than directly under the main question/header. This often results in applicants not seeing supplemental information, prompts, or guidelines until after they've provided their response.
  • Placeholder tags are limited. We'd truly love to utilize DocuSign for agreements but are unable to because we can't pull in all necessary field responses from the original submission.
  • The inability to edit an application for a submitter is a definite pain point. There may be something small, like a typo in their organization name, and everything following is impacted, e.g., all system communications where we use a placeholder tag for that field (another reason we can't use DocuSign). We've also had applicants mistype numbers somewhere and ask us to quickly update (in which case we'd keep their emails on file for record). Since that's not an option in Submittable, we open for editing and make them go through the work for something that could be remedied on our end in a matter of seconds. This hinders rapport with some applicants because the editing process can be confusing and frustrating for individuals who struggle with technology; and the back and forth to walk them through the editing process is time that could be spent elsewhere.
  • Not being able to see account emails and/or names of individuals for open submission drafts is a barrier. In our former system we could view basic information and personally reach out to applicants to ensure they didn't miss due dates. Additionally it enabled us to remove email addresses from reminder communications for those we knew already submitted and simply opened up an accidental additional draft. When we send these reminders in Submittable, we always get applicants reaching out panicked or annoyed because they already submitted but think this means we didn't receive it.
  • There's not an option to cc other emails when communicating with the submitter through the system. This can be limiting and requires us to move communications back into our personal inbox instead of keeping everything together in Submittable.
  • It's not possible to reassign submissions to a different email. This is needed in situations where a submitter has left an organization and a now defunct email was used for login as opposed to a generic company one (like info@). It makes future communications for reporting impossible through the system. There is such high turnover in nonprofits, especially in development departments, so this is an inevitable issue for many users.
  • Not all form fields are concealable – only those where answers can be inserted. It would be helpful to conceal text-only fields and dividers as there are moments when the content is obsolete to the reviewer. This is either because it's information there to guide applicants through the submission process OR because we've concealed all fillable fields in a section but then the section header and other text-only fields are still oddly hanging around. It can make the app look a bit off to reviewers and forces them to scroll through more content than they really need to.
  • Report structures cannot be duplicated and applied to different projects, which is vital for organizations with dozens of different funding programs or cycles throughout the year. This leads to so much extra manual work.
  • There's limited control over notification emails sent to assigned reviewers. You can't customize these, and if needing to quickly switch a submission back a stage for something, the second that submission is returned to the stage with external reviewers, they receive another email about that assignment, despite already getting the notice originally.
  • Submission PDFs are not customizable, which would be ideal to create clean and specific documents for sharing with board members or partners whom you won't provide access to in the system. Additionally, some reviewers like the option of printing, and the current formatting of the PDFs are not as reader-friendly as the online portal. Of particular note: rich text formatting doesn't carry over; monetary numbers throughout aren't comma delimited (this is an issue in the online reviewer view too) which can result in reviewers improperly reading a request amount.
  • Form uploads are not included within/at the end of submission PDF downloads. It's a lot of extra work to do bulk exports with zip files and then merge everything manually to get one PDF of submitted content for simplified recordkeeping and/or sharing with external parties as needed.
  • There are inconsistent/intermittent errors that occur when utilizing tables in applications, such as numbers disappearing entirely or not being calculated in the total if a $ is typed in originally. We've unfortunately had to find workarounds and make sure to add IFERROR formulas in the Excel file we upload to bypass the system errors.
  • There are numerous nitpicky things that cause difficulty on the back end. This is inevitable with any software or system; regardless, that doesn't make those quirks/limitations/etc. any less frustrating.
For a company with few and/or simple programs who is needing a no-frills way to receive and manage applications, Submittable is a good system. For the most part, it is extremely user-friendly for applicants and reviewers and relatively intuitive for admins. For organizations who have complex grant programs or needs, desire a lot of customization, or want their submissions portal to function in a similar manner as a CRM...Submittable has a lot of limitations in functionality and design that would have me tell you to look elsewhere. When originally searching for the next system, I recall others (such as OpenWater) being a better fit for the latter.
Return to navigation