Is Dapple a direct alternative to Award Force?

Yes, Dapple is designed as a direct alternative to Award Force. It provides similar functionality for managing awards, submissions, and judging, but with a modern interface, better pricing, and a focus on user experience.

What makes Dapple different from Award Force?

Dapple is built by creatives for creatives with a modern, intuitive interface. Key differences include: simpler pricing structure, no long-term contracts, faster setup, better judging experience, and features designed specifically for creative industries.

Is Dapple easier for judges to use?

Yes. Judges get a personalized, streamlined judging experience with visual-first design, easy media viewing, and a clean dashboard. Many users report judging is significantly faster and more enjoyable in Dapple.

Can Dapple handle paid submissions?

Yes, Dapple fully supports paid submissions with secure payment processing via Stripe. You can set flexible pricing, offer discounts, and track payments seamlessly.

Is Dapple suitable for large awards programmes?

Yes. Dapple scales from small competitions to large-scale award programmes with thousands of submissions. It includes bulk operations, advanced workflows, and features designed for enterprise needs.

What is Dapple and who is it for?

Dapple is a submissions and workflow platform built primarily for the creative industries. It helps organisations collect, review, manage, and report on submissions, applications or entries in one place without relying on inboxes, spreadsheets, or outdated application tools. Dapple is for creative organisations such as art institutions, publishers, literary magazines, awards bodies, agencies, festivals, academic institutions and teams running open calls, contests, or applications. It's also designed with creators in mind, making submissions clearer and more transparent.

How does Dapple help reduce admin?

Dapple centralises everything—submissions, reviews, communication, statuses, and reporting—into one structured workflow. This removes manual tracking, cuts down on repetitive tasks, and saves teams hours of administrative work in the process.

Can multiple people review submissions?

Yes. Dapple supports collaborative reviewing with clear permissions, allowing multiple reviewers to assess submissions independently and remotely.

Is Dapple suitable for small teams?

Absolutely. Dapple is designed to scale with you—whether you're a small team managing a few hundred submissions or a larger organisation handling thousands.

How is Dapple different from other submission platforms?

Most submission platforms were built for generic workflows and bolted onto the creative world as an afterthought. Dapple was built from the ground up for organisations running awards, open calls, contests, and grants — and it shows in every feature. Where other platforms charge applicants fees just to submit their work, Dapple has no application fees. Payments go directly to your Stripe account instantly minus small transaction fees. Intuitive judging and visual kanban boards let your admin team move submissions through review stages the way creative teams actually think — not buried in spreadsheets or clunky list views. Combined with next-level filtering that lets you cut and sort entries by any field, attribute, or status, your team can go from hundreds of submissions to a shortlist in minutes rather than days. It's a modern, sleek platform that makes complex workflows feel simple. See how Dapple compares feature by feature on our competitors page.

Do applicants need an account to submit?

Yes, however, it's very quick and simple to create and can be done in a matter of seconds. When a creator opens a form, they will be prompted to create a free account. They can either use their Google/Microsoft account, or they will be sent a link via email to confirm. Once created, they will be able to use their account to track the status of all their submissions, any messages, payments made and download any attachments.

Can I communicate with applicants through Dapple?

Yes. Dapple has an inbuilt messaging platform enabling you to manage communication in one place, keeping inbound/outbound messages organised and linked directly to each submission. You are able to send single or bulk messages to multiple applicants, create message templates and configure whether an applicant can respond.

Yes. Dapple is built with modern security standards and role-based permissions to ensure submissions and data are handled safely and responsibly.

Is there a free trial?

You can create an account for free with no credit card details required. We allow this in order to try the system out, see how it works and set everything up in advance of setting your forms live. As soon as you want to make your forms active, you'll need to upgrade to a paid plan. Please note that there is a 'demo mode' feature enabling you to create different projects and workflows, make test payments and submissions without affecting your live data.

I'm stopping submissions for a while. Can I pause my account?

Yes! You have the option to pause your account on every plan. We'll keep your account on ice, keep your setup complete and data safe so you can come back later.

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Award Force Alternative

A Better Alternative
to Award Force

A modern awards management platform built for creative organisations — with better judging workflows, flexible monthly pricing, and a beautifully designed submission experience.

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What's the difference?

If you're searching for an Award Force alternative, you're likely comparing awards management platforms for an upcoming competition, prize, or recognition programme.

Award Force is a well-known awards management software platform used by large organisations globally. It offers entry collection, judging tools, reporting, and security features.

But many creative organisations — particularly those running visual arts, design, photography or copy-based opportunities in publishing, literature or academia are now looking for something more modern, more flexible, and easier to use.

That's where Dapple comes in.

Dapple is a next-generation awards management platform built specifically for creative programmes. It combines a modern UI, superior simpler judging workflows, flexible monthly pricing, and a streamlined setup process.

If Award Force feels enterprise-heavy or outdated, Dapple offers a cleaner, more visual alternative.

Features and Interface

Modern UI and architecture

Dapple is built by creatives for creatives and this really shows in the features and interface. Designed with a modern, sleek UI, it's easy to use and simple to navigate.

