Zealous Reviews

Weather Photographer of the Year

Comments: Really good customer service and support! A useful and affordable tool for managing photography competitions.

Pros:

Fantastic and quick support. It was great to be able to rank the photographs during the judging process, to be able to easily pull of CSV files and access photographer quotes and information. Looking forward to using the new features next year.

Cons:

Unable to use batch commands when ranking long lists of photos but this has been fixed. Special characters in foreign language addresses not always working but this has also been fixed.

Functional and usable but small changes could make a big difference

Comments: Overall our experience with Zealous was positive - the platform is easy to use, the low pricing allowed us to forgive some of the (very small) annoyances and the excellent customer service throughout was also a strong bonus. We appreciate how welcoming they were of feedback and their desire to make improvements and changes to the functionality accordingly, so would definitely recommend Zealous and would be happy to use the platform again going forward. Our application numbers were up on the previous year.

Pros:

Overall, Zealous was a good platform - it was relatively straight forward to set up and use and served it's purpose (in our case, collating entries for an industry awards event). The pricing structure was a huge improvement on the platform we had used prior which compensated for some of the features we lost by changing platforms. However, the best thing about Zealous is their customer service. Their team are very warm and friendly, no query is too much trouble and they are quick to respond to any queries. They also invite feedback in a way which made me feel that they really do want to continue improving, not just as a box-ticking exercise, and I have already been informed that some of our suggestions are being actioned which is really encouraging. It makes us feel valued as customers and makes it all the more likely that we will return year on year.

Cons:

It would have been good to have been able to fully customise the forms - some of the language didn't really suit our audience (it is quite arts-centric) so we had to be creative in how we made the obligatory fields work for our applicants. It would also be great to have greater control over comms sent via the platform, i.e. reminders of application deadlines etc, which currently can't be sent en masse to those with applications in progress (they had to be done individually) and also can't be branded to our company. Both of these would be great features to have.

Zealous User Experience Review

Comments: Thankfully there was excellent customer support that helped our problems be resolved

Pros:

The public voting feature is a great tool for competition organizers

Cons:

Sadly that there were some bugs while the public voting is live

A great product, working hard to become an even better one.

Comments: We love working with the Zealous team and admire their commitment to making the platform work best for their customers.

Pros:

The Zealous customer service is second to none! [sensitive content hidden] has been our account manager for two years running and consistently goes above and beyond to support us. And when [sensitive content hidden] is unavailable, the rest of the team steps in as well. The platform is constantly evolving, and we were excited to see so many brilliant developments across the 12 months between using the platform for our Awards. The back-end is really simple to use and most sections have great personalisation options. And the price is really great!

Cons:

We discovered some issues with the accessibility of the platform, specifically for entrants using screen readers. However, we know that Zealous are taking the issue seriously and working to implement changes to improve this. We'd love p be able to personalise the automated emails further (something else I think they are working towards). Finally, because we have some public-voted categories and some Judged, we have to set up lots of individual opportunities so it would be great to have a dashboard that would show the progress of each opportunity in one place - rather than having to swap between each one when we wanted to check entry numbers etc.

Very good awards submission platform with excellent customer service

Pros:

The customer service. We had great help from [sensitive content hidden] in choosing the right plan for us and explaining us how the platform works initially and through the process before any major things we needed to set-up. The live chat was always very efficient and Bethan helped me with any questions and issues I had. It is very rare these days to receive so much support form a service provider and for that we are very grateful.

Cons:

I would have liked to have a main opportunity where I set up all the dates and then go into each awards category where I set-up the questions only. This is something that I have been reassured that this issue is being addressed and the a new functionality of the platform will address this.

A useful tool for awards/ competition management

Comments: We have saved a lot of admin time using Zealous. It has streamlined our judging process and given confidence to entrants who submit their work.

Pros:

I like the fact that judges can view and score all of the entries in one place and they can be allocated to judge certain categories/ entries according to expertise. The level of customer support/ service is very high and was especially useful in our first year using Zealous. It has saved us a lot of admin time and stress compared to our previous system.

