Free Submittable alternatives for literary magazines

A submission manager does a small number of things. It takes in manuscripts, shows them to your readers, records decisions, and tells writers what happened. Every product on this page does that. The differences are in who holds the files, who gets paid, and what happens to your archive if you stop paying.

I build and give away one of the options below, so read this knowing where I stand. I have tried to be fair to the others anyway, because an editor who picks the wrong tool and resents it is no good to anybody. Where I describe pricing I describe the model rather than the number, since numbers change and pages like this one are supposed to last. For a priced snapshot with screenshots, see the dated comparison I published in July 2026.

1. Green Submissions — free, self-hosted

This is the one I make. It is free software, not a free tier: you download it from greensubmissions.com, install it on ordinary PHP and MySQL shared hosting, and there is no cap on submissions, no monthly plan, and no charge per manuscript. Writers pay nothing to submit. The same codebase has run a working literary journal continuously since 2010.

What it covers, per the documentation: a sortable slush pile with reader scores, blind reading mode, custom statuses, decision notes that email the writer automatically, threaded revision requests, volunteer-reader applications with 1–10 ratings, a contributor directory, and a mail center. If you run contests, entry fees go through PayPal Checkout into your own PayPal account; no platform sits in the middle taking a cut.

The honest catch is that self-hosting is a job, if a small one. You rent the server, you run the installer, and you own the backups. If that sentence made you tired, one of the hosted options below may fit you better. The license is simple: use it for anything, including commercial publishing, and keep the footer credit link visible.

2. Duosuma, by Duotrope

Duotrope has run its market-listings database for years, and Duosuma is its submission manager. Instead of a flat monthly bill it charges by usage, which suits a magazine that opens for a month or two a year and would resent paying through the closed months. It is a small operation with a genuinely literary focus, and being attached to Duotrope's listings means writers who already track markets there will find you without much effort.

It is still a hosted platform. Your submission history lives on Duotrope's servers, and the meter runs as long as you do. Check its current rates yourself before committing, because they are theirs to change.

3. Moksha

Moksha was built by Neil Clarke, the editor of Clarkesworld, and it shows: the reading workflow is shaped by someone who actually processes an enormous slush pile. Genre magazines in particular use it. The model is a flat subscription, monthly or annual, with unlimited submissions, so a high-volume magazine is not punished for being read widely.

The trade is the same as with any hosted service. The subscription never ends, and the archive is a feature of your account rather than a folder on your server.

4. Submittable itself

The incumbent, and still the platform most writers know. The polish is real, writers already have accounts, and its discovery pages send some traffic to open calls. If a funder or university is paying the bill and nobody on staff wants to think about software, it works.

The model is a paid subscription, with a discounted plan available to literary organizations through CLMP, plus per-transaction processing charges when you take reading or contest fees. Worth knowing before you commit: the company's public marketing now leans toward grant management and corporate programs rather than literary magazines, which tells you something about where its attention will go. I wrote up the year-end arithmetic separately.

5. Email and a spreadsheet

The zero-software option, and I will defend it. A submissions inbox and a tracking spreadsheet cost nothing, need no setup, and plenty of respected magazines ran on them for years. If you expect a hundred submissions a year and one reader, start here without embarrassment.

What you give up: writers cannot check a status without emailing you, blind reading means forwarding stripped files by hand, there are no reader scores, and the "archive" is whatever your inbox search can dig up. The failure mode is success. The month your magazine gets noticed is the month the spreadsheet stops being funny.

Newer platforms

The last two years brought a wave of smaller entrants — Subfolio, Dapple, Ola and others — priced to undercut the incumbent. Some will be good. Some will be gone. Oleada, one of the cheap indie favorites, was already wound down in favor of a successor, and its editors found out from a blog post. Treat any young platform the way you treat a young magazine: promising, unproven, and holding something of yours.

How to choose

Three questions sort almost every magazine onto the right row of this list.

• Do you charge fees or run contests? If yes, per-transaction charges compound quietly. Self-hosting routes fees to your own PayPal, where only PayPal's ordinary cut applies.
• What is your volume? Under a few hundred submissions a year, email survives and free tiers stay free. In the thousands, metered and per-submission models get expensive, and flat or free options win.
• Do you intend to exist in twenty years? Then the archive question outranks the price question. A platform's archive lasts as long as your account does. A database on your own server lasts as long as you keep a backup.

If the answers point at self-hosting, the download and install guide are free, and the software will not meter you while you decide. And if what you are actually planning is a brand-new journal rather than a migration, start with how to start a literary magazine — the software question is only step five.