What is the Grow Digital Voucher?
It pays 50% of eligible costs to a maximum of €5,000, for small businesses of 1 to 50 employees, and it funds off-the-shelf software subscriptions, training and IT configuration. It does not fund bespoke website development or custom software.
That last sentence is the one most explainer pages leave out, so it goes first. Everything below is drawn from the Local Enterprise Office’s published scheme rules, checked on 11 September 2026. Schemes change; confirm with your own LEO before relying on any figure here.
Grow Digital Voucher amounts: the numbers
- Grant rate: 50% of eligible costs.
- Minimum grant: €500. Maximum grant: €5,000 per application. Because the rate is 50%, that means eligible spend of at least €1,000, and spend above €10,000 adds nothing to a single application.
- Number of vouchers: a maximum of two projects, capped at a cumulative €5,000, so two vouchers do not mean €10,000. A second one also has to be earned: approval depends on demonstrating the business progression set out in your Digital for Business report.
- Timing: the application must be submitted before any project spend is incurred or any project activity starts. The LEO’s concern is deadweight: committing, ordering, purchasing or contracting for any part of the project before you submit can make the whole project ineligible.
Grow Digital Voucher eligibility: who can apply
The Local Enterprise Office lists the tests an applicant must pass:
- You are a small enterprise: 1 to 50 paid employees, and annual turnover or balance sheet total of €10 million or less.
- If your business is part of a group, you count the group: the EU linked-enterprise rule adds the employees and financials of any enterprise owning more than 50% of you, or that you own more than 50% of. Group companies fail on this more often than on headcount.
- You have been trading for at least six months.
- You are registered and operating in the area of the Local Enterprise Office you apply to.
- You are solvent and hold current tax clearance.
- You are not a client of Enterprise Ireland or the IDA.
- You have completed a Digital for Business project within the previous two years.
Excluded sectors include coal and steel, primary agriculture, fishery and aquaculture, gambling, adult entertainment and tobacco. Excluded applicant types include commercial semi-states, trade associations and chambers of commerce, and not-for-profits, charities and sporting bodies that do not carry on taxable trading activity. The final decision sits with your LEO, not with any supplier.
The Digital for Business prerequisite most people miss
Digital for Business is a separate LEO programme ending in a report on where digital tools would help your business, and the voucher requires it to have been completed within the previous two years.
If you have never done one, you cannot apply yet. The order is: contact your LEO, complete Digital for Business, then apply against the recommendations in that report. The report is the gate.
What the voucher pays for
Two categories of cost are eligible, and the LEO defines both narrowly:
- Subscription fees for eligible business software that is new to the business, for a maximum of one year. The LEO’s own examples include ecommerce platforms, subscription-based website platforms, CRM systems, cloud accounting or payroll software where the business is moving to the cloud for the first time, and cybersecurity tools.
- Training and IT configuration to get that software working. Together they cannot exceed 50% of the total project cost.
What the Grow Digital Voucher does not fund
The Local Enterprise Office’s own words first:
- “The Grow Digital Voucher does not support bespoke website development.”
- “Custom or bespoke software is not eligible for grant support.”
- “Systems for regulatory compliance do not qualify.”
And from the rest of the scheme rules: a subscription beyond the first year is not eligible; adding licences or seats to software you already run does not qualify, because the subscription has to be new; and any element committed to, ordered or purchased before the application is submitted risks the project being deemed ineligible.
This matters on our own site more than most. A custom booking engine like ERP HEADtoHEAD’s, a membership platform and native apps like ESMA’s, or a designed-and-engineered website are all bespoke work, and none of it is voucher-eligible.
Can I use the Grow Digital Voucher for a website?
The short Grow Digital Voucher website answer is: only for the subscription-and-setup kind. If your site is a hosted platform product on a monthly plan, the first year’s subscription, configuration and training can be eligible.
Most projects have both parts: a subscription ecommerce platform, configured and with staff trained to run it, all eligible; plus a custom theme, an accounting integration or a quoting tool, none of it eligible. Split the two on paper before anybody applies, so the LEO sees exactly what it is asked to support. Where most of a project is bespoke the voucher is not the right instrument, and our website redesign and ecommerce development pages set out what a built project involves.
How to apply through your Local Enterprise Office in Ireland
The application belongs to your business rather than to a supplier, and the LEO asks to discuss every application first. The route is:
- Find your Local Enterprise Office: the one for the area where your business is registered and operating.
- Complete a Digital for Business project if you have not done one in the last two years.
- Talk to your LEO early; they confirm eligibility and what counts as evidence.
- Gather tax clearance, quotes for the subscription, configuration and training, and the report.
- Submit the application before you commit to, order or buy anything. Supporting documents can follow where your LEO permits it; the commitment cannot.
- Buy, configure and train, keep the invoices, and claim.
Application details are on the Grow Digital portal.
Where Loco fits
We are a digital product studio, so most of what we build is bespoke by definition. Our role around the Grow Digital Voucher is to separate the eligible and ineligible parts of a project and cost each correctly, so you claim what you are entitled to and no more.
That work sits inside our Digital & AI consultancy, which ends in a scoped, costed plan with each line mapped to the schemes open to you. Typically that means:
- Identifying the off-the-shelf subscriptions a project genuinely needs (CRM, cloud accounting, ecommerce platform, security tooling) and scoping their configuration and training as a voucher-eligible workstream.
- Scoping the bespoke work (design, development, integrations, custom software) as a separate, self-funded workstream with its own price and timeline.
- Saying plainly when the voucher does not fit, so you do not budget on money that will not arrive.
The application stays yours, and the grant is paid to your business.
For scale, our built work starts well above the voucher ceiling: projects from €10,000. The voucher earns its place on the tools around the build; the build itself is outside its scope.
A worked example: the Palmer Shore launch
Palmer Shore, a specialist in data-centre workforce governance, launched in 2026 with no website and no search history, and we designed and built the site that had to carry the brand from day one. That is bespoke website development: not voucher-eligible, and we said so at the first conversation. No part of that project was grant-funded; on a different project the off-the-shelf subscriptions adopted around a launch could be, and keeping the two apart is the discipline.
The Enterprise Ireland Innovation Voucher
The other scheme we are asked about is the Innovation Voucher, a different instrument for a different job. Checked on 11 September 2026 against the Innovation Voucher page and the programme terms of reference (January 2025).
- A standard voucher is worth up to €10,000, fully funded. A co-funded voucher is also up to €10,000 with the company contributing 50% in cash, so it can cover a €20,000 project.
- It is open to small and medium-sized limited companies registered in Ireland; you need not be an Enterprise Ireland client.
- It must be spent with a registered knowledge provider: higher education institutes and public research bodies on Enterprise Ireland’s published list, including registered providers in Northern Ireland. Never with a private supplier such as Loco.
- It excludes software purchases and development, standard website development and online optimisation, and standard mobile app development.
- One active voucher at a time, and a maximum of four in a rolling five-year period, of which one must be the 50-50 co-funded voucher. Each is valid for 18 months; applications are accepted year-round.
Where it fits a Loco project is at the research end. If a custom software or AI product depends on a question a university group is best placed to answer, the voucher can fund that knowledge transfer and we scope the build around it. Enterprise Ireland rejects applications where a solution to the knowledge question already exists in the marketplace. If the answer is buyable, it is not a voucher question.
