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manage, and report on submissions, applications or entries in one place without relying on inboxes, spreadsheets, or outdated application tools.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?

Dapple is built specifically for the creative world, aimed at solving the problems often found in these industries. Its modern, sleek interface helps make often complex workflows very simple. It focuses on clarity, fairness, and respect for both organisations and creators, rather than corporate or generic workflows.

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. We automatically add 10 free submissions to every newly created account in order for you to launch and experience live submissions coming through to your dashboard. Once live, you will be able to upgrade to a paid account through the billing section. 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.

What are my payment options?

Just enter your card details when you upgrade and you'll automatically be billed on a monthly or annual basis. If you require a different mode of payment, please reach out to us directly.

I'd like to add another organisation. Is this possible to add to my account?

Yes! You can add multiple organisations to your Dapple account. You will be billed for each new organisation you'd like to add to your account. Please reach out for more details.

How can I cancel my subscription?

If on the monthly subscription, you can cancel your account at any time. Your account will remain open until the end of your billing cycle. If signed up to an annual plan, your account will remain active until the end of your billing cycle.

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.

The Best Submittable Alternative for the Creative

Choosing between Dapple and Submittable

If you run open calls, awards, prizes, applications or any kind of opportunity in the arts, you’ve probably crossed paths with Submittable. It’s a powerful platform to be sure, and has firmly cemented itself as the market leader, no argument there. But power comes with baggage, and in recent years that baggage has become very corporate-shaped.

If, on the other hand, you’re working in publishing, literature, visual arts, music, film, theatre, academia, or any creative discipline, Dapple is built specifically for you…No, really - we spoke to over a hundred different people working in these industries when building the platform and constantly discuss every piece of feedback/feature requests we receive, so we actually solve problems for those in this industry.

This isn’t about “better vs worse.” It’s about fit. And for creatives, Dapple fits.

What's in this Article

Dapple is built for creatives not corporates

Fairness, transparency, and enterprise-grade tools without enterprise pricing.

Submittable’s evolution makes sense. Launching back in 2010, Submishmash, as it was known then, started with humble origins in the literary magazine world. It was the first to get there, understanding that the pain point of managing online submissions (as opposed to physical paper-based ones) was a phenomenon that would only accelerate. For many, it was the go-to and really only platform for creative orgs to use. Yet, over the years, as various large venture capital firms got involved (Submittable has raised nearly $170 million to date), their customer base has shifted toward large organisations, governments, and global corporations. And their product has understandably followed.

Today, much of Submittable’s focus is on:

Employee giving programmes
Corporate social responsibility initiatives
Government and relief funding
Large-scale grant management

If you’re Amazon, Meta, or a government body, that’s great news.

If you’re a literary magazine, arts organisation, festival, small publisher, or independent prize, those features are largely irrelevant, while the cost very much isn’t. It’s also worth noting that any product development is not aimed at the creative market, and so for smaller businesses, Submittable has not really improved its current technological offering in years.

Dapple was built with a different philosophy. Creative work deserves the same quality tools as big organisations, but without locking them behind five-figure contracts. We want to make the admin for organisations running artistic programmes as simple and easy as possible. And equally, we want the experience for applicants - those writers, artists and musicians, to have the very best experience when submitting work.

Dapple is also proudly independent, with no outside investment. That means no pressure to chase enterprise contracts at the expense of the creative community. The focus stays exactly where it should be: on you.

Features that make sense

Features built specifically for a creative market.

Submittable has some powerful features, but they are very much tailored to the enterprise customer. We listened to feedback, heard the Submittable-shaped gaps and built accordingly. Beyond all the standard features, Dapple adds:

Visual kanban boards to track submissions through the journey
Flexible, customisable stages and automations
A project hub to manage all opportunities from one dashboard
Easy setup (in minutes) with industry-specific templates
An intuitive, modern interface designed with creative orgs in mind

In short: features built to suit the needs of a creative organisation, not a corporate one.

