Duotrope alternatives for tracking your submissions

A good tracker answers three questions without a trip through your inbox: what did you send, who has it, and what needs doing next? A market database does a different job. It helps you pick where to send. Some tools do both, and you don’t have to buy both in one subscription.

What does Duotrope do best?

Duotrope’s strength is research: a searchable database of publishers and agents, editor interviews, and response and acceptance statistics built from its users’ reports, all sitting next to a submission tracker.

Its subscription FAQ lists a one-time 10-day trial, then US$6 a month or US$60 a year. Twelve monthly payments come to US$72, so paying yearly saves US$12. Check the price in your currency at checkout.

Pay for it if you use the research. If you check a magazine’s reported response time before every submission, compare similar markets and lean on the detailed search, the subscription can save you hours. If you send a few pieces a year, free tools and reading the magazines yourself may be enough.

Read the numbers the way Duotrope asks you to. Its statistics page separates figures from user reports from figures for a whole publication. Response data helps you plan the wait and the follow-up. It can’t promise a decision date, and no percentage can tell you how an editor will read your next story.

Before you cancel, list the Duotrope features you actually use. Swapping one subscription for three free tools isn’t a win if you end up doing more admin.

Is there a free alternative to Duotrope?

Yes. The Submission Grinder is free and donation-based, Chill Subs has a free basic tracker, and a free Submittable account can log work you sent elsewhere.

A spreadsheet works too, if you keep it current. Whatever you try, test it with a few real records: one rejection, one piece still out, and one accepted somewhere else.

“Docs don’t say” below means the tool’s own help pages didn’t mention the feature when we checked. It may still exist.

Missa’s row is about calls and tracking. For magazine research it has journal profiles and magazine rankings, but no acceptance rates. Our acceptance-rate guide explains why those numbers need care wherever you find them.

Submission Grinder vs. Duotrope: which should you choose?

Choose The Submission Grinder if its market search and tracking cover the magazines you send to and a subscription isn’t in your budget.

The Grinder’s FAQ calls the site donation-based, funded by writers’ donations and monthly sponsorships, and says the team would rather close it than charge for access. You don’t need a paid membership to log work. If an older review calls it ad-supported, the FAQ tells a different story.

Test its coverage against the magazines you already read. Search for one you send to now, one you barely know and one that’s closed. Then open each magazine’s own guidelines for the fee, who can submit and whether it’s reading now.

For your own records, use the same title for each piece every time and note the version. Log every decision, the dull ones included. If writers report only acceptances, or only rejections, the shared statistics skew. Keep work that’s still out separate from work that never got a reply, and follow each magazine’s rules on queries.

Duotrope may suit you better if you use its search, interviews or agent research every week. The Grinder may suit you better if free access and a plain record are enough. Log a week of real submissions in each before you decide.

Chill Subs vs. Duotrope: what’s different?

Chill Subs is worth a look if you want literary magazine listings, a free basic tracker and an easy way to bring your old records with you.

Its tracker guide covers table and board views, custom entries for publishers it doesn’t list, notes, CSV export and three import routes: from Submittable, from the Grinder or from your own CSV. That’s a real head start if you’re leaving a spreadsheet.

The paid tier, Chill Subs Better, is US$10 a month, according to the membership FAQ, and adds website tools such as keyword search and a prose formatter. Sub Club, a newsletter, and Forever Workshop, a monthly writing workshop, are separate memberships. Check which one includes the tool you want before you pay.

If you use its statistics, check where each number comes from. The listing guide says an asterisk marks community-sourced figures, and an “Editor’s Report” section shows figures it labels official. Both can sit on the same page, so read the label before you repeat a number.

Import a few rows before you move everything, and check which publisher each one matched. An upload that works isn’t the same as a history that mapped correctly.

Can Submittable track submissions you sent elsewhere?

Yes. Submittable’s external submissions tool lets you log work you sent without Submittable, by hand.

Some older comparisons say it can’t, so this one’s worth correcting. The external submissions guide walks through adding one: choose Add External Submission, enter the organization, pick a status and fill in the required fields. The My Submissions guide also lets you download the submissions on screen as a CSV.

If most of the magazines you send to already use Submittable, external entries might make it enough as your main tracker. Test it with an email submission and one sent through another organizer’s form. Then check you can tell those manual entries apart from submissions the receiving organization updates.

What it won’t do is update itself. An external entry isn’t connected to the other service, so you change the status when a decision arrives. It also doesn’t give you the market-wide response research of a dedicated database. If you want that, pair a directory with your own record.

Should you just use a spreadsheet?

Use a spreadsheet if you mostly want a dependable record and you’re happy to keep the dates, statuses and reminders yourself.

Start small. Give each submission its own row, and don’t overwrite the last destination when a piece comes back. If several versions share a title, give each one an ID.

The weak spot is upkeep. Set a short weekly review and log acceptances the day they arrive. Your calendar won’t remind you of anything unless you’ve set it up and checked it works, and a formula that counts days doesn’t send an email.

Don’t mark a quiet magazine as a rejection. Keep the piece pending until the guidelines or an actual decision say otherwise.

How do you move your submission history out of a spreadsheet?

Back up the original, clean a copy, and test the importer with a handful of rows before you bring the rest. Yes, even the color-coded one.

Missa is one place to bring it, especially if you also apply for residencies, grants, prizes or art, film, music and performance calls. The tracker keeps what you sent, where and when, and saved calls get an email two weeks, one week, three days and one day before the deadline, in your time zone. You still apply on each organizer’s page, not through Missa, so keep their receipt or confirmation email with your records. For finding calls beyond magazines, see where to find open calls.

The move itself, in any tracker:

1. 1
   Keep the original file untouched and work in a copy.
2. 2
   Make your status labels consistent and your dates unambiguous.
3. 3
   Map the columns. Missa’s importer maps title, organization and status, plus optional deadline, submitted date, response date, work, genre, fee, notes and source URL. Use “title” for the call or submission and “work” for the poem, story or artwork, if your sheet keeps them apart.
4. 4
   Import the hard cases first: a multi-poem packet, a partial withdrawal, a magazine that has closed, and two records with similar names. If a detail has no column of its own, put it in notes and keep it in your backup.
5. 5
   Review the rows before you confirm. Missa’s importer has a review step for this.
6. 6
   Compare the record totals, then open a pending piece, an acceptance and an old rejection.
7. 7
   Set reminders only once you’ve checked that deadlines and time zones came through correctly. Keep the old system until you’ve fixed any mismatches.