--- title: SmarterSelect Reviews meta_title: 'SmarterSelect Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 106 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how SmarterSelect works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.2 review_count: 106 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-07' parent_category: name: Vertical Industry url: https://www.g2.com/categories/vertical-industry --- # SmarterSelect Reviews **Vendor:** SmarterSelect **Category:** [Grant Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/grant-management) **Average Rating:** 4.2/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 106 ## About SmarterSelect SmarterSelect makes managing scholarships, grants, and awards a breeze. Our easy-to-use online platform helps you create applications, review submissions, and pick recipients – all in one place. Whether you're a small non-profit or a large foundation, we've got you covered. With features like custom forms, automated workflows, and team review tools, you'll save time and make better decisions. Over 2 million users trust us to keep things fair and transparent. Plus, our friendly support team is always ready to help. Want to focus more on making a difference and less on paperwork? That's what we're here for! ## SmarterSelect Reviews ### 1. A little clunky, but gets the job done **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** It's easy to replicate and use year after year, once you do have the program outlined and created at first. Being able to manage all applicants and evaluators in one space is great. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The tutorial videos I've not found helpful and were very boring/hard to follow. It's a little clunky and difficult to get the hang of at first. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm able to manage applicants and evaluators all in one space, very easily. **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hello, thanks for your review and feedback! ### 2. SmarterSelect - Makes Life Easier **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Erin H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** It enables us to manage our scholarship process so easily. We recieve almost 1,000 applications yearly. The online reviewing as been amazing for our committee. We always get quick repsonses to our questions/issues from the support staff. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** We have some issues with the short hand view - would like to see a specific field and have never been able to make it happen. So always need to download the full report - not a huge deal. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Being able to have 1,000 applicants easily apply and having 13 committee members easily review applicalcations. Without needing to use paper! ### 3. Grant tracking software recommendation **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Customization of midterm and final grantee reporting fields **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** There are no negatives that I'm aware of **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Consolidated reporting from grantees; able to extract management reports into a single Word document. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Wow thanks for this feedback! And thanks for choosing SmarterSelect. ### 4. SmarterSelect meets all of our program needs and is relatively easy to navigate **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Casey B. | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The different functions and dashboards for program applications, evaluation, and data exports. Overall it is easy to use after getting comfortable with it, and we were able to integrate everything into our programs. Customer support is relatively quick. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The loading times/bugginess of the software that occurs sometimes. It can also be a bit challenging to figure out processes at first **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect helps to centralize all program applications in one place, and it makes it easier to view all information at once or reference past data. ### 5. Great Tool for Colleges and Universities! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** I am a recent hire at a large university and one of my main tasks is running a program that requires the collection of student applications. SmarterSelect made it so easy to step into my new role and begin the work for my program ASAP. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** We had an issue where a student's professor was unable to receive the emailed reccomendation request for whatever reason, so the professor had to email me the document directly. While I was able to go into the application and mark it as received, I didn't see that I was able to upload the document to the application, which would have been helpful in keeping all of the materials/information together. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect is an easy and efficient way for us to distribute our program and fellowship applications to our students. It is also easy to use, which helps encourage students to apply. ### 6. User friendly for new users and useful for managing large amount of data for applications **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 22, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Information required for selections is easily inserted into the application **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Evaluation and gathering data requires additional guidance which may need guidnance by our technical staff for support. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1. awarding scholarships - ease of selections and data management for the awardees **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hello, many thanks for your review and feedback! ### 7. Excellent support, but finicky software **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Vic D. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The interface is clean and intuitive, and I'm incredibly impressed with the support documentation and staff availability via help chat for problems or questions that don't have support documentation available yet. There are a ton of useful features designed with application/selection processes in mind, many of which I haven't even had the opportunity to use yet. Reporting versatility is also fantastic, and I love how it looks like we'll be able to follow year-over-year data for each of our programs. