Awards management software is used by awards / grants organisers and program managers to help manage awards programs. The software is typically used to collect and manage submissions or nominations from entrants, and then have those submissions assessed by judges. The quality of software available varies wildly and it is important to confirm the software is reliable, has the required awards management features and can provide a good experience to all users. Equally, awards management software deals with the personal data of entrants and judges, so it is paramount the software has strong security measures, complies with privacy laws and has a safe, transparent method for handling payments.

We like to say Award Force... but that wouldn’t be fair to you. You aren’t after a marketing answer here- you want something unbiased. Truth is, there are plenty of award management software providers out there and if you are going to shop around, these are the key requirements...

• Have transparent pricing?
• Provide a seamless and pleasing experience for your entrants and judges?
• Enable you to accept entries the way you want?
• Have a method for handling duplicate entries?
• Help you save time and keep your program organised?
• Avoid charging for accepting entry payments?
• Have workflow functionality to help you automate tedious tasks?
• Empower judges with a suite of tools to make good adjudication decisions?
• Work in a language of your choice?
• Have strong security features? (and frankly, have the certificates to prove it?)
• Come with outstanding support that encourages success?
• Help you grow your program?

Tough question! All awards programs are different. We have a great guide to help you make some choices about that. Click here to get that for free

It’s simpler than you might think - but that doesn’t mean it won’t take hard work! It’s a lot to write in an FAQ but if you are interested - you are welcome to grab a free copy of our guide on the subject here.

Depends on the software, but with Award Force, it is! If you are interested, we’ve got a great toolkit, yeah, it’s free!) to help you do all the sums yourself so you can verify the return on investment on your terms. Click here for access to our ROI calculator.

We are where you are! Award Force is a fully remote organisation, with no official “HQ”. We are a truly global company with good people covering every major time zone and on every continent. Visit our About us section to learn more.

Yes! Any device capable of accessing and browsing the internet will have access to Award Force. Award Force responsively adapts to the device screen size you are using, all while providing a safe and secure way to enter, judge, or manage your awards program.

Yes you can! Learn more about our import functionality.

We have no requirements or limits. If you have 1 entrant or 1 million– you can use Award Force and get access to the same great service and support. Award Force is for all programs, big and small.

The Growth plan offer a clean, neutral design, with the ability to add your logo at the top of each page. The Pro and Premier plans include full control over account theme, offering: brand panels across the page header, customised emails and PDFs; granular control over colour scheme; high-impact brand imagery on the home log-in page; sponsor visibility across pages, emails, categories, chapters and more! Read more about branding.

We’ve helped clients launch on Award Force in as little as 24 hours! We still recommend 3-4 weeks from sign-off to go live— you’ll be more comfortable. But if you need fast turnaround, our friendly and knowledgeable Client Success team will help you make it happen.

Award Force is committed to ensuring that its product is accessible to people with disabilities. All the pages on our website and applications will meet W3C WAI’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1, Level AA conformance. Report any issues to product@craigcf8.wpcomstaging.com.

Nope. You buy the use of Award Force for a full 12-month period and can have as many users, program managers and chapter managers as you need to make your program a success. We have zero hidden fees.

Yes. At the time of upgrading, you will be charged the difference for the remaining term of your annual subscription.

Our onboarding service is the best way to maximise your return-on-investment from using Award Force. Onboarding includes:

• Personal introductory session with a Client Success Manager
• Consultation sessions, on how to best leverage Award Force features and capabilities to your strategic outcomes
• Collaborative support throughout your configuration
• Preparation of theme design based on your supplied brand assets
• Detailed pre-launch check (a helpful last check through your program with a fine-tooth comb to make sure all is okay)

Many of our clients are not-for-profit organisations. Our prices are very carefully set to ensure our business is sustainable and can provide a high-quality product and service to all our clients. As such, we don't currently offer a not-for-profit discount.

We can invoice in your choice of five currencies: Australian Dollars (AUD), British Pounds (GBP), Canadian Dollars (CAD), Euros (EUR) or US Dollars (USD). Contact us for pricing in your preferred currency. Payment can be made by bank/wire transfer, in most cases to a local bank account.

The service agreement is for a full 12 months. Whether your program runs for 3 months or 12, you’ll reap the benefits from the Award Force platform all year long. You can display galleries of awardees, with social sharing features, for year-round visibility of your program in your community. Use broadcasts from Award Force to communicate with your participants during the off-season and stay top-of-mind. Have pre-registration or "expression of interest" registration open during the off-season. And you'll always have immediate, easy access to all your past entries and judging results with the season archive.

