What is the Grow Digital Voucher?
The Grow Digital Voucher is a Local Enterprise Office grant that pays 50% of eligible costs, to a maximum of €5,000, for small businesses of 1 to 50 employees. It funds new off-the-shelf software subscriptions, plus the IT configuration and staff training that get them working. It does not fund bespoke website development or custom software.
Every figure here was checked against the Local Enterprise Office’s published scheme rules on 30 September 2026. Rules can change between rounds, so confirm the detail with your own LEO before you commit to anything.
The Trading Online Voucher closed to applications in December 2024 (LEO Monaghan notice), so the Grow Digital Voucher is now the LEO’s digital voucher. For the other schemes still open to an Irish business, see our guide to website grants in Ireland.
Loco Digital, founded in 2021 and based at The Digital Hub in Dublin 8, builds bespoke websites and software, such as the first Palmer Shore website and the ERP HEADtoHEAD booking engine, which is set up to bill each event from its own company. Work designed and built for one business is bespoke, so the voucher funds neither. This page sets out what it does fund, so you can claim every euro you are entitled to.
Grow Digital Voucher amounts
- Grant rate: 50% of eligible costs.
- Minimum grant €500, maximum €5,000 per application. Eligible spend therefore starts at €1,000, and spend above €10,000 adds nothing to one application.
- Up to two vouchers per business, with €5,000 the most you can receive across both.
Grow Digital Voucher eligibility
An applicant must pass every one of these tests:
- You are a small enterprise: 1 to 50 paid employees, with annual turnover, or a balance sheet total, no higher than €10 million.
- If your business is part of a group, the group counts. The EU linked-enterprise rule adds the staff and financials of any enterprise that owns more than 50% of you, or that you own more than 50% of. A partner enterprise, owned 25% to 50% either way, adds a proportion of the other’s figures.
- Your business has traded for six months or more.
- You apply to the LEO for the area where your business is registered and operating.
- You are solvent and hold current tax clearance.
- Neither Enterprise Ireland nor the IDA counts you as a client.
- You have finished a Digital for Business project in the last two years.
Excluded sectors include coal and steel, primary agriculture, fishery and aquaculture, gambling, adult entertainment and tobacco. Excluded applicants include commercial semi-states, trade associations, chambers of commerce, and not-for-profits, charities and sporting bodies with no taxable trading activity.
The Digital for Business prerequisite
Digital for Business is a separate LEO programme that ends in a report on where digital tools would help your business. If you have not completed one in the previous two years, you cannot apply yet. Complete it first, then apply against the recommendations in that report. If you are planning new software this year, start Digital for Business now: it is the step that decides how soon you can apply.
What the voucher pays for
The LEO defines two categories of eligible cost:
- Subscription fees for business software that is new to the business, for a maximum of one year. The LEO’s examples include ecommerce platforms, subscription website platforms, CRM systems, booking and payment software, cloud accounting or payroll software when you are moving those systems to the cloud, and cybersecurity tools.
- Training and IT configuration to get that software working. These cannot exceed 50% of the total project cost.
What the Grow Digital Voucher does not fund
The Local Enterprise Office names bespoke website development, custom or bespoke software, and systems for regulatory compliance as ineligible.
The scheme rules add these limits:
- A subscription beyond its first year is not eligible.
- Extra licences or seats for software you already run do not qualify, because the subscription must be new.
- The application must be submitted before any project spend is incurred. Committing to, ordering or buying any part of the project first can make the whole project ineligible.
Can I use the Grow Digital Voucher for a website?
Only if the website is a subscription platform. When your site runs on a hosted platform on a monthly plan, the first year’s subscription, its configuration and staff training can be eligible.
Most projects have both kinds of cost. A subscription ecommerce platform and its setup can be eligible. A custom theme, an accounting integration or a quoting tool built on top of it cannot. Split the two on paper before anyone applies, so the LEO can see which costs it is asked to support.
For a built site, our website redesign and ecommerce development services cover the work, and what a website costs in Ireland gives the price bands.
How to apply through your Local Enterprise Office in Ireland
Your business makes the application, and the LEO asks to discuss it with you first.
- Find the Local Enterprise Office for the area where your business is registered and operating.
- If you have no Digital for Business project from the last two years, do that first.
- Talk to your LEO early to confirm eligibility and what counts as evidence.
- Gather your financial statements, tax clearance details, the report, and the costs of the subscription, configuration and training.
- Submit the application before you commit to, order or buy anything.
- Buy, configure and train, keep the invoices, and claim.
Where Loco fits
Most of what Loco Digital builds is bespoke, which the voucher does not fund. What we can do is make sure every eligible line is on your application. Our Digital & AI consultancy finishes with a costed plan that maps each line of a project to the schemes open to you:
- The off-the-shelf subscriptions the project needs (CRM, cloud accounting, an ecommerce platform, security tools), with their configuration and training, as a voucher-eligible workstream.
- The bespoke work (design, development, integrations, custom software) as a separate, self-funded workstream.
Our built projects start from €10,000 and are bespoke, so the voucher does not fund them.
The Enterprise Ireland Innovation Voucher
The Innovation Voucher is a different scheme for a different job:
- Any small or medium-sized limited company registered in Ireland can apply, and you do not have to be an Enterprise Ireland client.
- You spend it with a registered knowledge provider, a higher education institute for example, and never with a private supplier such as Loco.
- Each voucher is valid for 18 months, and applications are open all year.
- Its terms of reference (January 2025) exclude software development, standard website development and standard mobile app development.
It suits the research stage of a project, when a custom software or AI automation build depends on a question a university group can answer. Digital Discovery and Digital Process Innovation are covered in our comparison of Enterprise Ireland AI grants.