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** As I've been designing the committee application and evaluation processes I've been working on this summer, I've hit a bunch of unforeseen roadblocks requiring workarounds -- program application forms using cycles don't allow applicants to view their applications after submission. Programs sharing a common application can't individually set visibility settings for questions on that common application. Provider-level questions cannot be set viewable by evaluators or applicants, so items added to applications by admins must be added as applicant-level questions, thus opening them to potential editing by applicants. Question types and options settings are very limited and pared-down in comparison to SurveyMonkey, which we previously used to run these processes. SmarterSelect has a lot of excellent features, but it really seems designed for one very specific, very simple type of application and evaluation process, with very little wiggle room in it. In addition to the things that just can't be done, there are a lot of opportunities to improve administrative quality of life that I hope they take advantage of -- I'd love to be able to export application data for a program in .xlsx, and for the applicants selected prior to export to not automatically deselect after I've exported so I can easily select the same group again to export their file attachments. Ability to sort on multiple columns when viewing applicants or programs would also be amazing (and is basic functionality in so many other platforms) -- right now, I can't fully alphabetize a list of names correctly. Let us set a default view for the applicant overview page for a program! Make exports download directly from the page! Can the Apps Submitted column, when added to the view for the Programs page, be conveniently linked to the applicants summary for that program like the Total Apps column is? They're small things, but when you're wrangling over 300 applications to 13 simultaneous programs, they start to add significant bulk to the workflow. All in all, I believe in SmarterSelect -- the more I learn about it and the more it develops as a software tool, the better it will get -- and it could be so, so good! **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Note: "Awards Management" above is misleading. We're using SmarterSelect for selecting committee members from a pool of applicants, so the thing being "awarded" is committee membership. SmarterSelect is helping our organization to un-silo its committee application process. Previously, we used SurveyMonkey, and if individual staff members in our small org didn't remember to share their application form surveys, or if someone left the organization, that created discontinuity in oversight and made situations where applicants applied to multiple committees and could only sit on one very difficult to reconcile. The ability to let administrators see all programs is incredibly helpful for us. We're also excited to be able to more reliably track year-over-year data in applications and selection so we can analyze in depth and discover persistent trends in selection, rise and fall of application numbers in response to marketing efforts, and other useful insights to help us improve and fine-tune our processes. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > This is great feedback. Thank you so much for taking the time to provide us with detailed feedback! We will share this with our product team. Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect! If convenient you can always provide feedback directly to our team via the link provided (select a reason of "I have a comment or feature suggestion" from the picklist). ### 8. User Friendly **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Krista F. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The software is very easy to navigate. If you ever have any trouble tech support is there to help walk you through and tell you step by step. They take the time to make sure you know how to use it. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** It would be nice to be able to make the forms a little more personalized and be able to change styles of the apperance of what the applicant sees. Being able to change up the apperance would be able to ensure the applicant is using a more current version of the form. Also, being able to have folders for each cycle to be able to put the forms in there from each year to make the page where all the active programs are to make it a little cleaner. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** They have helped us take out another part of how the evaluators review the applications. Our old software the evaluator needed to create a unique login each time they did an evaluation. This is nice and easy that they just log in and see the applications they need to review. It makes my life easier and it makes it easy for them to see all the documents they need to see and be able to have a smooth evaluation. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thank you for taking the time to provide us with feedback, Krista. Glad to hear that our tech support has been able to help you with the product. Regarding your feedback, we will pass this on to our product team. Thanks again for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 9. Great platform, easy to use. **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Marshall S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 10, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Easy to use and great (and responsive) support when I have questions. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I wish the platform supported tables for the input of certain information we'd like to gather from applicants. There is a work around to accomplish this, but native support of tables would be really helpful (at least for our organization) **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Streamlining the collection and evaluation of applicant data. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for the review Marshall and thank you for the feedback on the native support of tables. ### 10. SmarterSelect was the best value for our needs. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Peter G. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect is valuable for the cost and fairly easy to use. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I wish it was easier to copy items from one survey to another. I also wish item logic was available in the basic plan. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It has helped us efficiently manage all parts of our application process. ### 11. User-Friendly Builds & Easy Evaluations **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Benjamin C. | Administrative Assistant, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The most helpful aspect of SmarterSelect is the ease of building out applications. The automation and calculation features make the process streamlined for both my organization and our potential grantees. The evaluator options also make the process quicker with less paper waste than our previous method. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The only downside is the way the applications export. The format is not the easiest to read once exported from the site for my evaluators that prefer a PDF or printed report. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmartSelect is solving the problem of using multiple mediums to create, track, and evaluate our grant applications and reports. Now, my organization can create grant applications and letters of intent all in the same space, as well as review, evaluate, send messages, and keep all of our applications organized. Quick edits, such as deadlines and attachments, are user-friendly and avoid mishaps. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for the feedback Benjamin! Glad to hear that you are finding an easy build out for your applications. Thanks for letting us know about the export. We'll share this with our product team. If you have any other suggestions please feel free to submit them to support@smarterselect.com or at the link. Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 12. Expirence Smart Sheet **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 27, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Collaboration with other companies and teams. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I think that the columns can be confusing. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Grants making **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hello, thanks for your review and feedback! ### 13. Great Platform! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Maycee J. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 31, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** I really enjoy the features and abilities to collect a range of information for applications. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I wish it was easier to dowload the collected data instead of getting a link and downloading the CSV. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** collecting a wide range of applications ### 14. Useful for scholarship applications **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hannah T. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Ease of managing scholarship application **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** It can be timely to set up our scholarship applications with all critiera we use/ **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It makes it easy for us as admins and for students to apply for scholarships. ### 15. Lots of benefits! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jill P. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 01, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect has made my life easier. I don't spend 1.5 hours each day opening the mail to gather the applications anymore. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** It is not the most user-friendly platform. It took a long time to learn. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect has helped me receive 200+ applications for our summer fellowship program per year for the past several years. It has made the process so much more automated. ### 16. Dynamic review system **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Honna G. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect has allowed me to address a wide variety of needs for program and funding applications and easily involve key stakeholders in the review process. The permission sets allows me to easily define who can see what to ensure overall privacy. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** There is a bit of a learning curve to develop programs and creating forms but I've found SmarterSelect customer service folks to be very responsive in addressing my questions and helping me **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Allowing multiple awards and grant programs to exist in one core system. It also gives us the ability to allow folks to use a single system to review applications and the ability to export data, if needed, for external review. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for the review Honna! And thank you for choosing SmarterSelect. ### 17. 9/10 for SmarterSelect **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sonny D. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect is extremely helpful when gathering application data and sorting it in one place. Using SmarterSelect, we are able to run multiple campaigns at the same time and collect clean application data for future exports conveniently. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect is somewhat harder to train employees on. The program allows for tons of unique processes and tricks, but they do not come intuitively. Changing how you maneuver the website while keeping current features would be my only suggestion. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect helps us collect data and distribute multiple scholarship opportunities throughout the year to a number of different audiences. Without SmarterSelect, we would be hard-pressed to find a another program that can accomplish the same things SmarterSelect can. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > This is great feedback Sonny! Thank you so much for providing us with this insight and detail. We have shared this feedback with our product time. In the future (and if convenient), we'd love to hear your feedback at support@smarterselect.com or via the linked form. Thank you for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 18. Not very user friendly **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Anna H. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Nice to be able to build applications and track applicants at the same time. Easy to change applications. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The entire user experience is not very intuitive for someone without a tech background. I consider myself fairly computer savvy, but everything was so confusing. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** We use smarter select to track applications to our various committees. ### 19. The Clear Choice for Application Process **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Julie A. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 11, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The level of customer service provided is stellar. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The price! As a nonprofit, cost is important. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** For the most part, SmarterSelect provides efficient housing for our scholarship and grant applications. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thank you for the review Julie and thanks for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 20. User Friendly Interface for Scholarship Apps **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Abigail K. | Graduate Research Assistant, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Smarter Select is very user friendly both on the applicant end and the reviewer end. It is easy to build applications, and it is easy to get support as an applicant if needed. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** While Smarter Select is generally very user friendly, the customer service response times are a little on the slow end. This can be detrimental if an applicant is completing a scholarship application on a deadline. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Smarter select is helping to solve issues with scholarship applications both on the user and administrator end. They have helped fix issues with programming as well as application errors. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Hi Abigail, sorry to hear that you have had some trouble with your customer service response times. Thank you for providing this feedback. We'll share this with our support and our product teams to help improve our support response time. Glad to hear that you are finding the platform to be user-friendly, and easy to use. Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 21. Easy application management **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Simple way to manage applicants/applications. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The annual costs are a bit too high for how our organization uses it. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Easy way to keep track of applicants and their status in application process. ### 22. Great for Associations to use **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Amber P. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** I found it was easy to setup my applications. I love the library that you can chose others' applications so I didn't have to try to make a whole one on my own. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I wish that I could call to talk to get help, not just chat or emai. Especially when I was trying to fix things on the fly. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Having a way to communicate with applicates on application status and answer questions that they have. I also like the reports that we are able to pull whien it comes to judging the applicates. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thank you for the review, Amber, and thank you for choosing SmarterSelect. ### 23. SmarterSelect for Scholarship Applications **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Application process is smooth and I can communicate with applicants through the system with ease. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I do not like the new dual authentication and sometimes the systems loads very slowly. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing applications and allowing for ease in sorting for unique awards. ### 24. Efficient, User-Friendly System **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Its user-friendliness and capacity to store a variety of custom-made programs. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Nothing in particular comes to mind right now. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** How to organized and store a wide variety of different awards applications without losing track of them. ### 25. Easy to Use **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Public Policy | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** It is easy to use to review applicants and share the link. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** It is difficult to find edit buttons and hard to export specific information about the applicants. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helps us get applications in one space to review. ### 26. good for applications **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** easy to set up questions for applications that include submissions **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** not a lot of customization options for how form fields display **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** smarter select made it easier to review full applications rather than via excel sheet ### 27. Accessible and Easily Navigated **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The most helpful part for my team and I, are the report builders. I can use them to easily mail merge and see all of the information I need in one place. I really enjoy SmarterSelect. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The only least helpful thing is when we send the applications off to the evaluators. For some reason, there is ALWAYS an issue for them. Between logging in and actually getting to what they need, it is difficult for the committee. However, I am not on their end so I don't know how helpful this is. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect is solving the report issue. Other platforms haven't been as accessible. I think my team is more productive when it comes to this. It is easier for the students to navigate as well. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thank you for the review and feedback. Glad to hear that the report builder is making an impact for you and your team! Also if you continue to experience challenges with your evaluators accessing the applications, be sure to reach out to our support team. You can reach them at support@smarterselect.com, or via the provided link (submit a ticket). We'd love to help out! ### 28. Functional and scaleable but slightly overpriced and lacking customization **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jordan K. | Director of Strategic Growth and Public Engagement, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 01, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The application form builder offers all of the options we could ever need (e.g. calculations, dependencies, etc.). The applicant page also provides multiple filters and organization tools. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** We're unable to brand our application forms, and there are certain areas where it is not intuitive. For example, it takes time to figure out how to integrate a calculation into the application. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect allows us to better organize applications for our leadership programs. Multiple team members are able to access critical information and divide tasks more effectively. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thank you for taking the time to review SmarterSelect, Jordan. We value your feedback and appreciate you choosing us. If you have any feature requests or additional feedback feel free to use the form at the link provided and select "I have a comment or feature suggestion," from the picklist for the reason for contact. ### 29. Great Program for Scholarship Management **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 06, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The ease of creating the programs I need and the ease of managing my programs. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I find the search engine doesn't work all the time. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Scholarship management. ### 30. Smarter Select makes my life easier **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Dee M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The automation and capabities. I love that you can assign things to people, but also create your own customized review process. SmarterSelect is a great tool for tracking. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I wish it was a little more user friendly for the review process. Sometimes our volunteers get confused how to submit or review applications. I do appeciate the export features. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect helps us to keep track of our submissions for not only awards and scholraships, but for our poster competition / collegiate competition submissions as well. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect, Dee! If you need help in the future, we have a highly-rated customer service team that would love to help you with the submission and review process. ### 31. SMARTER Select was an excellent purchase for our application needs! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tracie S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Training and getting started was seamless. I have had excellent support when I've had issues. Appreciate that I can develop so many programs under our account. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I do not like that if I provide access to a team member that they can see all programs. It would be more effective for me to be able to share only what they need as we have confidential information that I don't want everyone on our team to have access to. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Application process for multiple programs **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hi Tracie, many thanks for your kind review and feedback! We've heard from others regarding your suggestion to limit access to programs to their respective program managers (e.g. grant managers see only their grant programs, scholarship managers see only their scholarship programs). It's on our Features List for consideration and future development. ### 32. Scholarship Platform **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Taryn L. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect is very good at managing our scholarship program. The applications are easily customizable and three is a lot of opportunities to make the applications our own. The software is affordable as well. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** While the actual software of SmarterSelect is very useful, it can be difficult to get in touch with their team. There is not a direct phone number that you can call but users instead must chat with support and potentially set up a Zoom call. It would be nice to have a direct contact to call with questions/concerns. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect holds our 100+ scholarship applications and is very easy to use as an administrator and as an applicant. The matching feature and common application save time for everyone! **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hi Taryn, Hello, thank you for your review and your kind words regarding our support team. We understand the importance of efficient and direct communication with our support team, and we apologize for any inconvenience you've encountered in reaching us. Although, we commit to responding to a ticket in 1 business day, our current response is 1 hour 11 mins. Our current chat responses run in the 2 minute time frame. If you have any further questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. Your satisfaction is essential to us, and we are committed to ensuring a positive experience for all our users. ### 33. Great product, but complex and hard to learn on the spot. **Rating:** 3.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Susannah S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 31, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** I like the ability to construct a complex application or copy an application from the vast library. I also like the software's ability to tabulate evaluation data. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The product is not as user-friendly as I would like. To build a 4 question application, I spent over 6 hours learning how to do it, and it still wasn't exactly what I wanted. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect assists us greatly in our applications and for the evaluators needing to see them. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for the review and the feedback. If it is convenient we'd love to get more details on your experience building out the 4 question application. The link provided will take you to our form for feedback. Select "I have a comment or feature suggestion," from the picklist. This will get your feedback to our product team. ### 34. Nice tool with great support **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The thing I like best is how responsive the support desk is. I've had several questions throughout the application and evaluation cycle, and each time I submit one they answer within 0.5 business days. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** It does not have all of the bells and whistles of some application platforms. But for my purposes, that is actually a benefit. It is not as complex, and we do not need a ton of different features. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** We need a platform that allows students to apply for our program, and for evaluators to assess them. It works well for both parts of the cycle. Setting up the application form takes minutes, whereas other programs I have used have taken hours. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > We're so glad you are having a good experience with our support desk! Glad to hear that you find the simplicity of the features as a benefit. Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 35. AOII Foundation - SmarterSelect **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 13, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** User-friendly; offers more than dropbox which we were using for past programs **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** would like to be able to clean up past applications and past evaluator groups; would like to be able to edit parts of the application without sending in a support ticket **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** They are continuing to update the features and the Q&A sessions help with the explanations of the updates. ### 36. SmarterSelect Review **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 28, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect helped us to streamline our program admissions, making it easier to build in logic, evaluate and assign applicants, and collect data that helps us run our programs. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** There are some quirks to building the application - like being unable to make copies of program applications if there is a logo/image uploaded. It can also be challening to figure out how to set up a reviewing system with multiple evaluators. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect helps us streamline our application systems throughout all of our programs, and from year to year. It is easy to find and copy the same program year over year, making sure data stays consistent. **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hi! Many thanks for your feedback! Our developers are actively working on the copy program issue you describe and you should see a fix shortly. Please drop a note to our support team and see if they can give you some suggestions for your evaluators. Thanks for your business! ### 37. Very easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** It is super easy to use & the customer service is great! If you have an issue and need support they respond super quickly & will make a virtual appt with you very quickly. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I am still figuring out to handle a large volume of applications on a rolling deadline but I did go to an open question & answer and they gave me some ideas on how to handle it. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** A centralized location to hold all our applications & a better way to review applications with multiple reviewers - including both application & applicant interviewers; a central way to pull that information. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thank you for the kind words about our customer service! Also glad you were able to use our Community Forum to get some help from your peers. Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 38. Difficult learning curve but then simple **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** I like that they offer instant live help when I have a question. It is very helpful in keeping me on track when I realize I don't know how to complete something. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect is really difficult to learn to start off with. It is not intuitive and requires a lot of clicks and searching to find something that should be pretty easy to do. Once you learn it once though, it's usually easy to remember since you have to use the functions so frequently. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** I have all my applications in one program which makes it easy to promote for my organization. **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hello, thank you for your review and your kind words regarding our support team. Our team is committed to refining the platform continuously and making it more user-friendly. Look for improvements in the 2023-24 timeframe. ### 39. Good for What It Is **Rating:** 1.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Non-Profit Organization Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** I like that SmarterSelect has a strong support team. My issues are almost always resolved within one hour. I also like how SmarterSelect has an easy to use and update Common App. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** I don't like how deep you have to click to be able to edit a form question. I find it takes a long time to be able to edit a question. I would like to be able to edit the questions easier. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect serves as our scholarship program platform. It allows students to apply for our scholarships from their computers or cell phones. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for the review and the feedback. We greatly value our customer feedback and will share it with our product team. ### 40. Useful application system **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sara-Christine G. | Executive Director Action Canada Fellowship and Public Policy Forum Academy, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Excellent customer support! Good way to receive and organise applications. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** It's not always intuitive. Sometimes you have to click through a bunch of options before being able to make the changes that you want to make. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** We receive a large volume of applications and also have many evaluators, so SmarterSelect helps us organise and connect those two groups. **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hi Sara-Christine, thank you for your review and your kind words regarding our support team. We apologize for any inconvenience you've encountered with the system's intuitiveness and the challenges you faced. Our team is committed to refining the platform continuously and making it more user-friendly. Look for improvements in the 2023-24 timeframe. ### 41. Not What I’d Hoped For **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ryan M. | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Customer service and technical support was very responsive. Any time I had a problem, someone was there to help. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** There are so many things about the system that are not intuitive. The system is clunky. Setting up calculations and auto scores are a nightmare. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It helped with assigning reviewers/evaluators and keeping info I needed anonymous off the evals. **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hi Ryan, thank you for your review and your kind words regarding our support team. We apologize for any inconvenience you've encountered with the system's intuitiveness and the challenges you faced while setting up calculations and auto scores. Our team is committed to refining the platform continuously and making it more user-friendly. Look for improvements in the 2023-24 timeframe. ### 42. Decent value -- straightforward app at good price **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nick O. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Price tag! Good pricing in comparison. Good responses from customer service. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Not too much capabilitity and the UX isn't as intuitive. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Need a process for students to apply for a program so this allows students to make applications, apply, and for us to review **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hi Nick, thank you for your review and your kind words regarding our support team. Reach out to our Support team for briefing on our features. I think there are some things you will like. Our team is committed to refining the platform continuously and making it more user-friendly. Look for improvements in the 2023-24 timeframe. ### 43. Smarter Select **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Food & Beverages | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 30, 2024 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The ease of application and review. Easy for our evaluators to log in and review. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Building reports of evaluations could be a bit easier! **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Awards review ### 44. Gets the job done! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Great data privacy for our constituents, straightforward setup, useful templates to reference as well. Overall we got what we needed at the most reasonable price on the market. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Communications with applicants weren't very straightforward, interface could use some enhancement. Customer support was not as in-depth and effective as would have been useful. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** SmarterSelect hosted our program application, accepting demographic information, essays, and signed waivers so that we could assess applicants and extend invitations to participate in our program. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thank you for your feedback, we greatly appreciate it and value the opportunity to learn about our customer's needs. Sorry to hear about the customer support experience. If convenient we'd love to hear additional feedback from you via support@smarterselect.com, or via the linked form. Glad to hear you are able to use the templates and finding the setup to be straightforward. We value your business and we are honored that you chose SmarterSelect! ### 45. Best System for the Money! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Karen S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Ease of account set up; price cannot be beat; thorough reports **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Our choice, but only a single user system **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Less paper, happier teachers with simple form **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect, Karen! And thanks for taking the time to provide a review. ### 46. Flexible, Easy Scholarship Software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 03, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** SmarterSelect is easy to use. Our programs do not change much year to year so we appreciate being able to copy programs in less than a minute. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Sometimes, I'd like the option to add existing applicants to a new program on the administrator side. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Accepting and managing national applications to a small program. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for the review and for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 47. Cool **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** August 08, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Pretty convenient to use in terms of collecting and grading scholarships. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The software could be more intuitive (regarding UX) **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** It's very easy to share the scholarship portal with students and schools, and also other scholarship evaluators. It really shortened the time it took to fairly grade all scholarships. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks for the review! We'd love to hear more about your UX feedback. If convenient for you, can you submit a support ticket at the resource URL and select "I have a comment or feature suggestion from the picklist?" Thanks again for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 48. Affordable and excellent customer support! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Performing Arts | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Our organization's solution for application management! Streamlined and affordable with helpful features, and excellent, super-responsive customer support! **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** A few features were tricky to work out, but this was mainly user error - customer support was fantastic. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Data management, full program coordination and automation, and organization of programs, applications, applicants, and evaluators. **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Wow thanks for the review and the feedback about our support team. . .they'll love to hear this! For those tricky features (non user error-related) we would love to hear your feedback via email at support@smarterselect.com, or via the form provided at the link. User feedback like yours is really valuable to our product team, and to our support team! Thanks again, and thanks for choosing SmarterSelect. ### 49. Great software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Jessica S. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** Going from collecting applciations by Excel to an automated system is amazing! **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** Little more training when you first purchase, however you can reach out and set up additonal training sessions when ever needed **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** We used excel before and now everything is automated and will match applciations to qualifing scholarships **Official Response from James Bogroff:** > Thanks Jessica! Glad to hear that this has been a good experience for you and that you were able to find the additional training sessions valuable. Thanks for choosing SmarterSelect! ### 50. SmarterSelect for reviewing candidates **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Tracy F. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 27, 2023 **What do you like best about SmarterSelect?** The rating aspect for reviewing applicants make the selection process much easier and saves time when using SmarterSelect. **What do you dislike about SmarterSelect?** The downloading aspect of SmarterSelect is somewhat cumbersome and would like to see this improved with easier charts and downloads. **What problems is SmarterSelect solving and how is that benefiting you?** Landing place for applications and the reviewing process. **Official Response from Robert Davis:** > Hi Tracy, many thanks for your review. We appreciate your positive feedback regarding our evaluation/review capabilities. Regarding the downloads and charts, I agree, and our team is committed to refining the platform continuously and making it more user-friendly. ## SmarterSelect Discussions - [What is SmarterSelect used for?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-smarterselect-used-for) - [View SmarterSelect pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/smarterselect/reviews?page=2§ion=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-21+04%3A03%3A26+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=b79c1736-1bb9-4952-be8c-6e11edfe18ed&secure%5Btoken%5D=60fa9057670affabf3dcf07ad5f139bfb74915e0c1f32ab67ef2dc37c7fecb86&format=llm_user) ## SmarterSelect Features **Application Collection** - Custom Application Forms - Attachments - Scholarship Matching - Application Tracking **Proposal Management** - Form Building - Review Tools - Grantee Portal - Attachments - Task Management **Submission Management** - Form Builders - Countdown Timers - Landing Pages - Applicant Portal **Application Review** - Automated Review Assignments - Scoring Tools - Review Portal - Review Comments - Messaging **Fund Tracking** - Disbursements - Grant Allocations - Email Notifications **Judging Management** - Judge Assignments - Multiround Scoring - Scoring and Voting - Submission Dashboards **Administration and Integrations** - Administrative Dashboard - Reports - Integrations **Impact & Outcomes** - Program Evaluation - Data Analytics - Ad Hoc Reporting - Dashboards **Awards Administration** - Event Support - Applicant Communications - CRM - Reporting **Grant Prospecting** - Funder Lists - Automated Responses **Compliance** - Eligibility Screening - Auditing **Integrations** - Fund Accounting - Donor Management ## Top SmarterSelect Alternatives - [Submittable](https://www.g2.com/products/submittable/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (167 reviews) - [Bloomerang CRM](https://www.g2.com/products/bloomerang-crm/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (891 reviews) - [Award Force](https://www.g2.com/products/award-force/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (289 reviews)