A Modern Alternative
to Zealous
More than just an awards platform, Dapple’s visual interface, intuitive judging experience and next-level flexibility show the difference between a modern and legacy platform.
What's the difference?
If you're searching for a Zealous alternative, you're likely running awards, open calls, exhibitions, or residencies and you've started to notice a bit of friction. A missing automation, a grumbling judge and a rising bill. Maybe the platform just feels a little… 2015.
Zealous has been around since 2011 and serves a wide slice of the arts industry. It champions the creator which we love, and it does a lot. But it was designed for a world where managing awards entries meant navigating a complex portal, not a fluid, visual pipeline you can see at a glance.
Dapple is a next-generation awards platform built from the ground up for modern programmes. It gives your team a real-time visual overview of every programme, an intuitive judging experience that reviewers love, and flexibility to manage just about any sort of program.
Features and Interface
All your projects on one screen
Zealous gives you a dashboard for your call. Dapple gives you a suite of analytics for multiple calls or categories, all on a single page.
With visual kanban boards, you see every submission at a glance, in real time, moving through the different stages from collection to completion. It keeps things simple, easier to manage and reduces admin time further.
- Visual kanban view across all submissions
- All projects visible from a single hub
- Drag-and-drop stage management
- Filters, tags, and saved views
- Unlimited stages on every plan
Entrants
An easy entrant experience
The entrant journey is modern, quick and integrated using the latest form tech.
- Beautiful entry forms: Custom backgrounds, headers, and a sleek visual layout improves the whole experience.
- Easy-to-use: Drag and drop, multiple field options, dynamic steps and smart conditional logic. Entrants find it simple and easy to complete.
- Payments: Create different dynamic payment options based on form selection.
- Draft reminders: Customise multiple automatic email reminders that nudge unfinished entrants back to complete their submission. This will improve conversion rates and revenue.
- Entrant accounts: They can view entries, download files, see payment history, upload supplementary material, withdraw entries and message your team directly.
Judges
A judging experience your panel will thank you for
Dapple's review rounds are clean, fast, customisable and optimised for creative work. 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 learning curve.
- Personalised: Customisable judging accounts with clear to-do lists
- Media: Optimised for high-res image and video review
- Feedback: Custom scoring criteria, votes, and comments, due dates, min/max requirements
- Multiple review rounds: Create a review round for each stage of the application journey
- Feedback: Collated feedback overview for admins
- Simplicity: Designed to be visual, easy to operate with no steep learning curve
Pricing
More submissions, lower cost
Zealous prices by submission volume and features but they don’t give you much. You'll be watching your yearly count tick up against a hard cap, or realising that multi-round evaluation is locked to a higher tier.
Dapple gives you more submissions at a lower price point, with more features on the plan you can afford.
- 500 submissions from just £39/month
- Multi-stage reviews included from Growth plan
- Onboarding on all plans
- Low transaction fee: 2% + £0.20
Dapple is 1000 times better than the system we used before. This is next-level stuff!
- Rowan S, Founder & Curator
Side by side
Let's compare
Compare the top-level costs and features across both platforms.