Support and Setup

Get set up in minutes and start taking submissions immediately.

We’re of the firm belief that you should always be able to try before you buy. You can create a free account in just a few clicks through the Dapple website - no need for sales calls, mandatory onboarding or account review periods, just click and go. Here’s how getting started with Dapple is easy:

Create a free account in just a few clicks
Set up quickly by using industry templates and a smart form generator
Full onboarding and setup hand-holding
Demo mode enables free testing without affecting real data
Instant chat support and help centre with over a hundred articles and guides

Setup can be done in a matter of minutes, thanks to in-built industry templates and a smart form generator - Submittable can take weeks or even months. We also understand that creative opportunities can be changeable to say the least! With Dapple, you only pay when you go live with your opportunity.

The Dapple team helps with setup and onboarding where needed, and support is instant through chat functionality in the platform - no need to wait days for a reply, and many of our five-star reviews reference the quality of support.

Dapple vs Submittable: software fees

No surprises here, but it’s very expensive!

Submittable (pictured above) is one of the most expensive platforms in the space. Their standard pricing starts at around $10,000 per year, with no monthly option. That’s a hard sell if you:

Run seasonal or one-off opportunities
Operate on grants or limited funding
Want flexibility year to year

They do offer a discounted $39/month CLMP plan (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses), which is certainly commendable but it comes with heavy feature restrictions such as limited submission quotas, submission forms with only 5 fields, no extra stages, limited users and reviewers. And this only applies to CLMP members - many creative organisations don’t qualify.

Dapple, by comparison:

Starts from $35/month
Offers monthly plans
Includes far higher submission and feature allowances
Provides additional discounts for CLMP members too.

In short: the same level of sophistication, without the enterprise lock-in.

Dapple vs Submittable: submission fees

Yeah, these too are expensive!

As Submittable established an early market dominance, it could set the terms of any payment fees without much competition. Charging 5% and $0.99 on every transaction, the Submittable fees are the highest out there. For creative organisations, they really didn't have any other choice - they could either suck it up or pass these extra costs on to their applicants. With rising costs all around, some took the latter approach, and this resulted in a perpetuating cycle of higher and higher fees for artists or writers, a culture that still exists to this day.

It's also worth noting that Submittable uses its own payment systems, meaning they receive the funds and pay organisations at a later date. If cashflow matters (and in the arts, it always does), waiting over a month for your own funds is far from ideal.

Submittable

5% + $0.99 per transaction
Uses its own payment system
Pays out weeks later, not immediately

Dapple, by contrast charge a much lower rate in fees and also integrates directly into any organisation's own Stripe accounts, meaning instant deposits. There are also much higher quotas on any free submissions to encourage organisations to offer opportunities without any fees.

Dapple

3.5% + $0.65 per transaction
Connects directly to your own Stripe account
Funds are deposited immediately
No extra Stripe fees paid by the org.

Real-world Example

If you receive 1,000 submissions at $5 each, Dapple will save you over $400.

If you receive 5000 submissions at $10 each, Dapple will save you $2,450.00.

That’s money better spent on artist fees, judges, printing, or simply keeping the lights on.

And because payments go straight into Stripe, there are no delayed payouts, no extra steps, no extra Stripe fees and no surprises. Transfer funds to your bank whenever you choose.

Try our calculator below to see how much you’d save!

So…who should use which?

Use Submittable if:
You’re a large organisation, corporation, or government body with a high budget and complex CSR or grant requirements.
Use Dapple if:
You work in the creative industries and want powerful tools, fair pricing, immediate payments, and a platform that actually understands your world.

Different tools for different jobs. For creatives, the choice is pretty clear. Curious how much you’d save? Dapple’s Pricing Calculator makes the maths hard to ignore.

Learn more about Dapple

If you'd like to know more about Dapple and how this platform can help you, book a call in with our team below.

The Best Submittable Alternative for the Creative Industry