Best SmartSimple Alternatives for Grant Management 2026

SmartSimple Cloud is the most configurable grant management platform available. That is not marketing language — it is a statement with real consequences for who should and should not use it. The platform can replicate virtually any grant workflow, integrate with almost any external system, and accommodate the most complex multi-programme portfolios. It is also, for exactly the same reasons, among the most demanding platforms to implement and administer.

SmartSimple has its roots in universities and research funders, where grant programmes often involve multiple institutions, staged milestones, multi-tiered review processes, and complex compliance requirements. That heritage shows in the platform's design: it is built for scenarios where standard workflow models are insufficient, and where the cost and time of a bespoke configuration is justified by the complexity of what needs to be managed.

In 2023, Foundant Technologies and SmartSimple came under shared ownership — a strategic alignment that created a company with two distinct product tiers. SmartSimple continues as the enterprise tier; Foundant GLM serves the mid-market. Both platforms operate independently.

What is SmartSimple Cloud?

SmartSimple Cloud is an enterprise-grade, highly configurable cloud platform for grants management, research management, and corporate social responsibility. It originated in the higher education and research sector — managing funding flows between universities, research councils, and multi-institution collaborations — and has expanded to serve foundations, government agencies, and large corporate funders with similarly complex requirements.

The platform's architecture is built around a core configuration engine that can be shaped to match almost any process. Unlike more opinionated systems that ask you to adapt your workflows to fit their model, SmartSimple inverts this: you configure the platform to match your workflows. That flexibility is the product's defining characteristic, and it comes with corresponding implementation complexity.

SmartSimple and Foundant Technologies (maker of Foundant GLM) came under shared ownership in 2023. The two platforms are designed to serve different tiers of the market: SmartSimple for large, complex organisations; Foundant GLM for smaller and mid-sized foundations. Both continue to operate as independent products.

What are SmartSimple's key features?

Unmatched configurability: SmartSimple can be configured to handle virtually any grant workflow. Multi-tiered review processes, complex eligibility trees, conditional forms, automated approval chains, integration with external financial systems — all are achievable. This is not a platform where you work around the system's limitations; you configure the system to match your requirements.

Strong API and integration layer: SmartSimple has a well-documented API that supports integration with ERP systems, financial platforms, HR systems, and data warehouses. For large organisations where grant management data needs to flow into other enterprise systems, this is a meaningful advantage over platforms with limited integration capabilities.

Enterprise-grade security: SmartSimple meets a high bar on security certifications and data protection — important for organisations in regulated sectors (universities, government agencies, large foundations) where information governance requirements are stringent.

Multi-institution and multi-tiered grant management: SmartSimple's research funding heritage gives it particular strength in scenarios involving multiple applicant organisations, sub-grants, consortium arrangements, and the complex reporting requirements that come with multi-institution awards. Most grant management platforms are not built for this level of complexity.

End-to-end lifecycle management: The platform covers the full grant lifecycle: pre-application eligibility, application intake, multi-stage review and assessment, award and agreement management, payment scheduling, monitoring, and reporting. In enterprise configurations, this can include automated milestone triggers, budget tracking, and compliance documentation.

Research management capabilities: For funders operating in the research sector — research councils, university foundations, innovation funds — SmartSimple's research management layer provides tools for tracking intellectual property, publications, and research outputs alongside standard grant management.

What are SmartSimple's limitations?

Extreme implementation complexity: SmartSimple is not a system you switch on. Implementations typically run four to eight months for moderately complex configurations, and longer for the most demanding use cases. This requires a significant project investment from both the organisation and SmartSimple's implementation team or specialist partners.

Requires dedicated internal technical resource: Unlike more self-contained platforms, SmartSimple requires ongoing technical administration. Changes to forms, workflows, and integrations often require someone who understands the platform's configuration logic — either a dedicated internal administrator or ongoing support from an implementation partner. For mid-sized organisations without that resource, this creates a real operational burden.

Mid-sized foundations often find it over-engineered: SmartSimple's configurability is its greatest strength and its greatest liability. Foundations running a single programme or a straightforward annual round are paying for and managing complexity they do not need. Platforms like Foundant GLM or Submittable serve those needs at lower cost and with less overhead.

No built-in UK compliance: SmartSimple does not include out-of-the-box checks against the Charity Commission register, Companies House, or OFSI's consolidated sanctions list. UK funders must build or source these verification steps separately.