Yes. If you have 2 or more programs (awards, grants, scholarship programs, etc), we can offer a volume discount for multiple Award Force accounts. Please contact us for a quote.

We call it client success because we don’t just offer you support – we offer you success! Our client success team is proactive and highly responsive. We care about your program and are committed to ensuring you get the best out of Award Force. It’s good for both of us!

Regardless of your account level or plan, you’ll have full access to our wide offering of help and support resources, including phone and email support. Our Help Centre and in-app support (accessible in the Award Force platform) are packed full of articles and videos that will help you get the most out of Award Force. You can also submit a ticket, check our platform status and read monthly product updates from either the Help Centre or from within Award Force! We also provide free access to the Award Force Academy, a place to learn more about the Award Force platform, with helpful strategies on program promotion, using an awards program to generate revenue and ways to save time and organise your program, amongst many other interesting topics.

We are on hand 24/5. From Monday to Friday, our response time commitment worldwide is 4 hours (but it’s usually much less than that). Tickets received on the weekend are responded to first thing Monday.

We offer a helpful “Setup guide” and checklist to help you configure your Award Force platform to start accepting entries and kick off your judging. It’s a fantastic way to get up and running. For those who need to get going fast or are short on time and resources, ask about our configuration service.

Award Force is extremely flexible and works wonderfully with all types of programs that work to recognise excellence. Our platform provides wide-ranging flexibility to fit your program and judging requirements.

Yes, we can!

Yes! Award Force has been used successfully in many live judging scenarios. But only if the devices the judges will use are connected to the internet. Award Force is fast, reliable and won’t let you down.

Any kind. Award Force will accept any file type you request from your entrants or submitters. It’s all under your control. Want PDFs but not JPGs? No problem. Award Force enables you to control your program on every level. You set the tone and we’ll play the tune.

Si, amigos! Award Force is available in twenty four professionally translated languages and growing. Additional languages can be made available by request.

Sure can! Our public voting feature is a great way to get your community involved! Read more here.

Yes, you can. Each entry has a unique identifier and can be appended to the end of your public voting page URL for direct linking.

Yes you can. We use cookies to control voting without registration, but it's susceptible to abuse so where greater integrity is important, we recommend enabling registration of voters.

If you are a program manager, yes you can. We generally advise against it but it is possible.

With more than 15 question types, you can ask just about anything. You can use a variety of text fields, checkboxes, radio buttons or specific fields like URL, date, email and phone number. If you run a grants program, you will likely be interested in our table field type.

Glad you asked! Yes, there is. We offer a popular feature dedicated to automatically finding and managing duplicate entries.

Our broadcast and notification functionalities will allow you to communicate quickly with your entrants and judges. Broadcast a message to your participants when you have something timely you’d like to convey to many users (winner announcements or communicating a deadline) or create a notification to be sent when a user performs a particular action on the platform (registered, progressed to a further round, etc).

Yes. You can choose to require payment at the start of an entry or on submission.

We currently support more than 15 different payment gateways. Learn more here.

Yes. We provide a lot of flexibility when it comes to pricing rules, so you can decide if an entrant is charged for all entries submitted, entries submitted per category or even in entries with a parent category.

Yes! Perfect for early bird specials, special customers, or drumming up support for your program.

You’re doing your homework. We like that! Yes, you can accept payments in all major currencies (dependant on your payment gateway provider, of course) and we have a neat little feature for controlling tax rates (and tax rate labels), on a per country basis. We even support variable tax rates by province / state, for the likes of Canada and the US.

Award Force uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure in the European Union to host the system. Our application and database servers are located in Australia, the European Union, Hong Kong, the United States and Canada. You can choose to have your data stored in any one of those regions.

Yes, custom domains are available on the Pro plan.

The Award Force application is packed full of features to help clients maintain GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) compliance. In our opinion, GDPR is the most stringent and robust user privacy law worldwide – as such, complying with GDPR ensures our coverage of some lesser known or less stringent alternatives.

Yes, we are more than happy to pass along our ISO 27001 certificate, penetration testing results and PCI-DSS attestation. Please get in contact to discuss.

No. Award Force is a stand-alone platform that cannot be embedded on a website.

Yes. We call this feature “Review flow.” Learn about it here.

Yes, we support single sign-on with WordPress, Drupal, SAML, Google, Facebook and Twitter.

We currently offer integration with Salesforce, Copyleaks, Google Analytics, AddThis and more than 15 different payment gateways. Many more are coming on the horizon!

We do! You can access our API documentation here.