Cons:

I would like judges to be able to add comments/ notes for each entry and it would be useful to be able to customise the email notifications that are sent out - I currently switch them off because they're not quite the right fit.

Eessential for Competition management

Comments: A useful tool to save administration time for Competition managenent of entries.

Pros:

Ease of uploading Competition Entries and scoring of them by Judges.

Cons:

The scoring system needs to have an optional 'comment box' to record Judges views of Entries too and for Judges to automate feedback to Competitors if required.

Ease of use and value for money

Comments: I am only on our second Call for Artists, but so far it has been the perfect tool for accepting and reviewing artist submissions.

Pros:

I have found Zealous very intuitive. Setting up a Call for Artists was easy and quick. And it is easy for artists and judges. Getting set up in the system doesn't require more than an email and password, and the instructions for submitting and reviewing are very clear. Customer service has also been very responsive.

Cons:

I would love to see more fields that are specific to public art, such as commissioning entity, location and project budget.

Lots of Praise for Zealous!

Comments: Thanks for helping us up our game with a much enhanced submitter experience, easy to use platform for judges, and all around huge time saver for us as administrators. Your customer service, and specifically Diana, went above and beyond for us.

Pros:

Having the submissions and judging housed in the same platform was a gamechanger for our 4year old global competition.

Cons:

There a still a few features that we wanted that were not available to us. We found some work arounds but look forward to seeing the new enhancements before our next competition comes around.

Excellent platform for student competition judging

Comments: Great - much easier for our company to manage submissions and judging process of our Art and Poetry competitions. [sensitive content hidden], our account manager, is a star - she's very responsive and helpful, thank you!

Pros:

Easy to use platform with excellent customer support. Great features for set up and judging abilities.

Cons:

Occasional bugs which impact the ease of submissions.

Great software for managing large open calls

Pros:

Zealous made the management of our art prize so much easier - the platform enabled judges to view admissions individually as well as collectively and made our administration of the entries so much easier. Would definitely use again.

Cons:

The pricing structure for paid entrants, this is very high compared to other options our there, especially as you're also paying a monthly fee.

Great form function

Comments: Zealous is facilitating the operations of the Swiss Cultural Fund UK. Its form function allowed us to gather more systematized information and to assess it better.

Pros:

The functions linked to the application form are the functions that are the most useful. It allows us to work easily with the applications and to get the right type of information.

Cons:

As we are project based, it is not 100% intuitive to submit first the CVs and budget etc. and then fill in the application form, for both the applicants and the judges.

Managing my Zealous Account

Pros:

I like Zealous because it is easy to set up year to year. It saves all your ´opportunities´making it an easy process from one contest to another.

Cons:

What i like least are the search filters.

Great platform

Comments: Really pleased! The platform is great and the customer service is amazing! [sensitive content hidden] in particular were so helpful and friendly!

Pros:

The platform itself is great, everything is in one place, easy to navigate and manage. However, for me, the customer service is what has really stood out. We had an unusual situation where I needed to take over the management of our account, and the team were amazing! They helped get me set up, hopped on calls to talk me through everything, were just on the end of the phone or an email away for any query I had and regularly checked in to make sure I understood everything. Really impressed!

Cons:

We had a couple of teething issues, as this is our first time using Zealous. I don't know if these are things we would have been able to do or if we'd need new functionality:A couple of our questions couldn't be formatted by the person entering the category, so they just appeared as one text block, rather than separated with line breaks.As this was a multi-stage entry process, the entrants didn't get an email notification when completing their finalist submissions.

Great team!

Comments: Very satisfied!

Pros:

Amazing team! Very helpful and made me feel part of a team.

Cons:

The dashboard isn't completely intuitive (at least for me).

I'd recommend Zealous as a competition platform

Comments: Excellent

Pros:

I liked how it was easy to collate a large volume of competition entries from around the world . Excellent customer support with good transparency about when they were available to help solve any technical issues.

