OpenWater Awards Reviews in June 2025: User Ratings, Pros & Cons

Great Product with Excellent Support

What do you like best? The efficiency this platform has provided our awards program reduced our adjudication time from months to a couple of weeks. What do you dislike? Nothing. The system is intuitive, responsive and very easy to work with. Recommendations to others considering the product: Perhaps implement a Single Sign-On process that is tied to our association membership system. What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized? Our awards ...

Openwater Nuances

What do you like best? I'm still learning all the nuances of the Openwater site that we use, but as I continue to learn I find new and better ways to operate the system. What do you dislike? The one thing I would REALLY like to be able to do is to refine the Bulk Assignments so that when nearing the end of a judging session, it would be possible to assign only submissions with fewer than 5 reviews to all the judging committee members. Currently, I have to go through and delete all the ...

Continues to add value and be a great return on investment

What do you like best? It's difficult to pick just one when the product and the customer support have both been exceptional. We initially chose the OpenWater platform to address our calls for proposals around around our events, but the flexibility of the product has allowed us to use it for a host of other programs that were all being run on legacy custom built software. But in addition to the configurability of the product, the entire OpenWater support team has been probably the most ...

Great platform!

What do you like best? I love the detailed reports you can get. When we are done w a program, we can download, text, images, contact information, we can even see day to day dollar amounts. I also like how on the back end if a submitter made a mistake you can go in and change what needs to be changed. The judging portal is very helpful when going through the jury process. It is very helpful that it keeps all the information from the year before so you just need to update your program! ...

Great service and easy to use product

What do you like best? I love how easy the platform is to use. Once I got my bearings, I have been able to build and change things for our programs with no hassle. I also appreciate the high level of customer service we receive. What do you dislike? The only downside is that our company requires a specific template be used for the front end to correspond with our brand guidelines. It sometimes means I need the Dev team to work on things instead of being able to handle myself. What ...

Awards product operating off Openwater sites

What do you like best? The customer service is always a 10/10. From quick questions asked via the bot to more drawn out projects like our recent merge to hosting our sites on the platform, service is always top. What do you dislike? The ability to talk to some other platforms we utilize, like Campaign Monitor, would be amazing. Recommendations to others considering the product: Connect with their staff, and they'll find the solution that works best for your business goals. What ...

Review of OpenWater platform

What do you like best? The Awards and Prizes team at the Institution of Engineering and Technology operates several awards, prizes and scholarship schemes, all with different entry and reporting requirements. The team has been using the OpenWater platform for over one year now and the flexibility and functionality of the platform has led to many improvements and efficiencies in how IET awards are run. The support from the OpenWater team has been excellent, enabling the Awards team to get ...

Amazing customer service

What do you like best? The customer service. Our account manager, Helen, takes such good care of us. It can be hard to learn a new platform from scratch, but with all the helpful reps, it's been really easy. They're quick to respond, they explain it so well and if I can't figure it out, they're happy to hop on a call and walk me through it. What do you dislike? It can be a bit confusing with the jargon, but I'm learning! The help centre is an amazing resource. I don't love the ...

Simple and straight

What do you like best? I would say organizing everything in a single place is the best thing with OPenwater making it easy for the people to browse through the various entities. What do you dislike? The most frustrating thing with openwater is that it made hard for the developers to contribute to the project other than contacting the support. What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized? Website management, Awards management, content creation

Chapter Awards

What do you like best? The platform was super easy for my chapter leaders to use. This was our first year and I received little to no questions about signing up or using the program. What do you dislike? The growing pains with setting up the program. But, that comes with using a new product. The customer service was great and even though some days were a pain Josh was patient and very helpful. Recommendations to others considering the product: Working with OpenWater was awesome. ...