OpenWater 2026: Benefits, Features & Pricing

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Overview
Pricing and Plans
Features
Integrations
User Reviews

Overview

OpenWater

4.6

(73)

Pricing

Starting at $5,100.00 per year

About OpenWater

OpenWater streamlines program management with its end-to-end solution for accepting and reviewing applications, awards, grants, scholarships, proposals, and abstracts. OpenWater’s secure, all-in-one platform makes navigating the review process easy with its user-friendly features. Empower your program administrators by automating time consuming administrative tasks, collecting high volume submissions, and driving data-proven decisions through custom reporting and analytics.

Easily collect, judge, and award an infinite number of applications and submissions for various
use cases including:
• Awards
• Fellowships
• Scholarships
• Grants
• Virtual Conferences
• Peer Review
• Speaker Management
• Accreditation Management

OpenWater Screenshots

OpenWater Pricing and Plans

Starting price: $5,100.00 per year

Free Trial

Free Version

Basic

$5,100.00

per year

No plan information available

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OpenWater Features

Popular features found in Grant Management
Applicant Tracking
Collaboration Tools
Contract/License Management
Document Review
Due Date Tracking
Financial Reporting
Grant Discovery
Payment Tracking
Reporting & Statistics
More features of OpenWater
Access Controls/Permissions
Activity Dashboard
Activity Tracking
Administrative Reporting
Alerts/Notifications
API
Applicant Portal
Application Management
Approval Process Control
Awards Management
Blind Judging
Budget Control
Categorization/Grouping
Commenting/Notes
Compliance Management
Configurable Workflow
Contact Management
CRM
Customizable Branding
Customizable Fields
Customizable Forms
Customizable Questions
Customizable Reports
Customizable Templates
Data Import/Export
Deadline Management
Document Management
Electronic Payments
Electronic Submission
Email Reminders
Email Templates
Entrant Management
Entry Fee Processing
Entry Management
For Grantmakers
Forms Management
Fraud Detection
Grant Application Management
Grant Award Tracking
Grant Management
Impact Measurement
Interview Management
Judging Management
Labeling
Monitoring
Polls/Voting
Progress Tracking
Promotions Management
Recommendations
Reminders
Reviewer Management
Role-Based Permissions
Scoring
Search/Filter
Single Sign On
Skills Contests (Photo, Essay, Design, etc)
Social Media Integration
Social Promotion
SSL Security
Status Tracking
Third-Party Integrations
Web Forms
White Label
Workflow Management

OpenWater Integrations

Salesforce Sales Cloud

NetForum Enterprise

authorize.net

iMIS

MemberClicks

Fonteva for Associations

See all 20 integrations

OpenWater User Reviews

Overall Rating

4.6

Ratings Breakdown

63%

33%

Secondary Ratings

Ease of Use

4.2

Value for money

4.3

Customer support

4.9

Functionality

4.2

Al B.

Verified reviewer

Automotive

5001-10000 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

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.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Customer support

Functionality

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.

Reasons 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.

Brandi T.

Verified reviewer

Higher Education

201-500 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2024

Data Management

Overall I have been satisfied with the excellent technical support I received during the height of my event planning and management. I really appreciate having one dedicated support person[sensitive content hidden]). She's great!! The platform does a great job of being my central hub for collecting submissions.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

I like having all my symposium submission data in one place and the ability to run reports.

Cons:

There is a steep learning curve if you are brining new team members on to manage the platform. It is not an intuitive platform. I don't like the website platform. It lacks the ability to have more customizable features. I end up not using the website for my event because aesthetically it is not appealing. I wish the virtual display of submissions. Public view was better. It looks outdated.

Reasons for switching to OpenWater

Limited data management features and abstract submission collection and scoring.

Mariel B.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

201-500 employees

Used monthly for more than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed May 2024

Needs to be User Friendly

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Customer support was responsive when we had any issues

Cons:

I did not like the way it is designed, it is not easy to navigate.

Carol K.

Verified reviewer

Events Services

11-50 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Review source

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.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

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.

Reasons 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!

Taunie K.

Verified reviewer

Computer Software

201-500 employees

Used other for less than 2 years

Review source

Reviewed October 2019

A very adaptable solution.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

We weren't actively looking for a contest management solution but a Sales representative reached out to gauge our interest in OpenWater, after hearing about our Construction Intern Awards scholarship program. Up until that point we had been using Wordpress to manage this competition, which included a lot of manual maintenance, popular voting plugins, a bulky media gathering process, entry content display delays, and several other headaches. On top of that, we had to use other solutions to manage the judging portion of the contest, which involved either rigging survey products or creating a mess of spreadsheets but both caused confusion for the judges. What we liked most about OpenWater is that it addressed all of the above problems we were facing and allowed us the freedom to customize almost everything. Every other contest management software that we looked at wouldn't let us use our own CSS/HTML to style the site, relying on some sort of WYSIWIG instead. After the initial setup, OpenWater was a huge timesaver. We have also had outstanding support reps since the beginning of implementation. We've asked for a lot during our time using OpenWater and they definitely come through for us.

