OpenWater

RATING:

4.6

(56)

About OpenWater

OpenWater is a cloud-based solution that helps users manage the entire lifecycle of grant programs from registration to submission of various types of grants by reaching out to potential grantees. Key features include outcomes measurement, payment tracking, financial reporting, self-registration and grant award tracking. Designed for foundations, non-profits, corporations and government agencies, OpenWater's drag-and-drop interface provides form building tools to collect contact information and store them in a unified database for future reference. The team-based application comes with custom tools comprising dependant/multi-category fields to gather a wide range of data based on client requirements. Additionally, administrators can manage user access to review gra...

OpenWater Pricing

Contact OpenWater for detailed pricing information.

Starting price: 

$5,900.00 per year

Free trial: 

Not Available

Free version: 

Not Available

Wow applicants and raise the prestige of your award, through an OpenWater awards website.
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OpenWater Reviews

Overall Rating

4.6

Ratings Breakdown

Secondary Ratings

Ease-of-use

4

Customer Support

5

Value for money

4.5

Functionality

4

Most Helpful Reviews for OpenWater

1 - 5 of 56 Reviews

Josh

E-Learning, 2 - 10 employees

Used less than 12 months

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

Reviewed September 2021

Powerful and flexible awards management system

User Profile

Al

Verified reviewer

Automotive, 5,001-10,000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed May 2024

OpenWater has no competition

Pain-free. They are highly responsive to questions and suggestions. Contest management is an added part of my workload. OpenWater's system keeps it from getting too out of hand. My supervisor deals with the financial aspects. I don't know the details, but she has been able to secure multi-year discounts.

PROS

OpenWater's system is powerful and elegant. I'm only a daily user fwhen our contest is live, approximately half the year. I'm always pleasantly surprised by the improvements they've made when I open the next year's contest. I suspect that we are not using OpenWater's system to its full potential, but what we do utilize more than works for us. Their self-help guides are useful and when they're not, customer service is available (see caveat below). I have had several different dedicated service advisors; all have been uniformly excellent. Our entrants and judges find the system easy to use.

CONS

Communication is mostly by email. If you want a phone call, you need to make an appointment. That said, they are highly responsive when rare problems arise.

Reason for choosing OpenWater

N/A. OpenWater and our previous vendor were the only contestants. As indicated, OpenWater proved its superiority.

Reasons for switching to OpenWater

OpenWater cold-called. I was skeptical at first, but they mentioned that they employed several staff from our then-current provider. They sold me by showing how their system could solve several problems I was having with the current system.

Skye

Verified reviewer

Publishing, 2-10 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra

OVERALL RATING:

5

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

5

Reviewed April 2019

3 Years of Loyalty and Counting

10/10 would recommend.

PROS

So easy to use, the software has self explanatory navigation, intuitive organization and all the functionalities we need for our awards programs. If issues do arise (though not that often!), the immediate customer support and service streamlines our work-flow and save us time and headaches. The OpenWater team truly does respond within 10 minutes of opening the chat box, which hovers conveniently but covertly on every page of the site when you are logged in as primary admin. (Shout out to the rep who always provides instant solutions!) The platform is ever improving. We are always finding new updates within the interface and its capabilities that are obviously informed by customer feedback. They truly are the most receptive and adaptive team we've worked with.

CONS

If the software team weren't so amazingly immediately responsive, we could have small grievances to list in this cons corner, but all gripes are attended to and abolished within the same day they are discovered. So the only issue this leaves us with is one that really does have a solution, but one that requires more funds: We have multiple awards programs running at once, and although the upgrade is available to have additional programs open simultaneously, it would be an economical advantage to be able to have at least one more program live within the payment plan we are currently using. This wish aside, OpenWater and their team have been nothing less than one of our best investments to date.

Douglas

Education Management, 5,001-10,000 employees

Used monthly for less than 6 months

Review Source
This review was submitted organically. No incentive was offered

OVERALL RATING:

1

EASE OF USE

1

FUNCTIONALITY

1

Reviewed March 2024

Useless Split Screen

I hated using it. It slowed me down, was cumbersome and had no option to get a printout of the application to review off line.

PROS

The split screen for reading the application and answering review questions is nothing short of useless - constant needless scrolling back and forth.

CONS

Split screen - lack of options to download the application as a pdf - need to be online to use this.

Carol

Events Services, 11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review Source: Capterra
This reviewer was invited by us to submit an honest review and offered a nominal incentive as a thank you.

OVERALL RATING:

4

EASE OF USE

5

VALUE FOR MONEY

5

CUSTOMER SUPPORT

5

FUNCTIONALITY

4

Reviewed May 2024

How Open Water Saved the SME Awards and Scholarship Programs!

It has been a wonderful relationship working with the Open Water Customer Service and OW IT department.

PROS

Top Notch Customer Service Representatives. I never had to wait for someone to help when I needed it. Ease of implementation. User satisfaction. Virtually effortless to maintain and copy to the next year award cycle.

CONS

I have not found anything to complain about or wish I could have. Our last awards and scholarship was such a horrible software--Open Water has been a dream come true. The obstacle we have had the most problem with is our emails from the Open Water system getting through to our customers/users and not going to their spam accounts.

Reason for choosing OpenWater

We we familiar with the product. We used it for abstracts. We saw the value of using it for awards and scholarships. We had a lot of programs that we could manage on one platform which made it more economical for the volume that we do.

Reasons for switching to OpenWater

Personify was horrible. I had non stop complaints for every cycle!