Agree with you about Awwwards. They were good before they got over commercialized (bought by WIX template maker?). Up went the costs... $55 submission fee, $550 conference fee to get your award (plus travel costs), $165 for basic directory listing, $20K to be a sponsor (conflict of interest?). Too expensive for me and sooo many traffic bots it got hard to tell if there was any real traffic.
Right now cssdesignawards seem more independent and transparent but yeah.. the ratio of elite sites vs average sites can be like awwwards because everybody submits their sites to them. Cssdesignawards have kept their submission fees low over the years and pretty sure they are the only award to send actual real trophies out with no cost (you might want to verify that).
Others suggested the following as non-commercial awards... webbyawards, onepagelove, FWA, csswinner, webawards and uplabs. I don’t really visit webbys but I would say they are definitely commercial. They’ve been around forever and have a big following. Good for sites about famous people IMO.
Onepagelove is a fav of mine so definitely give them a go for single page sites. By far the best in that category. FWA is great for experimental sites, games etc.… I do suspect it was taken over by Awwwards/WIX last year though. Kinda obvious with the fwwaawawarddd thing - an award for winning an award on awwwwards and fwa on the same day?? Seems like a monpoly move to try and push out the indpendents.
Csswinner hahaha... should be called cssloser! Slogan is “A unique platform…” yet everyone knows it continually copies other awards and unfairly drags down the reputation of the whole Indian design and dev industry.
Never heard of webawards and don’t use uplabs so can’t comment on them. In the end it depends what you are after. There are pros and cons for all. Here’s how I weigh it up:
Commercialized awards.
Pros:
Cons:
Free awards.
Pros:
Cons:
Hope that helps!