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OpenWater vs Zealous Comparison (2026)

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OpenWater

Zealous

Overview

OpenWater streamlines program management with its end-to-end solution for accepting and reviewing applications, awards, grants, scholarships, proposals, and abstracts.

🏆 Zealous is an online contest management system built to save everyone time and grow your contests. Securely collect, store and analyse entries. Automate e-mails to all stakeholders, sign up for a flexible monthly package, and cancel at any time. Perfect for awards, contests & competitions.

Platforms supported

Web-based
iPhone app
Android app
Windows Phone app

Typical customers

Freelancers
Small businesses
Mid size businesses
Large enterprises

Customer support

Phone
Online
Knowledge base
Video tutorials

view more detailsview details

Platforms supported

Web-based
iPhone app
Android app
Windows Phone app

Typical customers

Freelancers
Small businesses
Mid size businesses
Large enterprises

Customer support

Phone
Online
Knowledge base
Video tutorials

view more detailsview details

Video & Screenshots

No videos yet

Pricing

Starting from

5100

Per year

Free trial available
Credit cardless trial
Free account
Subscription based

Starting from

Per month

Free trial available
Credit cardless trial
Free account
Subscription based

User reviews

4.6

Value for money

Ease of use

Features

Customer support

86%

would recommend this app

4.7

Value for money

Ease of use

Features

Customer support

87%

would recommend this app

Pros

“What I like most about OpenWater is the strong customer support and the flexibility to customize the system to fit our specific conference needs.”

Jenna K.

Education Systems Manager

“Judges are now able to enter all of their scores and we can use OpenWater to calculate and weight things as needed versus having to do all of this manually before!”

Danielle A.

AVP

“This level of support and flexibility has been especially valuable in adapting the platform to our conference workflows and requirements.”

Jenna K.

Education Systems Manager

Pros

“I would have liked the option to divide the text into chapters or boxes rather than reading as one long section of text over several pages.”

Juliet D.

Director

“It created a professional look and a relatively easy system to work with once teething problems were resolved.”

Claire R.

CEO

“We've used them for 3 years now and have always had ease of use with our judges (over 160 applications per year now) and entrant communications.”

Tamara R.

CEO

Cons

“As a result, we rely on a separate system to manage these connected data points, which creates a duplicative and time-consuming workflow.”

Jenna K.

Education Systems Manager

“There have been several times where my team has needed to set something up and it isn't in a place that we would think it would be in. ”

Danielle A.

AVP

“It lacks the ability to have more customizable features. ”

Brandi T.

Undergraduate Research and Training Programs Manager

Cons

“Also with the jury allocation we were having some problems because of the fact that not all jury members entered the platform at the same time.”

Florina P.

Program Manager

“I don't know if these are things we would have been able to do or if we'd need new functionality:A couple of our questions couldn't be formatted by the person entering the category, so they just appeared as one text block, rather than separated with line breaks. As this was a multi-stage entry process, the entrants didn't get an email notification when completing their finalist submissions.”

Lisa H.

Marketing Co-ordinator

“we are nature conservation organisation and we couldn't fill out some of the information as we would wish to. ”

Neza P.

Dam Removal Europe Network manager