PLATFORM COMPARISON

Looking for a Submittable alternative?

Submittable is a broad submission-management platform spanning grants, corporate giving, and scholarships, with real scale: Scholarship America selected it as its technology provider in 2025. AwardSpring is built specifically for scholarships, donors, and funds at colleges, universities, and foundations. The difference is scholarship-specific depth versus program breadth.

AT A GLANCE

Comparison table

AwardSpring and Submittable at-a-glance comparison
Criterion	AwardSpring	Submittable
Core buyer	Colleges, universities, and scholarship foundations	Foundations, corporations, and administrators running grants, CSR, and scholarships together
Single application with auto-matching	Yes, for every customer	Per-program eligibility screening; cross-fund matching not documented as of August 2026
Scholarship + donor management	One platform, one record	Donor reporting documented in its corporate-giving products, not the scholarship product
Integrations	Built for financial aid and foundation office workflows	Two-way API; Salesforce, DocuSign, Candid, PeopleSoft; SAML/OIDC SSO
Support	16-minute average response; 4.7 of 5 on G2 across 110 reviews	Published 12-minute average tech-support response
AI	SpringIQ: AI drafts and prepares, people decide	AI Assistant generates application forms; document parsing and review summaries

Core buyer

AwardSpring: Colleges, universities, and scholarship foundations
Submittable: Foundations, corporations, and administrators running grants, CSR, and scholarships together

Single application with auto-matching

AwardSpring: Yes, for every customer
Submittable: Per-program eligibility screening; cross-fund matching not documented as of August 2026

Scholarship + donor management

AwardSpring: One platform, one record
Submittable: Donor reporting documented in its corporate-giving products, not the scholarship product

Integrations

AwardSpring: Built for financial aid and foundation office workflows
Submittable: Two-way API; Salesforce, DocuSign, Candid, PeopleSoft; SAML/OIDC SSO

Support

AwardSpring: 16-minute average response; 4.7 of 5 on G2 across 110 reviews
Submittable: Published 12-minute average tech-support response

AI

AwardSpring: SpringIQ: AI drafts and prepares, people decide
Submittable: AI Assistant generates application forms; document parsing and review summaries

WHY AWARDSPRING

When institutions choose AwardSpring over Submittable

Criterion 1

Matching across every fund, not screening per program.

Students complete one AwardSpring application and are matched to every scholarship they qualify for, so committees start scoring on day one. Submittable's help center documents per-program Eligibility Forms, a screening step in front of a specific project's application; we found no Submittable documentation of automatically matching one general application across many funds.

Criterion 2

Donor reporting where the scholarships live.

AwardSpring's donor reporting runs on the same record as awarding. Submittable's documented donor reporting sits in its corporate-giving products (the Bright Network portal); its scholarship product page does not mention donor reporting or stewardship for scholarship donors as of August 2026.

Criterion 3

A platform sized to scholarship teams.

Capterra reviewers rate Submittable highly (4.8 of 5 across nearly 400 reviews) and also note that the cost can feel difficult to sustain within a modest operating budget.

THE HONEST FIT

When Submittable may fit better

An organization running grants, CSR and employee giving, and scholarships side by side on one platform (its 2024 WizeHive acquisition brought Bright Funds employee giving into the family).
A foundation or corporate program that pays recipients directly: Submittable advertises disbursing funds to scholars and fellows from the same place applications are accepted.
Programs with multilingual applicant pools: Submittable's AI Assistant generates application forms in English, Spanish, French, and German.
Publishers, media organizations, and arts programs running open-call submissions, which sit outside a scholarship-specific platform's scope.

SWITCHING

Switching from Submittable: what the move looks like

Export your data. Applicants, awards, and program history come out as spreadsheets. You own your data.
Guided rebuild. SpringBoard onboarding recreates your scholarships, cycles, and review workflows, and imports historical data.
Cut over between cycles. Implementation is timed so your next award cycle opens on AwardSpring.

FAQ

Questions about this comparison

Is AwardSpring a good alternative to Submittable?

For scholarship-first organizations, yes: matching, review, awarding, and donor reporting are the whole product. For organizations whose scholarship program is one of many submission programs, Submittable's breadth may serve better.

How does AwardSpring pricing compare to Submittable?

Both are quote-based annual subscriptions. AwardSpring includes unlimited applicants, reviewers, and admins, scoped to institution size and award volume.

Can we migrate from Submittable to AwardSpring?

Yes. Most customers switch between award cycles, and historical data comes across during onboarding.

KEEP COMPARING