| Cost | ✦ Dapple | Zealous |
|---|---|---|
| Entry-level paid plan | £39/month (500 submissions) | £39/month (75 submissions) |
| Onboarding fee | Free | Free |
| Monthly billing option | ✓ All plans | ✓ All plans |
| Transaction fee on paid entries | 2% + £0.20 + Stripe Fees | 2.2% + 20p (capped at £2) + Stripe Fees |
| Free trial / test account | ✓ | ✓ (20 entries) |
| Feature | ✦ Dapple | Zealous |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow & Management | ||
| Immediate launch | ✓ | ✓ |
| Applications list view | ✓ | ✓ |
| Visual kanban boards | ✓ | — |
| All projects on one screen | ✓ | — |
| Submission & creator tags | ✓ | — |
| Filter and sort | ✓ | ✓ |
| Stage-based automations | ✓ Growth+ | — |
| 1:1 messaging with submitters | ✓ | — |
| Automated draft reminders | ✓ | Scale |
| Multi org and team | ✓ | — |
| Advanced permissions | ✓ | — |
| Advanced exports | ✓ | ✓ |
| Judging & Review | ||
| Multi-stage review rounds | ✓ Growth+ | ✓ Pro+ |
| Custom scoring criteria | ✓ | ✓ Pro+ |
| Hide fields from reviewers | ✓ | ✓ |
| Public voting | — | ✓ Pro+ |
| Forms & Submissions | ||
| Customised branded forms | ✓ | — |
| Conditional logic | ✓ | ✓ |
| All file types | ✓ | ✓ |
| Form versioning | ✓ | — |
| Embed video and images | ✓ | ✓ |
| Customised step functionality | ✓ | — |
| Customised listing page | ✓ | ✓ |
| Awards directory | — | ✓ |
| Auto-form generator | ✓ | — |
| Draft submission reminder emails | ✓ | ✓ |
| Demo mode | ✓ | — |
| Analytics & Integrations | ||
| Claude MCP integration | ✓ | — |
| Built-in analytics dashboard | ✓ | ✓ |
| Zapier integration | ✓ Pro | ✓ Enterprise |
| Audit history | ✓ Growth+ | — |
| Support | ||
| Live chat support | ✓ All plans | ✓ All plans |
| Dedicated account manager | ✓ Pro | ✓ Enterprise |
*All data based on publicly available information as of March 2026.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, Dapple covers the same core use cases as Zealous: awards, open calls, exhibitions, residencies, and competitions. Where Dapple differs is in its approach. It's built around a visual pipeline, not a list-based portal, and it's priced to be accessible for smaller and mid-sized organisations from day one.
Dapple's review rounds are designed around what judges actually need: a clear queue of what's pending, a clean view of each submission, fast image and video loading, and simple scoring with no friction. Judges get personal accounts they can easily sign in to using Google or Microsoft single sign-in or an automated email link. No passwords or logins to remember! They can see their progress at a glance, leave scores, votes, and comments and give creator feedback in a single workflow. Admins get a collated view of all feedback. The most common thing we hear from judges who switch from other platforms is that it's just... easier.
For most organisations, yes. Dapple's Starter plan starts at £39/month for up to 500 submissions. If you want to take this amount of submissions with Zealous it will cost 3 x this amount with a more restricted set of features.
Absolutely. Dapple is built for organisations running multiple open calls at once. You can manage all of them from a single hub, with submissions visible across all projects in one global list. Starter plans support up to 20 projects; Growth up to 100; Pro is unlimited.
Dapple's Stages kanban boards gives you a visual, column-by-column view of all your submissions as they move through your workflow stages — from received through to shortlisted or selected. Unlike a table-based list (which you can toggle too if you prefer this view), you can see the state of your entire programme at a glance. It's especially useful for visual art and photography submissions where seeing the work in context matters. Zealous doesn't offer this feature.
Yes. You can create a free account and set up your programme without a credit card. Dapple also has a demo mode that lets you test your full workflow before going live — something Zealous doesn't offer.
Yes! With Dapple you don’t need to speak to a sales rep and pay up front, you can sign up for a free account, set up in a matter of minutes and test out the system for an unlimited amount of time. Use Demo Mode to test out all the features safe in the knowledge that this won’t affect any real data. Only start paying when you go live with your opportunity and start taking live submissions.
Yes, this is very simple to do. We have a built-in creator upload feature to upload all of your previous customer database into. We offer free onboarding support to all new organisations and will help you migrate any previous setup in Dapple. Get in touch to book a setup call!
Yes, on every plan. Dapple uses Stripe Connect to process entry fees securely, with a 2% + £0.20 transaction fee, plus Stripe's standard processing fees. There are no additional per-submission charges or minimum thresholds. All funds will immediately appear in your own connected Stripe account. We accept all major cards and currencies.