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Is WizeHive Zengine worth it?
August 29, 2019

Is WizeHive Zengine worth it?

Tashia Fouch | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with WizeHive Zengine

WizeHive Zengine was used in one particular department of my organization, to manage our annual grant application process whereby we offer grants to all the schools within Chicago's public school district. Zengine provides a portal where applicants can submit an application, and we can have reviewers to review and score the applications within this same portal, and those who receive a grant can complete a grant report in the portal at the end of the grant period.
  • Grant application management can be daunting, but Zengine makes it a lot easier.
  • Combining the grant application, review process, and final reporting process in one portal is a huge convenience!
  • With our applicants being a specific and specialized group, we needed customized functions to ensure that only those who were eligible for our grants were able to begin the application process. For this custom functionality, Zengine charges extra, many times a significant amount extra, whereas I feel a functionality such as this should be integrated into the platform as standard.
  • 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.).
The platform itself is pretty easy and straightforward to use. Full disclosure, I have used others that have more user-friendly interfaces and are more simple to get around in, but Zengine is not super-complicated at all. Most of its functions are self-explanatory, and those that are not, WizeHive offers at-your-service tech support via e-mail, so you can e-mail in a question/issue, and you usually get a response back within a few minutes.
Zengine's customer support team is very attentive and at the ready, to answer questions, troubleshoot problems, etc. They will also communicate directly with your applicants if you'd like them to, which is helpful if applicants have trouble creating a login, or forget their password, etc. Zengine will communicate with them directly to fix whatever their issue may be.
Compared to these, Zengine is on par with each of them. All of them offer pretty much the same functionality, although a couple of the others have a more user-friendly interface. Zengine is on par with pricing as well, similar to all of these. The difference comes in when you need something not part of the standard package. Most of these will allow unlimited users, while Zengine only allows 30 I believe. If you need more than 30 (which we often do, as our team of grant reviewers consists of about 50 people), you will have to pay extra for them. You will also have to pay extra with Zengine if you're offering more than one grant, whereas the others allow you to offer anywhere from 5 different grants to an unlimited number of grants. This was key for us because, although we only offer one grant annually right now, this year we plan to offer a short (3-month) micro-grant dedicated to a specific group/category of schools. Zengine will charge us $1,500 additional to offer this short-term micro-grant, whereas the others will allow us to offer it at no additional charge.
I believe Zengine would work well for an organization seeking to offer a public-facing grant that anyone can apply for, or if the organization does not mind having to weed through applications and eliminate ineligible applicants themselves. If, like us, you anticipate a large number of applicants (over 600 schools for us), then Zengine will cost you a lot extra to be able to filter out ineligible applicants upfront so that you only receive applications that have passed muster.