For SurveyMonkey, application management is a bolt-on. For Reviewr, it's everything.
SurveyMonkey built its name on surveys and forms, and Apply reflects that DNA: a form-first tool with application review layered on top. It collects and routes submissions fine, but evaluation — scoring, blind review, real judging — feels bolted on rather than built in. Reviewr was designed for review from the start: everything you need to run scholarship, grant, and award programs, with the evaluation depth built in.
SurveyMonkey Apply started as FluidReview, an application tool acquired by a survey company in 2014 and folded into its suite — now under private-equity ownership. The founding team has moved on, and application management sits as one product among many.
Reviewr has built for one discipline since 2011 — running world class scholarship, grant, and award programs. There's no survey business to serve and no suite to subsidize. 100% of product investment goes toward your programs.
Setting up SM Apply means a Customer Engagement Rep builds your forms, workflows, and automations for you. Iterating later means going back through their team, or relearning a back end that administrators consistently describe as having a steep learning curve.
Reviewr is self-service by design. Build and adjust your own forms, workflows, and reviewer assignments without waiting in a vendor queue — and without needing a developer to make a change mid-cycle. Need help? Don't worry, we're here every step of the way.
SM Apply's reviewer split screen renders the application as a PDF, blind review works only at the whole-form level, and scoring is standard — with applicant and reviewer data that reviewers say is hard to merge. No AI review tooling.
A native side-by-side reviewer view with materials and scoring together, field-level redaction for true blind review, configurable assignment, and normalized scoring that surfaces reviewer bias.
Submittable doesn't publish pricing. Third-party sources report steep jumps between tiers, extra fees for added users and features, and at least one reviewer describing a capability mentioned in the sales call that required an additional, prohibitively expensive add-on.
Straightforward pricing that directly relates to the value you will receive with measurable ROI. Every standard report included. No surprise add-ons when you need a combined data export.
With SM Apply, your site is built by a Customer Engagement Rep during onboarding — and changing a form, workflow, or assignment rule later means going back through their team or relearning a back end administrators describe as having a steep learning curve. When your cycle is live and something needs to change, that lag is exactly when it hurts.
To be fair, SM Apply's support is genuinely well-regarded — responsive, knowledgeable, and their highest-rated dimension. But responsive support and a self-service platform aren't the same thing. Reviewr is built so your team configures and evolves programs directly — no queue, no dependency.
No sales pressure. No commitment required.
The all-in-one platform for managing scholarships, grants and awards programs.