Cons:

It was difficult to edit the categories that each judge was assigned to whenever there was a later change in plan.

Zeolous used for an image collection

Comments: Zealous help our company to collect entries for an image collection, it was easy to use and the platform always provided enough support to deal with any problems encountered.

Pros:

The platform offers an easy way to collect a large number of media submissions. I appreciated the customer support, which was always quick and amazing, and helped fix any issues with setting up an opportunity or helping with technical problems I have encountered over the past few months while using the platform.

Cons:

There could be a bit more room in organising the files within the platform and thematic grouping that is not preset by category.

Great service!

Pros:

We were very impressed with the ease of the platform in setting up our awards submission. It made the process simple and we were able to utilise the functionalities to increase our submissions by 50%.

Cons:

We would have liked the option to rearrange the form to suit our process, to have the application form first then submission section afterwards.

Very helpful tool for award management

Pros:

We were looking for a secure public vote system for our annual award and found this amazing award management platform that took our submission process to a whole next level. We were most satisfied with excellent costumer support.

Cons:

Zealous is at the moment still very much catering the art sector and so are some of the menues tailored. We would wish more flexibility in adding roles and fields, eg. we are nature conservation organisation and we couldn't fill out some of the information as we would wish to.

Zealous effortlessly manages the Rugby Photographer of the Year awards

Comments: We had a very positive experience with Zealous. Apart from the platform just working and doing what we wanted it to do without any issues, the real bonus was the real time customer service. And not bot chat, but speaking to an actual person that had all of the answers and actioned them there and then. For me that was the real bonus to Zealous.

Pros:

The Zealous platform has ease of use at its heart. We used it for submissions to a photographic awards. We were easily able to set up multiple categories under one entry mechanism and make it easy for not only our own use but for applicants to use. We also saw a massive uptake in entries from our previous awards. We have to attribute that to the Zealous platform and the clear steps to making a successful submission.

Cons:

No cons to using Zealous. It did exactly what we wanted it to.

Outstanding Judging Platform with equally outstanding Customer Service

Comments: I cannot express how delighted and thankful I am with the Zealous product and the Zealous team. The platform is extremely easy to use for the administrators, entrants and judges alike. The process saved hundreds of hours as the site organizes the project, presents options for the contest as well as provides options for judging. The team at Zealous is extremely supportive and has a sincere interest in ensuring the event is structured in a way to ensure success. The contest was an essay contest for a US High School, and ease of use was a critical need. The number of entries received were double what was expected. This success is highly correlated to the professionalism of the platform the users saw, and the ease of use for High School Students is a very big deal. This essay contest was for students to document how Covid-19 has impacted them, in 2020. It is likely the essay contest would not have taken place had it not been for Zealous. Thank you [SENSITIVE CONTENT HIDDEN] - you are rock stars! If you are deciding on a platform to use for your contest, stop here and use Zealous.

Pros:

The software was extremely flexible to use and was able to be modified to fit the needs of the Contest. The entrants are students, and some of the judges are also students, so anonymous judging was required. The contest was set up so the entrants would have minimal questions (i.e., distractions) to answer prior to entering the contest. We had a lower than expected drop out rate from initial review of contest to actual entry to contest, which is a huge win. The contest also required a large number of judges, from students, alumni of the school, and community members. This was also easily accommodated in zealous.co. The results of the contest will be posted on various local, state and ideally national museums and archives. A huge shout out to Zealous.co who has a flexible product that performs and is part of this historical process. Well done.

Cons:

Nothing. The product met the objectives of the essay contest with clear guidelines, and ease of use for administrators, judges and entrants, as well as the museums who will be archiving this information.

