# Page 2 | OpenWater Reviews 2026. Verified Reviews, Pros & Cons | Capterra > Page 2 - Is OpenWater the right Scholarship Management solution for you? Explore 73 verified user reviews from people in industries like yours to make a confident choice. Source: https://www.capterra.com/p/140294/OpenWater-Awards/reviews --- OpenWater 4.6 (73) [View alternatives](https://www.capterra.com/p/140294/OpenWater-Awards/alternatives/) Provider data verified by our Software Research team, and reviews moderated by our Reviews Verification team. [Learn more](https://www.capterra.com/our-story/) * * * Last updated March 6th, 2026 # Page 2 - Reviews of OpenWater ## Showing most helpful reviews Showing 26-50 of 73 Reviews Sort by: Most Helpful Rating Company Size Reviewer's Role Length of Use Frequency of Use TB Tammy B. Event Program Manager Semiconductors Used the software for: 2+ years ### "ADI/Openwater Review" August 19, 2025 4.0 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. 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. Review Source Response from Advanced Solutions International August 20, 2025 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! BA Branden A. Professional Development Specialist Information Technology and Services Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Excellent Customer Service..." August 26, 2025 4.0 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. Review Source Response from Advanced Solutions International August 28, 2025 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! VR Verified Reviewer Technology Director Hospitality Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Easy to Use with Excellent Support" August 19, 2025 5.0 Overall, our admin users, our applicants and our judges have all found great benefit from using the OpenWater platform. It has helped increase our overall number of applicants and streamlined our judging process greatly. Pros The product support is outstanding. While the product is super easy to use, if any questions or issues come up, the support team is fast and efficient to respond. Cons The reporting could use some improvements. I feel like there are some key reports that don't exist or could be more effective for admin users to manage programs, specifically reports related to judge interactions on a specific program. Review Source Response from Advanced Solutions International August 20, 2025 Thank you for taking the time to share your experience! We’re so glad to hear that you’ve found OpenWater easy to use and that our support team has been there when you needed them. Your feedback on reporting is especially helpful, as we’re always looking for ways to improve and make the platform even more effective for admins, applicants, and judges. It’s wonderful to know that OpenWater has helped grow your applicant base and streamline your judging process! EH Emma H. Account Manager Entertainment Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Open Water Experience" August 26, 2025 5.0 again, \[sensitive content hidden\] is amazing. I like how I can easily pull reports and there are very minimal customer feedback issues. 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. Review Source Response from Advanced Solutions International August 27, 2025 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! LH Lawrence H. Coordinator Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Great service to manage a variety of different programs" August 19, 2025 5.0 Great management tool for a wide variety of applications that's easy to use as the administrator and as a user. 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. Review Source Response from Advanced Solutions International August 20, 2025 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! Al B. Editor Automotive Used the software for: 2+ years ### "OpenWater has no competition" May 6, 2024 5.0 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. Switched from [OmniPlan](https://www.capterra.com/p/82208/OmniPlan/) 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. Review Source CK Carol K. Awards and Scholarship Coordinator Events Services Used the software for: 2+ years ### "How Open Water Saved the SME Awards and Scholarship Programs!" May 1, 2024 4.0 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. Switched from [ThreeSixty](https://www.capterra.com/p/212188/Personify360/) Personify was horrible. I had non stop complaints for every cycle! Review Source BT Brandi T. Undergraduate Research and Training Programs Manager Higher Education Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Data Management" May 16, 2024 5.0 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. 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. Switched from [Dryfta](https://www.capterra.com/p/139986/Dryfta/) Limited data management features and abstract submission collection and scoring. Review Source TK Taunie K. Product Marketer Computer Software Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "A very adaptable solution." October 4, 2019 4.0 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. Alternatives considered [Award Force](https://www.capterra.com/p/148148/Award-Force/)[SurveyMonkey Apply](https://www.capterra.com/p/123374/SurveyMonkey-Apply/)[Evalato](https://www.capterra.com/p/180032/Evalato/) Reason 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. Review Source CS Carleen S. Technology Manager/Awards Administrator Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Best of the Best" July 8, 2021 4.0 We've been with OpenWater for about 7 years now. We haven't considered looking elsewhere for our Awards needs. The program has the functionality we need, the price is extremely reasonable, and the customer support is above reproach. Pros OpenWater is very easy to use. The training videos and knowledge base are extensive and easy to use. The support team is superb - always available and willing to help. I have a dedicated support member, so there is excellent consistency. She knows our organization, she knows our program, and she knows our needs. Cons I would like more user-friendly reports. It would be nice to create my own custom reports a bit more easily. But this is not a deal-breaker. It likely has more to do with the kinds of complex reports I'm looking for than OpenWater's ability to provide good reporting. Alternatives considered [Award Force](https://www.capterra.com/p/148148/Award-Force/)[omniCONTESTS](https://www.capterra.com/p/13308/omniCONTESTS/)[Judgify](https://www.capterra.com/p/160569/Judgify/) Reason for choosing OpenWater The price was right. The sales team didn't harass us (as the others did for years). The implementation and roll-out processes were very easy. Review Source SB Skye B. Show Coordinator Publishing Used the software for: 2+ years ### "3 Years of