Beautiful, fully customisable entry forms
Multiple rounds and workflows
Category and subcategory analytics
Visual-first kanban board layout for image-based entries
Round based automations

While Award Force provides robust functionality, its UI reflects earlier-generation software design. Dapple feels current — because it is. For organisations that care about brand experience and design quality, this matters.

Entrants

A standout entrant experience

The entrant journey feels modern, polished and integrated — not like a third-party portal. Here's what that looks like:

Beautiful entry forms: Custom backgrounds, headers, and a sleek visual layout improves the whole experience.
Easy-to-use: Drag and drop, multiple field options and smart conditional logic. Entrants find it simple and easy to complete.
Payments: Payment baskets with secure checkout and automatic tracking.
Draft reminders: Customise automatic email reminders that nudge unfinished entrants back to complete their submission — increasing conversion rates.
Entrant accounts: They can view entries, download files, see payment history, upload supplementary material, and message your team directly.

The result? Higher completion rates, happier entrants, and an awards process that feels as thoughtful as the work being submitted.

Judges

Superior judging experience

As the beating heart of any awards, your judges should have the most easy-to-understand, frictionless way of reviewing entries. Dapple provides:

Personalised: Customisable judging accounts to fit preferred workflows
Media: Optimised for high res image and video review
Feedback: Clear scoring, voting and commenting with quick toggles.
Dashboard: An overview of feedback and scores where edits are made before submitting to admin.
Simplicity: Easy to operate with no steep learning curve

Judges value a simple, fluid experience, with a clear to-do list and overview of their previous feedback. Entrant creativity should be the focus, not software friction.

"I've used Award Force for years. Judging in Dapple is so much more user-friendly, visual and quicker to complete."

— Emily RF, Founder

Pricing

Flexible monthly pricing

Software aimed at enterprise customers typically come with mandatory annual contracts and highly restrictive entry-level plans. Dapple is different:

No annual lock-ins but flexible monthly options
A lower entry-level starting price point
More accommodating feature access
No onboarding fees
Scalable plans for growing programmes

If you're a small-to-medium creative organisation, you shouldn't need an enterprise budget to run a professional awards programme.

Dapple makes professional awards management accessible.

Setup

Faster setup and easier administration

Legacy, enterprise-led software can be powerful — but with great power comes great configuration overhead. Dapple focuses on simplicity:

Create an account for free to set up and test
Smart form generator to build forms in seconds
Duplicate projects in one click
Free onboarding and setup assistance
Minimal onboarding required

Most creative teams don't have internal IT departments. Dapple is built so that it can be setup quickly without the need for assistance. A full awards programme can be set up in a matter of hours.

Side by side

Let's compare

Compare the top-level costs and features across both platforms.

Cost	✦ Dapple	Award Force
Platform fees - Starter	£39–£99/m	—
Platform fees - Growth	£129–£199/m	£2,250/year
Platform fees - Pro	£299/m	£4,500/year
Onboarding fee	Free	£1500
Industry discounts available	✓	—
Unlimited entries	Pro = unlimited	10k
Transaction fees	3.5% + £0.49	3.9%
Monthly subscription option on all plans	✓	—

Feature	✦ Dapple	Award Force
Workflow & Management
Immediate launch	✓	—
Project hub	✓	—
Visual kanban boards	✓	—
Submission & creator tags	✓	✓
Administrators can edit applications	✓	✓
1:1 messaging	✓	✓
Advanced bulk messaging	✓	Pro only
Multi-team & org	✓	Pro only
Advanced permissions	✓	Pro only
Judging & Review
Advanced judge features	✓	✓
Hide fields from review	✓	✓
Bulk assign	✓	✓
Customised rounds on all plans	✓	Pro only
Unlimited judging stages	✓	✓
Forms & Submissions
Unlimited form fields	✓	✓
Charge entry / submission / application fees	✓	Pro only
File size	1gb	10mb (unlimited on Pro)
All file types	✓	✓
Listings page	✓	✓
Form versioning	✓	—
Image display	✓	✓
Form conditional logic	✓	✓
Demo mode	✓	✓
Entry resubmission	✓	Pro only
HD video hosting	✓	Pro only
Analytics & Integrations
Data export	✓	Pro only
Audit history	✓	Pro only
Webhooks + integrations	Pro only	Pro only
Support
Live chat support for all plans	✓	✓
Advanced security certification	—	✓
Multi-lingual user interface	—	✓
Public voting / galleries	—	✓

*All data on this page is based on publicly available information and reviews for this software as of February 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

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A Better Alternativeto Award Force

What's the difference?

Modern UI and architecture

A standout entrant experience

Superior judging experience

Flexible monthly pricing

Faster setup and easier administration

Let's compare

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Dapple a direct alternative to Award Force?

What makes Dapple different from Award Force?

Is Dapple easier for judges to use?

Can Dapple handle paid submissions?

Does Dapple support branding and customisation?

Is Dapple suitable for large awards programmes?

Can entrants manage their submissions easily?

Is Dapple more affordable than Award Force?

How quickly can we launch an award on Dapple?

Can we migrate from Award Force to Dapple?

Explore alternatives

Submittable Alternative

Zealous Alternative

SlideRoom Alternative

Got 15 minutes?

A Better Alternative
to Award Force