Cons:

Our contest is set up in a pretty unconventional way (weekly popular vote-based contests combined with a separate traditional scholarship application), and OpenWater has done a good job of keeping up with our requests. There are several smaller, nit-picky things about the popular vote functionality that could be improved but it's still better than what we were doing before. Another factor that we've had to work around is the fact that the contest dashboard looks the same for everyone who visits the dashboard, regardless of user type (applicant/judge/voter), which can be confusing for some users.

Reasons for choosing OpenWater

We decided to choose OpenWater over alternative solutions because of the customization options. We wanted more options than just being able to select our brand colors and upload a logo to a standard form (which is the case with most solutions we came across). OpenWater gave us the freedom to adapt the application portal to match are website CSS as well as other customization options, like SMTP for emailing.

Tammy B.

Verified reviewer

Semiconductors

10000+ employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Reviewed August 2025

ADI/Openwater Review

We've had an overall positive experience. Any time we have questions, [sensitive content hidden] specifically has been incredibly quick and helpful with finding solutions/workarounds or with connecting us to the right resource to help.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

OpenWater serves our purposes to administer and manage a large call for submissions program and grading. The flexibility to build out the rounds and approval levels/types is a great feature.

Cons:

The interface and moving around inside the product is still a bit clunky. Once you know where to look, all the features are there, but it's not super intuitive or easy to train new users as a result.

Vendor Response

Thank you, Tammy! We’re so glad OpenWater has supported your submissions program and that our team has been quick to help with solutions. Your input on the interface is very helpful as we continue working to make the platform more intuitive. We truly appreciate your partnership!

Replied August 2025

Branden A.

Verified reviewer

Information Technology and Services

51-200 employees

Used daily for more than 2 years

Reviewed August 2025

Excellent Customer Service...

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Open Waters Customer Service is second to none! They always respond quickly, ensure coverage and communication when a team member is out, and find a comprehensive solution.

Cons:

The system is quite extensive... It took me too long to learn about the Essential Training for All Admins.

Vendor Response

Hi Branden! We’re so glad our customer service team has been able to support you quickly and thoroughly. We also appreciate your feedback on training, as it helps us continue improving the experience. Thank you for your kind words!

Replied August 2025

Emma H.

Verified reviewer

Entertainment

2-10 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Reviewed August 2025

Open Water Experience

again, [sensitive content hidden] is amazing. I like how I can easily pull reports and there are very minimal customer feedback issues.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

the customer service [sensitive content hidden] is AMAZING!! She answers all my questions within like 5 minutes, it is impressive

Cons:

The platform is a little clunky to navigate, so it took me a moment to get familiar with it. Now I am able to solve 85% of my questions through trial and error.

Vendor Response

Thank you so much for sharing your feedback, Emma! We’re thrilled to hear that our customer support team has been able to help you quickly and effectively and that reporting has been a valuable tool for you. We understand your point about navigation and are always working on ways to make the platform more seamless. We truly appreciate your continued partnership and your thoughtful review; it helps us keep improving!

Replied August 2025

Paige S.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

11-50 employees

Used weekly for more than 2 years

Reviewed August 2025

5 Stars for Open Water

We have been using open water for over 5 years and have had a great experience. The support team is wonderful to work with as well.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

The ease of use, year over year. Copying programs is one of the best features they offer! The judging portal also works very well for our evaluators and the entire platform is very customizable.

Cons:

There is a learning curve to Open Water, but once you get the hang of it, it is consistent across your different programs.

Vendor Response

Thank you for your review, Paige! We’re so glad to hear that OpenWater’s ease of use, program copying, and judging portal have been helpful for your team. We appreciate your long-term trust and are thrilled our support team has made your experience even better!

Replied August 2025

Lawrence H.

Verified reviewer

Non-Profit Organization Management

51-200 employees

Used monthly for less than 2 years

Reviewed August 2025

Great service to manage a variety of different programs

Great management tool for a wide variety of applications that's easy to use as the administrator and as a user.

Ratings Breakdown

Ease of use

Value for money

Customer support

Functionality

Pros:

Getting started is intuitive and after some playing around in the system I was able to start creating programs in no time. I use this to manage two programs and the system it easy to use throughout the process. Checking statuses and judging are well designed.

Cons:

While the system provides a great tool to manage these programs, the price increase for the service isn't matching additional benefits that are being released for my purposes.

Vendor Response

Lawrence, thank you for your thoughtful review! It’s great to hear that the status tracking and judging features have worked well for you. We also appreciate your perspective on pricing. We’re grateful for your trust and are glad the platform has been a reliable tool for both administrators and users!

Replied August 2025

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