Loyalty and Counting" April 23, 2019 5.0 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. Review Source HN Holly N. Project Coordinator E-Learning Used the software for: 2+ years ### "OpenWater review" May 9, 2024 4.0 Pros I like the ability to edit the submission page and customize it to each of our meetings - we do two per year with the abstract submissions. I like the ease of the review process as well. Cons Sometimes our members have problems logging into OpenWater, even though we use a single sign on that should be tied to our membership database. Review Source MC Melissa C. Director of Programs Performing Arts Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Grant and Scholarship Management" May 6, 2024 4.0 Pros I like the customization, quality of support via Open Water support specialist, ease of use, and ability to pull data Cons More training sessions offered, more information on grant tracking, integrations with salesforce and MailChimp. Email Wizard can be tricky. Review Source MJ Mark J. Web Systems Manager Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Excellent product, people, and support! " September 20, 2017 5.0 Pros Although OpenWater is already very intuitive straight out of the box, I really like how support is just a chat button away. I receive instant, friendly, expert support whenever I have questions or concerns. No waiting on support tickets! They also have an excellent collection of pictorials, videos and docs on their academy site: http://academy.getopenwater.com/v2. Last but not least - OpenWater actually listens to their customers. If we have an idea or would like to see something changed, they submit it into a queue for review and if approved, it's implemented. They have used a couple of my suggestions in the past two years. Cons Some areas could use better means of access. For instance - I think that project-related themes and websites should be available from within their own navigation menu. This is really not even a "CON" for me. It's just a matter of opinion. I'm also not particularly fond of the checklist process that was recently added, but I can see how others could find this useful, especially new users. Review Source Response from Advanced Solutions International September 22, 2017 Thanks for your comments and suggestions. The checklists you reference can be turned off, I'll have a support rep reach out to you with more info regarding that. Also your feedback is noted regarding the menu structure, we understand it can be tricky, especially with the number of websites and programs you manage. LC Lori C. Assistant Director Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Contest Management for Journalism Organizations" May 13, 2024 5.0 Someone asked me about Open Water because they were looking for a new awards management program and I gave it a major thumbs-up because the experience overall was great. Pros It's very easy to use and works intuitively in a lot of ways. When I took over administering the contest, I had to learn how to manage it on my own and it didn't take a lot of work to do that. The customer service overall has been excellent. Cons I'd like more options for customizing reports. For instance, entries are often submitted by contest coordinators who don't need to be part of the reports. We'd like to focus on the entrants themselves but the report configurations won't allow that. Reason for choosing OpenWater I took over management of the program so not certain how it was selected. Review Source Helene V. Director, Content Public Relations and Communications Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "OpenWater is the most dynamic way to achieve an active work team" April 28, 2022 4.0 Without a doubt, since we have OpenWater in the company, our projects are more dynamic, the work teams are more motivated to accomplish their goals and tasks, and the way in which projects and sales are presented, through notifications, templates, competitions and games, drives us to improve the performance of the activities we perform. Pros It has multiple templates of contests to improve sales, fulfilling different activities and goals. It also has templates that are customizable, to create our own contests, according to the goals, projects and sales, we have. Administrators have a module to see the competition, the progress of each person, and can include other activities. One of the most recommended software for the sales department, as it is a fun, effective and entertaining way to get employees to be always active with their sales and focused on improving their performance and earning the rewards they are offered. Cons The system gets a little slow when logging in and sometimes when entering information and progress of participants. Updates from other users also take time to be reflected on the screen, so it is almost not in real time. It could be a little more customizable, since there are not so many options when creating profiles. Review Source Leo B. Program Manager, Client Services Specialist, Robotics Membership Manager Publishing Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Great service and even better support." May 2, 2018 5.0 It reduces the amount of time and effort it takes to run a program and extract the data collected. Pros It is extremely configurable and the company is very responsive to the needs of the customer. They have added features and functionalities that were not available so that they could suit our needs. Cons Some of the native reporting features could use improvement but were created for us at our request. It would be nice to be able to duplicate entries from a 2 step program into a 1 step program. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Software Engineer Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Amazing support" July 23, 2018 5.0 Awesome products. Pros This is the most reliable award software I have got till now. The things I like most are the function duplication, custom forms, the internal linking of the form ect. Email notifications and form management features are really helpfull. It gives all possible customizations. On top of all these things, if you are stuck with anything, you can simply contact the support team and my experience with them is just amazing till now. They provide you complete support technically and that too in poliet way. If you want anything that is out of the product customization, they will ask for the flow and will try to implement it. The most friendly customer support I have came across till now. Cons Nothing as such till now. Iiked this software as I have experienced other bad quality award softwares and just fade up with them. Also the website takes more time to llad Review Source CK Christina K. Editorial Director Media Production Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Ease