Should Creative Organisations Charge Fees Upfront or at the End?

Introduction

Most creative submission platforms get the payment question wrong, though not always in the same direction. Charging fees before applicants have started their submission is usually a mistake. But so is dismissing upfront payment entirely. The answer depends on your cash flow reality, your application cycle, and how well your platform handles the experience after payment is taken.

What’s in this article

• Why pay-first became the default
• When charging upfront is genuinely justified
• What needs to happen after payment is taken
• Refund policies and what applicants need to know
• Why most organisations should still charge at the end
• The future of integrated submission flows

Why Did Pay-First Become the Default?

There’s a reason older platforms demanded payment first and that’s because they were built before seamless checkout flows existed. Admins needed a simple way to confirm commitment, so they made applicants pay before accessing a form. Back then, it made sense. Like dial-up modems or burning CDs, it was a workaround for a technical limitation that no longer exists.

But in 2026, we shop online, book travel online, order groceries online and in all of those cases, you don’t pay before you know what you’re getting. You browse, choose, build your basket, review the details, and then you pay. Submission fees should work the same way. You’re buying a service: entry to a competition, a chance to be included in an exhibition, expedited review, or administrative costs.

And yet many organisations still lead with the paywall and so it’s worth exploring whether this is justified or simply a bit of tech inertia.

When Is Charging Upfront Actually Justified?

There are genuine circumstances where taking payment at the start of a submission process is the right call.

Cashflow-dependent productions

The clearest example is when the quality of the opportunity is dependant on cashflow. Let’s take classical music and live performance. An ensemble running an open call may need early entry revenue to determine the size of the orchestra they can hire or whether the venue is a 200-seat hall or a 500-seat one. These are decisions that must be made months before the event takes place. Waiting until the end of a long application cycle to collect fees simply isn’t financially viable.

Lots of calls, festival applications, and live event submissions involve long application cycles with months of form-filling, document gathering, and application hoops to jump through before a submission is ready to be sent. If entry fees only arrive at the end of that process, the organising team may not have the cashflow to commit to the production infrastructure in the meantime. In these cases, upfront payment isn’t a power move, it is a practical necessity.

Awards and events with upfront cost commitments

Certain award programmes and events face similar pressures. If venue hire, judging panel fees, or marketing spend must be committed to before a submission window closes, early revenue isn’t optional, it’s what makes the programme possible. Organisations in this position aren’t asking applicants to pay first out of habit. They’re doing it because the alternative is not running the programme at all.

What Must Happen After Payment Is Taken

If you’ve made the decision to charge upfront, the experience after payment must be frictionless. An applicant who has paid before starting their submission has already committed. The last thing they should encounter is a clunky, confusing, or fragmented process.

Once payment is confirmed, the applicant should be guided immediately and clearly into their submission. That means:

• A clean confirmation that payment was successful and their submission is now open
• A single, saved application environment where progress is preserved
• Clear signposting of every step required to complete the submission
• Auto-saved drafts so partial progress is never lost
• A direct support route if they have questions during the process

Payment-first can work well when it is genuinely necessary but only if the submission experience that follows is polished enough to justify asking for commitment upfront.

Refund Policies: Be Clear Before Payment, Not After

Many organisations running submission programmes operate a strict no-refund policy on entry fees. This is especially common when fees fund upfront production costs — once that money has been committed, it cannot simply be returned.

If this applies to your programme, it must be communicated clearly before an applicant reaches the payment step, not buried in terms and conditions and never disclosed for the first time after a transaction completes.

Applicants need to understand:

• That entry fees are non-refundable
• Why (briefly, e.g. entry fees fund programme costs committed in advance)
• What happens if their submission is unsuccessful
• Whether any exceptions exist (e.g. duplicate payments, technical errors)

Surfacing this prominently on the entry page, payment step, and confirmation email protects both parties. It reduces disputes, manages expectations, and demonstrates transparency.

Why Most Organisations Should Still Charge at the End

For organisations that don’t have a genuine cashflow dependency on early revenue, the case for charging at the end is clear, and the data is consistent.

Upfront fees shrink your applicant pool

A surprising number of people exit the moment money appears before they’ve started. Emerging talent, underrepresented communities, and people submitting for the first time are disproportionately affected. Upfront fees don’t filter for quality; they usually filter for financial confidence.

Payment-first hides the data you need

When applicants bounce at an upfront paywall, you have no record of who nearly applied. You can’t follow up, you can’t understand why they left, and you can’t improve the next cycle based on that information.

The completion rate illusion

Organisations sometimes defend upfront payment by pointing to higher completion rates among those who start. That can be true, but it is often the wrong metric. Far fewer people start in the first place, which means fewer people finish, which means lower total revenue and a smaller, less diverse pool of work.

The fee becomes an informed decision, not a blind gamble

When applicants reach the payment step at the end of a well-designed submission, they already know their work is uploaded, their form is complete, and they’ve followed the guidelines. Paying then feels natural — a confirmation, not a risk.

Why Organisations Without Cashflow Pressures Still Charge First

For organisations that don’t have a genuine cashflow need for early revenue, the reasons for sticking with pay-first are mostly about inertia, not strategy:

• Legacy software or patchwork tools that cannot support end-of-journey payment
• The belief that payment-first still reduces admin in modern workflows
• Anxiety about abandoned submissions, rather than seeing them as salvageable leads
• Reluctance to update a process that technically works, even if it works badly

Modern submission platforms have removed most of the friction from making this change. The question is not whether it is possible to switch — it is whether your programme has a genuine reason not to.

The Future of Submissions Is Integrated, Not Fragmented

One of the biggest problems with old-school submission flows is how fragmented they are. Visit a website. Click a link to pay somewhere else. Copy a transaction ID. Wait for a form link by email. Open it on a third platform. Hope the admin matches everything correctly.

The goal is integration: a single, seamless environment where filling details, uploading work, reviewing guidelines, and paying all happen in one continuous flow. Whether payment sits at the start or end, the experience should feel as natural as any other digital transaction.

See How Dapple Handles Submission Payments

Dapple supports both payment models. If your programme needs to collect fees upfront, or if you’re ready to move to end-of-journey payment, your Stripe account connects in a few clicks, applicants get auto-saved drafts in their own accounts, and payment drops neatly into a single basket at the end of the process.

Either way, the submission experience is built to feel natural, and applicants notice the difference.