I recently wrote on my site blog about the various festival submission websites out there, from a filmmaker's perspective. Please click here to see the full post. Here is a summary:

A director of a small festival asked me what my experiences were, as his festival would soon have to choose a submission platform to use. I compiled my observations into a chart:

Conclusion: FilmFreeway is clearly the best website to use from the point of view of filmmakers. It’s free, it has a fluid, simple interface, it doesn’t ask you to fill in too much information, you can pay via PayPal and you don’t even have to upload your film file, just link to where it is probably already uploaded: YouTube or vimeo. It even has an upload option if for some reason you don’t have YouTube or vimeo.

FestHome and Reelport are the next cheapest, with fees of 1E50 to 2E per online submission. FilmFestivalLife has a nice interface but is the most expensive, at 3E per entry.

I will continue using all six websites as long as festivals will continue to send me to all six. And I have no idea how much these websites charge the festivals for their use. But if there is a festival looking to jump on the online submission bandwagon, I hope these observations help you see what we filmmakers take into consideration when using these platforms.