Excellent submission portal and competition judging platform

Comments: Hosting our annual photography competition on Zealous was a revelation. The platform is incredibly easy to use at every stage of the process. Setting up the competition ‘opportunity’ was done in a matter of minutes even though we added a series of extra categories to customise the application form, and as submissions rolled in we were able to keep an eye on what we were receiving in realtime. Over the months we ran the call-out we received over 1,000 individual images, a notable increase from our previous competitions, in part due to the brilliant marketing from the Zealous team themselves. We had a complex judging process for the competition involving several rounds with different external judges, but on Zealous the organisation and management of this was relatively easy. All of the judges who took part in the process praised the platform for its sleek design, easy navigation and overall ease. We will definitely use Zealous again in the future and encourage anyone planning a competition or looking to collect submissions to try Zealous too!

Pros:

One of the best features of Zealous is the way that submissions are presented alongside their captions and the application form. When judging the competition, being able to easily click between views, selecting scores, and viewing scores in order, was incredibly useful. The automated messaging and rounds systems also saved us hours of administrative work and enabled us to focus our energies on the submission selections. But perhaps the biggest ‘pro’ of working with Zealous is the support that the team provides. Our internal team is not particularly tech-savvy and we had a lot of questions at the beginning, but no matter how many emails we sent, our account manager and the support team were quick to respond, friendly and just generally a pleasure to work with.

Cons:

We didn’t encounter any problems using the software, but it would be nice in the future to see more flexible scoring options and the ability to leave notes or feedback on submissions. But with all the updates Zealous offers, I’m sure it won’t be long until such features are available.

Excellent competition portal and submission management

Comments: The Zealous team has been really great at helping us manage our competitions and addressing our feedback. They are quick to respond and clearly value us even as a small customer.

Pros:

We've been using Zealous for our Creative Future Writers' Award competition for several annual rounds. It's fairly easy to set up, quite customisable, and provides an excellent portal for us to collect and sort submissions. Initially we were hesitant about the potential for people submitting having problems with it, having to mediate their technical problems and/or hiccups, but these have been nearly non-existent. Previously we had an in-house portal on our website and as submissions rose year on year (from 300 to 1,500) it was really clear this wasn't working at all, and the level of manual administration was totally eliminated by transferring over to Zealous. From a user-end standpoint, it's very professional looking and incorporates all of our branding. Previously we received a much higher proportion of e-mail/postal entries and these have probably gone down significantly due to the ease of entering via Zealous.

Cons:

We have found Zealous really flexible and easy to use. There are only a couple of minor aspects we're working with them on (scoring before the closing date and processing optional entry donations)--and Zealous is doing all they can to address these. Occasionally we've found submissions slow to load when reading them but I gather this has been fixed.

Amazing platform and support

Pros:

Really enjoy using Zealous for our artist call out opportunities - it's very customisable with the different functions/features to suit our opportunities. Also easy to invite other stakeholders as judges onto the platform and review submissions. Being able to save submissions on the account as well as exporting them is also a bonus. What really makes Zealous stand out is having an amazing account manager who can answer any queries and offer 1-1 support as a user. Happy to keep using Zealous for our future projects!

Cons:

Customisable automated emails for applicants would be great in the future.

Unexpected Experience but a Smooth Sailing in Scoring Competition with Zealous

Comments: I had so much fun and hoping to use this in the future.
Worth every single pennies I spent.

Pros:

Considering this a scoring platform, but take it as an automation software which made everything essential, from organising your judges, assigning the scoring to the judges, and even calculating your average scores with an easy UI and commandable UX. It takes some time to learn but the best thing is the customer service themselves helped by assisting me with detailed walkthrough (through Microsoft Teams), and countless email of questions to which they assist me very well. The application and the scoring data can be downloaded easily as csv files, and even all applications can be in PDF forms. Truly appreciate it especially if you have to manually assign later on. I'd like to appreciate too how the team helped me initially when we encountered problems with my card (I couldn't pay through the website), but they invoiced me the payment (through email) and everything went well.

Cons:

I really wish that sub-categories can be introduced because mainly categories only might not be sufficient for the data. In example, Category A and sub-category 1 (instead of separating them into categories only). Another thing is, you may need to cater your own tutorial (but it's not really difficult) for the judges considering the level of understanding and literacy.