Submittable Alternative
The Creative Alternative
to Submittable
Dapple is built for creatives not corporates. We believe in fairness and transparency like low fees or enterprise-grade features accessible to all.
Dapple is built for creatives not corporates. We believe in fairness and transparency like low fees or enterprise-grade features accessible to all.
Submittable started as a submissions platform for the creative world, making it easier for literary magazines to accept submissions. Then it pivoted. Today, it's a corporate social responsibility and grants management tool, built for Amazon, Meta, and Visa. Its homepage doesn't mention artists and its pricing is designed for companies of that size.
Dapple is what Submittable used to be, and done properly. Built specifically for creative organisations managing awards, residencies, exhibitions, open calls, publishing and smaller grants, it provides a genuinely modern submission experience, a workflow your reviewers and judges will actually enjoy, and transparent monthly pricing that doesn't require a procurement department to sign off.
Features and Interface
Submittable is aimed at grants teams at large foundations and corporations. It shows. The interface is organised around compliance workflows, budget tracking, and employee giving tools — not around the kind of creative open call you're actually running.
Dapple enables multiple programmes on entry-level plans and each one has its own visual pipeline. You see every submission moving through your stages at a glance, from a single hub, in real time. No hunting through tabs. No chasing your team for status updates. No programme limitations.
Entrants
Submittable's applicant portal is functional but it was designed for grant applications and compliance-heavy processes, not creative submissions. It can feel clinical, bureaucratic, and slow for artists, performers or writers who just want to submit their work.
Judges
Submittable has review tools. They work. But they were designed for grant committees evaluating dense written proposals — not judges assessing visual work, photography, film, or design. The interface reflects that.
Dapple's review panels are clean, fast, and built around creative content. High-res images and video load beautifully. Scoring, voting, and commenting is frictionless. Judges see exactly what's assigned to them, where they left off, and what's complete — with no training required.
"Submittable is complex, difficult to use and doesn't really suit our needs. Dapple is the opposite. You haven't missed anything!"
— Rebekah B, Exhibition Co-ordinator
Pricing
Submittable is expensive. Aimed at enterprise customers, any entry-level plans come with mandatory annual contracts and highly restrictive feature sets like limited form fields or single programmes. Dapple is different:
If you're a small-to-medium creative organisation, you shouldn't need an enterprise budget to run a professional awards programme.
Setup
Submittable requires an implementation process — onboarding calls, setup support, and in some cases, professional services to get your programme configured. That's fine if you're a foundation distributing millions in grants. It's overkill if you're running an open call for a photography prize.
Dapple is designed to be fast. A smart form generator, a large library of creative industry templates, one-click project duplication and an interface your whole team can navigate without a training session. Most organisations are live within hours.
Submittable charges a sizeable 5% + $0.99 per transaction. Dapple by comparison charges 3.9% + $0.65 (3.5% + £0.49 in the UK) per transaction. This might not seem like a big difference, but you'll quickly start to notice when hundreds or thousands of submissions start coming through! Check out our pricing calculator to get an idea of how much you'd save using Dapple instead.
Submittable also uses its own payment system to manage your payments. This means you don't receive your funds for over a month. With Dapple, we connect directly to your own Stripe account, meaning funds are deposited instantly, giving you more financial flexibility.
Dapple uses Stripe Connect to integrate directly with your own Stripe account. Every payment is instantly deposited into your Stripe account with Dapple's fees already deducted. There are no additional Stripe fees to pay, as these are fulfilled by Dapple.
Total number of submissions you receive per year.
What submitters pay, on average.
| Platform | % Take | Per Submission | Estimated Annual Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Submittable | 5% | £0.75 | £1,000.00 |
| Dapple | 3.5% | £0.49 | £665.00 |
Submittable pricing: 5% of each paid submission fee + £0.75 per transaction.
Dapple pricing: 3.5% of each paid submission fee + £0.49 per transaction.
The calculation includes any associated Stripe fees which are fulfilled by Dapple directly with Stripe.
Side by side
Compare the top-level costs and features across both platforms.
| Pricing | ✦ Dapple | Submittable |
|---|---|---|
| Submission fees | 3.9% + $0.65 | 5% + $0.99 |
| Platform fees | Start from $49/m | Start from $10,000/y |
| Industry discounts available | ✓ | CLMP only |
| Monthly subscription option on all plans | ✓ | — |
| Feature | ✦ Dapple | Submittable |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow & Management | ||
| Multi-projects on all plans | ✓ | — |
| Immediate launch | ✓ | — |
| Visual kanban boards | ✓ | — |
| Project hub | ✓ | — |
| Advanced permissions | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-team & org | ✓ | — |
| Advanced bulk messaging | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1:1 messaging | ✓ | ✓ |
| Submission & creator tags | ✓ | ✓ |
| Administrators can edit applications | ✓ | — |
| Automations | ✓ | ✓ |
| Applications list view | ✓ | ✓ |
| Automated draft reminders | ✓ | ✓ |
| Message scheduling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Judging & Review | ||
| Advanced review features | ✓ | ✓ |
| Bulk assign | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hide fields from review panels | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customised rounds on all plans | ✓ | — |
| Unlimited judging stages | ✓ | — |
| Forms & Submissions | ||
| Unlimited form fields on all plans | ✓ | — |
| Maximum file size upload limit | 1gb | 400mb |
| All file types | ✓ | ✓ |
| Listings page | ✓ | ✓ |
| Form versioning | ✓ | ✓ |
| Form conditional logic | ✓ | ✓ |
| Auto-form generator | ✓ | — |
| Demo mode | ✓ | — |
| Entry resubmission | ✓ | ✓ |
| HD video hosting | ✓ | ✓ |
| Image display | ✓ | — |
| Analytics, Discovery & Support | ||
| Advanced reporting tools on all plans | ✓ | — |
| Claude MCP integration | ✓ | — |
| Built-in analytics dashboard | ✓ | ✓ |
| Data export | ✓ | ✓ |
| Zapier integration | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audit history | ✓ | ✓ |
| Discovery platform | — | ✓ |
| Public voting | — | ✓ |
| Corporate volunteering tools | — | ✓ |
| Employee giving tools | — | ✓ |
| Live chat support for all plans | ✓ | — |
*All data on this page is based on publicly available information and reviews for these sites as of February 2026.
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