Submission manager for small magazines
June 17, 2023 9:02 PM Subscribe
Can you suggest a good but inexpensive submission manager for a tiny magazine?
Our tiny magazine currently processes submissions manually and we'd like to move to a better system to receive submissions, allocate to editors and ideally manage initial correspondence such as rejections and acceptances. We definitely can't afford Submittable (I understand it no longer has a free tier) so are looking into free or inexpensive alternatives.
One we're looking into is Submission Manager. If you have used it, I'd love to hear how you found it - how reliable and easy to use it was. I know it is self-hosted.
Any other submission managers you've used and liked, as an editor or as an author?
Our tiny magazine currently processes submissions manually and we'd like to move to a better system to receive submissions, allocate to editors and ideally manage initial correspondence such as rejections and acceptances. We definitely can't afford Submittable (I understand it no longer has a free tier) so are looking into free or inexpensive alternatives.
One we're looking into is Submission Manager. If you have used it, I'd love to hear how you found it - how reliable and easy to use it was. I know it is self-hosted.
Any other submission managers you've used and liked, as an editor or as an author?
The agents I know use QueryManager/QueryTracker, and I believe it's free? I'm not sure if there's some reason it wouldn't work for a magazine, though.
posted by cider at 3:18 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by cider at 3:18 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
Depending on what functionality you want and how you feel about building a custom form and workflows, something like Smartsheet or AirTable might suit.
I've used Smartsheet for submissions (for a different purpose but ultimately, it was someone who needed to submit certain information + an attachment, which I imagine is not terribly different from what you need) and it worked fine for me -- the form drives an email to my inbox, I can reply to that email using the person's email address if I want to, or I can manage the incoming info in whatever way I need (in this case I was putting these requests into Basecamp).
I haven't personally used AirTable for this use case but they do offer forms. I did a bit of a cursory look around my free account but I cannot tell if they allow attachments on forms -- I would imagine they do, but that would be a sticking point probably.
posted by Medieval Maven at 6:30 AM on June 18, 2023
I've used Smartsheet for submissions (for a different purpose but ultimately, it was someone who needed to submit certain information + an attachment, which I imagine is not terribly different from what you need) and it worked fine for me -- the form drives an email to my inbox, I can reply to that email using the person's email address if I want to, or I can manage the incoming info in whatever way I need (in this case I was putting these requests into Basecamp).
I haven't personally used AirTable for this use case but they do offer forms. I did a bit of a cursory look around my free account but I cannot tell if they allow attachments on forms -- I would imagine they do, but that would be a sticking point probably.
posted by Medieval Maven at 6:30 AM on June 18, 2023
I would just use Submittable's free tier for this.
There's also Submission Manager (which is old and janky, but was the first widely used submission platform before Submittable took over) and SlideRoom. I know I've seen another new one mentioned lately, probably on Chill Subs. You could also DIY something using Google forms plus a couple plugins for captchas and to manage file uploads..
posted by knucklebones at 9:23 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
There's also Submission Manager (which is old and janky, but was the first widely used submission platform before Submittable took over) and SlideRoom. I know I've seen another new one mentioned lately, probably on Chill Subs. You could also DIY something using Google forms plus a couple plugins for captchas and to manage file uploads..
posted by knucklebones at 9:23 AM on June 18, 2023 [1 favorite]
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by tavegyl at 9:16 PM on June 17, 2023