of use" May 6, 2024 5.0 It's wonderful! I have no complaints. Anytime I run into a question I cannot answer or something I can't figure out via the very informative website, our customer service agent, Genevieve, is OUTSTANDING! Pros OpenWater is so easy to set up specifically for our awards program. Then it is easy for the entrants to navigate as they enter our program and the judges to use as they remotely judge our entries. Finally, the winners' entry materials are used to create feature stories in our magazine, so we have everything we need for our stories, including high-res photos, at our fingertips thanks to OpenWater. Cons It's pricey but you get what you pay for. Review Source MF Michelle F. Associate Advertising Manager Insurance Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Good awards management software with great client support" July 22, 2021 4.0 OpenWater offered a solution for my department to easily manage a new sweepstakes program for our members. Pros OpenWater had everything I needed to manage our department's annual sweepstakes. While there aren't a lot of bells and whistles, this no-frills solution is straightforward and wasn't that difficult to use. The best part of OpenWater are the prompt and helpful account reps. If I had a question, they would respond right away. Cons The interface and customization tools can be a little confusing at first. There aren't a lot of opportunities to customize web forms or pages beyond very basic HTML and fields. If you aren't looking to create flashy pages, this software could be a great choice. Review Source VR Verified Reviewer Implementation Consultant Financial Services Used the software for: 6-12 months ### "Integration Partner" November 27, 2017 5.0 Pros We worked with the Openwater team on an integration with a mutual client. Kunal and the team brought a tremendous understanding and care for the clients needs and worked with us to find creative ways to simplify the process for the individual administrators. The solution provided by Openwater is used by the client to manage the annual awards process, and has been in use for several years. It allows them to collect submissions at the local level, and manage the process through multiple rounds, culminating with the annual national award ceremony. Cons It is early in the relationship, however as challenges have arose we've been about to work through them with the team and have not encountered an issues we couldn't solve for. All around a good experience so far. Review Source Response from Advanced Solutions International November 29, 2017 Thank you for the kind words. We take pride in our integrations and Kunal is excited to keep pushing the limits on how we can better integrate with systems. CB Cyndie B. Advertising Lecturer Education Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "American Advertising Awards Competition" May 9, 2024 5.0 Overall, it is a user-friendly platform. There could be changes to uncomplicate the process, but I honestly don't know how to do it. Pros The ability to access previous forms, categories, etc. Cons It can be a little clunky to navigate. It takes a while to figure out the system. I have been managing our competition for the past six or more years. Each year, it takes a bit to remember how to set up the competition. Review Source SS Shanita S. Director, Membership & Public Relations Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: Less than 6 months ### "Makes our members happy!" September 27, 2019 4.0 OpenWater has been very pleasing for membership. It solved several of our issues: 1. We needed a software that would tie into our database. 2. We wanted to be able to perform membership renewals with pre-filled data so that our members would not have to redo much if anything. 3. Allow members to stop and start without losing data. 4. Allow new data that was entered to flow back into our database. We can now do all of this at a great rate and without a ton of hassle. I love that integration was not a long drawn out process either. The team at OpenWater worked well with our integration team and got us up and running in no time. It was helpful to have a couple of our programs created by OpenWater and then handed over to us after training as well. Pros I like that we CAN integrate this software into our database and have our users log in using their credentials used in our site and have some fields pre-populated. Cons The multiple ways to access the emails and the judging settings. It would be easier to have a main area on the dashboard of the admin panel and be able to tie the information to a program. Would like to eliminate the number of places to remember to go set up. It also does not tie into our database to update a status as paid. Reason for choosing OpenWater We received the recommendation from ATS. I trust them when it comes to knowing the best system to work in. Switched from [RightSignature](https://www.capterra.com/p/220507/RightSignature/) We had too many complaints from members and the emails from their system kept going to spam. Review Source MS Matt S. Manager, IT Used the software for: 1-2 years ### "Amazing customer service, tons of features, steep learning curve" December 14, 2017 5.0 Incredibly customizable form creation and so much more. Pros The Open Water platform is one of the most robust and full-featured systems we've come across. It's extremely detailed and customizable, with the ability to adapt various templates to suit needs as simple or complex as you desire. Some of our favorite features include the external and internal linking within forms, program duplication, easy to create conditional child forms, and the autoscoring feature. However the best "feature" of Open Water is their customer service team. They are, hands down, the best CS team I have worked with out of hundreds of vendors in various industries. They are fast, polite, and know their product down to the smallest details. Cons After managing the Open Water platform as the primary admin over the course of nearly two years, I have no serious complaints. The platform has a steep learning curve and we have found it somewhat hard to retain configuration knowledge since the system makes it so easy to duplicate past programs, so we rarely start a new one from scratch. When we do we sometimes need to reach out to the OW team for a refresh, which they are always happy to help with. Review Source RT Robyn T. Senior Director Non-Profit Organization Management Used the software for: 2+ years ### "Review of OW" May 2, 2024 4.0 Not my favorite program to work in, but it does a good job of managing what it is supposed to do. Pros Once you have it set up you can clone forms, automated emails, etc. Cons Not intuitive, the learning curve is steep. 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