Frequently Asked Questions

MeritBoard is an AI-powered contest platform designed for K-12 teachers. Create photography, art, and writing contests in your classroom, invite other teachers to compete head-to-head in Challenges, or run multi-teacher Group Contests. Our AI judges student submissions and generates rankings, certificates, share cards, and animated results reels.

MeritBoard supports seven contest types:

• Photography — photo submissions
• Physical Art — paintings, drawings, sculptures, etc.
• Digital Art — digital illustrations and designs
• Poetry — poems up to 3,000 characters
• Persuasive Writing — essays up to 10,000 characters
• Creative Writing — stories up to 15,000 characters
• Mixed / Other — any format you choose

We use OpenAI's advanced Vision API to analyze student submissions based on criteria like composition, creativity, technical quality, and originality. You can also provide custom judging criteria for each contest. The AI generates scores and constructive feedback for every submission, then ranks them automatically.

Yes! Teachers have full control. After AI judging, you can adjust rankings, modify recognition tiers (medals, ranks, honorable mentions), and customize how results are displayed. The AI is a tool to assist you, not replace your judgment.

Image contests (Photography, Physical Art, Digital Art): JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP, and HEIC — up to 10 MB per file.

Writing contests (Poetry, Persuasive Writing, Creative Writing): You can type or paste text directly, or upload PDF, DOC, DOCX, and TXT files.

A Challenge is a head-to-head contest between two teachers. You invite another teacher by email, and each of you uploads submissions from your students. The AI judges all submissions together and crowns a winner. It's a fun way to spark friendly competition between classrooms!

When creating a new contest, select Challenge as the scope. Then:

1. Enter your opponent's email address
2. Set the number of submissions per teacher (1–10)
3. Optionally set a submission deadline and custom judging criteria
4. Choose whether you want host override (the ability to adjust results before publishing)

Your opponent will receive an email invitation. If they don't have a MeritBoard account yet, they'll be invited to sign up. They can review the contest details before accepting or declining.

A Group contest lets multiple teachers in a MeritBoard Group compete together. All group members can upload submissions from their students, and the AI judges everything in a single pool. It's great for grade-level, department-wide, or school-wide competitions.

Groups are collections of teachers that you create or join. From the Groups page on your dashboard, you can:

• Create a new group and invite teachers by email
• Accept or decline group invitations
• Run Group contests that all members participate in

To run a Group contest, select Group when creating a contest, then choose which group to use.

Challenges and Group Contests only count towards the creator's subscription limit, and only once the contest is completed. If another teacher invites you to a Challenge or runs a Group Contest, it does not use any of your contest slots. You need a Pro plan or higher to create Challenges and Group Contests.

Yes! Our Free plan includes:

• Up to 30 students
• 3 completed contests (lifetime)
• AI-powered judging, certificates, and sharing

Pro — $19/month or $175/year (“Founding Teachers” pricing)

• Up to 150 students
• 5 completed contests per month
• Challenge and Group contests
• Unlimited open/draft contests

Pro Plus — $99/month or $895/year

• Up to 300 students
• 12 completed contests per month
• Everything in Pro, plus priority support

Admin — $269/month or $1,995/year (for schools & districts)

• Up to 20 Pro teacher accounts
• Admin dashboard, org billing & invoicing
• School-wide contests and read-only contest visibility

Only contests that have been judged by AI count towards your limit. Open and draft contests don't count. You can have unlimited contests in progress at any time — the limit only applies when you run AI judging.

Yes! Cancel anytime with no penalties. You'll retain access through the end of your current billing period. All past contests and results remain accessible even after cancellation.

Yes! If your school requires a purchase order or check payment, you can generate a pre-payment invoice from your Invoice page. You must have a Free Tier account to access this page.

1. Sign up with your school email
2. Add your students
3. Create a contest
4. Upload student submissions
5. Run AI judging
6. Share results, certificates, and the animated results reel!

Usually 1–3 minutes depending on the number of submissions. You'll see a progress indicator while the AI analyzes each entry.

Yes! You can have unlimited open and draft contests. Only completed (judged) contests count towards your monthly or lifetime limit.

Currently, teachers upload submissions on behalf of students to maintain control and comply with COPPA.

All past contests remain accessible in your dashboard. You can still view results, certificates, and share cards. You just won't be able to create new contests beyond your plan's limit.

Yes. We are FERPA and COPPA compliant. Student data is encrypted, stored securely, and never sold to third parties. Only teachers can access their students' information. Read our full Privacy Policy.

We recommend obtaining parental consent before uploading student work, especially if you plan to share results publicly. Check with your school's policies on student privacy and photo releases.

Yes. Results are private by default. You can share them via public link with parents and students when you're ready, and you can change visibility settings at any time.

Yes. Teachers can delete students, submissions, and entire contests at any time. Deletion is permanent and removes data from our systems within 30 days.

Contact us and we'll help you out! We typically respond within 24 hours.

Absolutely! We build based on teacher feedback. Use our contact form to share your ideas.

MeritBoard is designed to be intuitive, but we're happy to provide onboarding sessions for schools and districts. Contact us to schedule.