Custom, opaque pricing: SmartSimple pricing is enterprise-level and entirely custom. There is no publicly available pricing, no free tier, and no entry-level plan. Organisations should expect pricing that reflects the platform's positioning in the enterprise segment.

Change management overhead: Because SmartSimple can be configured so extensively, changes made during or after implementation can have unexpected downstream effects. Organisations that want to iterate their grant programmes frequently may find the change management overhead more significant than with more opinionated systems.

How is SmartSimple priced?

SmartSimple pricing is custom, based on organisational size, number of programmes, required features, and integration complexity. No pricing is publicly disclosed. Implementation costs are separate from the annual licence and are typically significant — multi-month implementation projects with professional services involvement are the norm.

There is no free tier, no trial period, and no entry-level plan. SmartSimple is positioned squarely as an enterprise solution, and its pricing reflects that.

Organisations evaluating SmartSimple should budget for the platform licence, implementation fees, internal staff time for configuration and training, and ongoing administration overhead. For many organisations, the total cost of ownership in year one is substantially higher than the headline licence fee suggests.

Who is SmartSimple best suited to?

SmartSimple is the right choice for:

• Large foundations or government agencies managing multiple distinct programmes with genuinely different workflow requirements
• Research funders managing multi-institution grants, consortium arrangements, or staged milestone-based funding
• Corporate foundations with complex approval hierarchies and integration requirements with enterprise financial systems
• Organisations in regulated sectors where enterprise security certifications and data governance controls are a procurement requirement
• Any organisation where a standard workflow model would require too many compromises, and where the investment in bespoke configuration is justified by programme complexity

SmartSimple is not the right choice for:

• Small to mid-sized foundations whose grant programmes can be managed within a standard workflow model
• Organisations without dedicated technical resource to administer the platform ongoing
• Any team that needs to be operational within weeks rather than months
• UK funders whose primary requirement is built-in Charity Commission and OFSI compliance

How does SmartSimple compare to its main competitors?

Against Fluxx, SmartSimple typically wins on maximum configurability and integration depth, particularly in research funding contexts. Fluxx has an edge in analytics (Grantelligence™), user adoption relative to implementation complexity, and customer support reputation. Both serve large organisations and both require multi-month implementations — the choice between them often comes down to whether research and multi-institution funding is a significant part of the portfolio.

Against Blackbaud Grantmaking, SmartSimple is the more flexible choice for organisations that are not already in the Blackbaud ecosystem. Blackbaud's key advantage is native integration with its own financial and fundraising products (Financial Edge NXT, Raiser's Edge). For foundations that use Blackbaud across the board, that integration value is real. For those that do not, SmartSimple's standalone depth is generally stronger.

For a broader view of the full market, the grant management systems comparison covers all major platforms in detail.

SmartSimple and Foundant: what does shared ownership mean?

In 2023, Foundant Technologies and SmartSimple announced a strategic alignment under shared ownership. The stated rationale was to create a company that could serve the full spectrum of the market: Foundant GLM for small to mid-sized foundations, SmartSimple for large and complex organisations.

From a product perspective, both platforms continue to operate independently with separate roadmaps and separate teams. At the time of writing, there is no indication that the platforms are being merged or that buying one commits you to the other.

From a customer perspective, the main practical implication is that an organisation that starts on Foundant GLM and outgrows it has a natural migration path to SmartSimple within the same ownership group — though any such migration would still involve a substantial implementation project.

What do SmartSimple users say?

User reviews consistently highlight SmartSimple's configurability as the platform's defining strength — and the same capability as its main challenge. Reviewers who have successfully configured SmartSimple to match their complex workflows typically describe it as a highly capable system. Those who underestimated the implementation complexity or ongoing administration requirements are more critical.

The research funding sector is particularly positive: universities, research councils, and large innovation funds frequently cite SmartSimple as the only platform capable of handling the complexity of their grant programmes. Mid-sized foundations that were sold on SmartSimple's power but did not need it — or lacked the resource to administer it — represent the most common category of dissatisfied users.

Is SmartSimple the right choice for UK funders?

For the small number of UK organisations with genuinely complex requirements — research councils, large corporate foundations, multi-programme government-linked funders — SmartSimple may be the only platform with sufficient depth. Its research funding heritage and integration capabilities are unmatched in the market.

For the majority of UK funders, SmartSimple is over-engineered and expensive. The absence of built-in UK compliance features (Charity Commission, Companies House, OFSI) means that even large UK funders need to build or source their due diligence workflow separately — a meaningful consideration when evaluating total complexity.

