Submittablevs
Jotform
Jotform: Far cheaper if you only need forms and payments and can run review in a spreadsheet
Submittable
Application, review and grant management for funders running open calls at volume
As of 31 August 2026, Submittable's pricing is not published; the vendor quotes on request. A submission platform built for organisations that receive far more applications than they fund, with reviewer scoring and blind review at its core. Softwr lists it under Nonprofits. Submittable is available on Web.
Overview
What Submittable does
Submittable handles the full lifecycle of an open call: a public application form, eligibility routing, reviewer assignment and scoring, decision letters, and for grantmakers the award, payment and reporting steps that follow. It started in literary and publishing submissions and moved into philanthropy, corporate social responsibility and government programmes. What separates it from grant systems built around a foundation's internal workflow is that Submittable is built around the applicant queue. Blind and multi-stage review, reviewer conflict flags, weighted scoring rubrics and load balancing across a volunteer panel are first class rather than add-ons. If you run a programme where three hundred applications arrive in a fortnight and twelve reviewers score them, that is the difference between a working process and a spreadsheet. Buyers are foundations, corporate giving teams, arts organisations and government agencies distributing funds, including a lot of pandemic-era and disaster relief programmes. The trade-off is cost structure: pricing is by quote and reported entry points sit around a few thousand dollars a year, with sharp increases as submission volume, forms or seat counts rise. Organisations that adopt it for one programme and then spread it across the whole grants function often face a much larger renewal than they budgeted.
What people use it for
- A foundation running an open grant round where a volunteer panel must score hundreds of applications without seeing applicant identities
- A corporate giving team collecting employee-nominated grant requests and needing an audit trail for finance
- An arts council managing fellowship and residency applications with multi-stage juries
- A city agency distributing relief funds and required to show equitable review and decision records
Related searches
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Submittable.
- Pricing is not published and tier jumps are steep, so an organisation that grows past a submission or form limit can face a renewal quote well above the previous year with limited negotiating room mid-programme.
- It is built around the application funnel rather than the funder's relationship with grantees, so long-term relationship management, pledge tracking and multi-year commitments are weaker than in a purpose-built grants CRM.
- Applicant-facing forms are constrained by the platform's templates, and organisations wanting a fully branded application experience on their own domain will find the customisation shallow.
- Reporting is serviceable for programme counts but limited for board-level financial reporting, so many finance teams still export to spreadsheets to reconcile awards against the general ledger.
- Payment disbursement capability varies by tier and region, and organisations funding recipients outside the United States often still pay grants through their bank rather than through the platform.
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Submittable
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- SubmittablevsFormstack
Formstack: Where the requirement is form building and workflow across a whole organisation, not just funding applications
- SubmittablevsBlackbaud Raiser's Edge
Blackbaud Raiser's Edge: Where the money side and long term funder relationships matter more than the review queue
Pricing
What Submittable costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Submittable
On request
- Application forms and applicant portal
- Reviewer workflow and scoring rubrics
- Grant award and reporting modules on higher tiers
- Priced by submission volume, forms and seats
- Annual contract, quoted by sales
Capabilities
Features
Configurable application forms
Conditional logic, eligibility screening and file uploads with format limits
Blind and multi-stage review
Anonymised reviewer queues, weighted rubrics and staged shortlisting
Reviewer management
Assignment, load balancing, conflict of interest flags and reviewer reporting
Grant payments
Award tracking and disbursement with recipient reporting requirements
Impact reporting
Post-award report collection and outcome data capture
Applicant messaging
Templated decision and request-for-information correspondence
API and integrations
Data out to Salesforce and analytics tools
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
What does Submittable actually cost?
It is not published. Reported entry points are in the low thousands of dollars a year, with price driven by submission volume, number of forms and seats. Get the tier limits written into the contract before signing.
Is it a grants management system or a submission manager?
Both, depending on tier. The review side is its strength. Award tracking, payments and grantee reporting sit on higher tiers and are less deep than a dedicated grants CRM.
Can reviewers work anonymously?
Yes. Blind review, staged rounds and conflict of interest flagging are core features rather than paid extras.
Is there a nonprofit discount?
Nonprofit pricing exists but is applied inside the quote rather than published as a percentage, so compare quotes rather than assuming a standard rate.
Keep looking
Where to go from Submittable
- Submittable alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Submittable pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Submittable badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Nonprofits softwareThe full category
- Best Nonprofits softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Nonprofits software for
Compare Submittable with
- SmartSimple Cloud
- Blackbaud Grantmaking
- Instrumentl
- Fluxx
- Foundant Technologies
- GrantStation
- Bonterra
- DonorPerfect
- Candid
- Glue Up
- CharityEngine
- Wild Apricot
- Salesforce for Nonprofits
- Salsa CRM
- Virtuous
- Blackbaud Raiser's Edge
- DonorPerfect
- Glue Up
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Submittable, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
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