Zealous vs Awardify

OpenWater

Award Force

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

Awardify

Awardify is a fully customizable software program designed to simplify and organize the award show process. Awardify provided an intuitive interface and features easy-to-use evaluation tools to ensure quick and accurate judging for your awards program.

Short (plain-speak): 
Award Force is the world’s #1 awards software, trusted by millions of users worldwide. Secure, intuitive and designed to meet country-specific requirements without compromise. 

🏆 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.

Access Controls/Permissions

Activity Dashboard

Activity Tracking

Alerts/Notifications

Applicant Tracking

Approval Process Control

Awards Management

Blind Judging

Categorization/Grouping

Collaboration Tools

Commenting/Notes

Contact Management

Customizable Branding

Customizable Fields

Customizable Forms

Customizable Questions

Customizable Reports

Customizable Templates

Data Import/Export

Document Review

Electronic Payments

Electronic Submission

Email Reminders

Entrant Management

Entry Fee Processing

Entry Management

For Marketers

Forms Management

Judging Management

Landing Pages/Web Forms

Polls/Voting

Progress Tracking

Promotions Management

Ratings/Reviews

Real-Time Analytics

Real-Time Data

Reporting & Statistics

Role-Based Permissions

Scoring

Skills Contests (Photo, Essay, Design, etc)

Social Promotion

SSL Security

Status Tracking

Third-Party Integrations

Web Forms

Workflow Management

Zealous

Web-based

Windows

Chromebook

Linux

Free Plan

Starter

Scale

Enterprise

Director

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.

Program Manager

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.

Student Engagement Manager

Their product is constantly evolving and improving to meet the needs of its users (e.g., we can now collect judge comments).

The judging process was also very clear and easy to use - we even had a 94 year old judge who managed very ably to navigate the site!

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

It is visually driven and well designed making it appealing to applicants and judges alike.

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.

Contest Chairperson for a Nonprofit Organization

Beyond all of that, the woman who worked with me to train me in the software and ensure my contest was set up appropriately was incredibly helpful, nice, and made it very clear that Zealous is a labor of love that is constantly seeking ways to improve its service.

This was a great plus cause we always knew that if we write to you we will receive support in minutes.

Director of Arts and Events

Zealous made the management of our art prize so much easier - the platform enabled judges to view admissions individually as well as collectively and made our administration of the entries so much easier.

It was pretty easy to use all the features and we received great support from the team where we got stuck.

The user-interface as an Opportunity organizer was very easy to understand, and provided me with some structure to organize information the way I liked.

Global Director

The team at Zealous, especially [sensitive content hidden], were always there when we needed them to ask lots of questions and find the best way to build our Awards on the platform.

Marketing Specialist

This is our second year using Zealous for our competition and we will be using it again next year as well!

Consultant

It’s and easy to use platform made even better by the support.

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The BEST part, though, was the amount of support and guidance I received from our contact there, [sensitive content hidden].

Brilliant customer service - the team is always happy to help and goes above and beyond to provide support throughout.

Truly I had a fantastic experience using Zealous and I urge anyone considering running a contest using Zealous to do so.

Zealous was a blessing to me (this year's contest chair), our office staff, and our judges.

Events Manager

It would also be great to have greater control over comms sent via the platform, i.e. reminders of application deadlines etc, which currently can't be sent en masse to those with applications in progress (they had to be done individually) and also can't be branded to our company.

Events and Training Manager

I would like judges to be able to add comments/ notes for each entry and it would be useful to be able to customise the email notifications that are sent out - I currently switch them off because they're not quite the right fit.

Marketing Co-ordinator

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.

Trustee

A useful tool to save administration time for Competition managenent of entries.

I like the fact that judges can view and score all of the entries in one place and they can be allocated to judge certain categories/ entries according to expertise.

Events Executive

We had great help from [sensitive content hidden] in choosing the right plan for us and explaining us how the platform works initially and through the process before any major things we needed to set-up.  

Executive Assistant

It's important for us to allocate judges to a sub-section of the entries and this is not currently an easy process in Zealous. If a judge accepts an invitation midway through the judging period, this results in having to re-allocate the judges.

Programmes Manager 

What really makes Zealous stand out is having an amazing account manager who can answer any queries and offer 1-1 support as a user.

Student Engagement and Events Officer

Great features for set up and judging abilities.

No title

Amazing experience, I never write reviews but this product was that good I felt I should.

Senior Executive

I believe as soon as you sign on to a paid plan you're assigned a dedicated support contact, who can give extremely knowledgable demos and are available if anything isn't going the way you want.

The live chat was always very efficient and Bethan helped me with any questions and issues I had.

They helped get me set up, hopped on calls to talk me through everything, were just on the end of the phone or an email away for any query I had and regularly checked in to make sure I understood everything.

Partner

Getting set up in the system doesn't require more than an email and password, and the instructions for submitting and reviewing are very clear.

Social Media and Communications Coordinator

Being able to assign specific categories to judges, score cards, and a robust submissions catalogue  have shaved off a lot of time for all involved, and saved us days of manually faffing around in folders and spreadsheets.

We moved from using a spreadsheet to Zealous midway through judging an award and it streamlined the whole process.

Coordinator

Zealous help our company to collect entries for an image collection, it was easy to use and the platform always provided enough support to deal with any problems encountered.

PhD student

It was difficult to edit the categories that each judge was assigned to whenever there was a later change in plan.

Dam Removal Europe Network manager

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

The judges and applicants all found the platform easy to use, and if anyone ran into any issues the live chat was available for ad hoc tech questions.

We would wish more flexibility in adding roles and fields, eg.

Excellent customer support with good transparency about when they were available to help solve any technical issues.

It makes us feel valued as customers and makes it all the more likely that we will return year on year.

sensitive content hidden], our account manager, is a star - she's very responsive and helpful, thank you!

Communications Manager

Really good customer service and support!

The level of customer support/ service is very high and was especially useful in our first year using Zealous.

Project Manager

sensitive content hidden] has been our account manager for two years running and consistently goes above and beyond to support us. And when [sensitive content hidden] is unavailable, the rest of the team steps in as well.

Customer Support

Judging Process

Email and Submission Automation

User Interface

Competition Management

Judge Comments and Feedback

Features

Bugs and Issues

Information Organization

Scoring and Judge Assignment

Small Business

Large Enterprises

Mid-size Business

Freelancers

Zealous Solutions

Single Sign On

Awardify Subscription

Head of Events

Limited Flexibility in Certain Reports: Some reports (particularly around user information and submission requirements) feel slightly rigid and could benefit from more customization or simplification.

Director of Membership Engagement

We have a better understanding of how to navigate and customize the system to meet our needs.

Master Electrician

The interface/UX could use improvement, and it didn't allow us to award a first, second, and third — only first.

I do feel like there are several issues that could be worked out to make this a more user-friendly platform.  

I would use them again and advise others looking for awards software in this price range to do the same.

Director, Operations, People and Culture

Awardify customer support was vey helpful and the training calls were extremely helpful!  

General Manager

Just need to work out the kinks on our end for the nominee interface.

Membership and Events Coordinator

It offers intuitive features that enhance the entire experience.

Special Projects Coordinator

I found the interface and process to be both smooth and efficient.

Treasurer

It centralized all aspects of an annual awards program and has an incredibly intuitive nomination, entry and judging platform.

Zealous vs Awardify Comparison (2026)

Zealous

Awardify

Overview

Video & Screenshots

Pricing

User reviews

Key features

Integrations

Alternatives