UK funders looking for a platform that includes compliance checks, AI-assisted assessment, and grant lifecycle management without a multi-month implementation should look at purpose-built UK platforms. The AI for funders guide covers what modern AI-assisted grantmaking looks like in practice, and the due diligence automation guide explains what UK-specific compliance checks involve.

What do UK funders use instead of SmartSimple?

For the majority of UK funders — foundations, trusts, community foundations, local authority grant teams — Plinth is the purpose-built UK alternative that addresses the gaps SmartSimple leaves. Built specifically for the UK grantmaking context, Plinth includes Charity Commission, Companies House, and OFSI sanctions checks as standard workflow steps rather than manual processes sitting outside the platform.

The contrast in deployment is significant. SmartSimple implementations run four to eight months and require either dedicated internal technical resource or an implementation partner. Plinth is designed to be live within weeks, with setup that programme staff can handle without specialist technical skills.

On AI: SmartSimple's AI capabilities are limited for grantmaking specifically. Plinth uses AI throughout the grant lifecycle — AI-assisted application scoring and assessment summary for reviewers, AI-generated feedback drafts, automatic extraction of outcome data from monitoring reports, and AI-generated tailored impact reports for funders. These are working features, not roadmap items.

For organisations that genuinely need SmartSimple's depth — large research funders, multi-tier government grant distributors, complex multi-institution programmes — there may be no adequate substitute. But for foundations that adopted SmartSimple expecting enterprise depth and found themselves paying for complexity they don't need, Plinth's combination of purpose-built UK compliance and AI-assisted assessment is the more proportionate choice. A free tier makes evaluation low-risk.

FAQ

What is SmartSimple used for?

SmartSimple Cloud is used primarily for grant management, research funding management, and corporate social responsibility programmes. It is most widely deployed by large foundations, research universities, government agencies, and corporate foundations managing complex, multi-programme portfolios.

How long does SmartSimple take to implement?

A typical SmartSimple implementation runs four to eight months. More complex configurations — particularly those involving multiple programmes, extensive integrations, and bespoke approval workflows — can take longer. This is among the longest implementation timelines in the grant management software market.

Did SmartSimple merge with Foundant?

SmartSimple and Foundant Technologies came under shared ownership in 2023 as part of a strategic alignment. The two platforms continue to operate independently. SmartSimple serves large, complex organisations; Foundant GLM serves small to mid-sized foundations. There has been no product merger.

What makes SmartSimple different from Fluxx?

Both SmartSimple and Fluxx are enterprise grant management platforms with high configurability. SmartSimple's primary differentiation is its strength in research and multi-institution funding, its deeper API and integration layer, and its maximum-configurability architecture. Fluxx's differentiation is Grantelligence™ analytics, a somewhat faster implementation, and a widely-praised customer support function. See the Fluxx Grantmaker review for a full comparison.

Does SmartSimple have AI features?

SmartSimple has introduced some automation features, but AI-assisted assessment, due diligence, and impact reporting are not core features of the platform in the way they are for purpose-built AI grantmaking tools. Platforms designed specifically around AI capabilities offer significantly more sophisticated functionality in this area.

Is SmartSimple suitable for small foundations?

No. SmartSimple's configurability is designed for organisations with complex, multi-programme requirements. Small foundations will find it over-engineered, expensive, and disproportionate to their needs. More accessible options — including Foundant GLM, Submittable, and purpose-built UK platforms — serve small foundations more appropriately at lower cost and with less administrative overhead.

Does SmartSimple work for UK funders?

SmartSimple can be deployed by UK funders, but it does not include built-in compliance checks for the UK context — no native Charity Commission verification, Companies House lookup, or OFSI sanctions screening. UK funders managing these checks manually or through third-party integrations add operational complexity to an already demanding platform.

Recommended next pages

• Grant Management Systems Compared: Fluxx, Submittable, Foundant, SmartSimple and More — Side-by-side comparison of all major platforms
• Fluxx Grantmaker Review: Features, Pricing and Alternatives — SmartSimple's closest enterprise competitor
• Foundant GLM Review: The Accessible Grant Management Platform for Foundations — The mid-market platform from the same ownership group
• How to Automate Due Diligence in Grantmaking — UK-specific compliance requirements and how to meet them
• AI for Funders: The Future of Grantmaking — What AI-assisted grantmaking looks like in practice

Last updated: February 2026