Choosing proposal software is difficult. There are quite a few options, some considerably better than others. So in our completely biased opinion, where does PandaDoc stack up?
PandaDoc are an interesting company. They’re not really a proposal company - they’re more a document signing service like Docusign or Signable.
PandaDoc |
Better Proposals |
|
|---|---|---|
| Digital signatures | ||
| Digital Signatures |  |
|
| Ready to use templates | ||
| Ready to use templates |
200+ |
250+ |
| Document analytics | ||
| Document analytics | |
|
| Integrations | ||
| Integrations |
36 |
40+ |
| Free trial | ||
| Free trial | |
|
| Custom domain | ||
| Custom domain |  |
|
| Custom branding | ||
| Custom branding | |
|
| Document tracking | ||
| Document tracking | |
|
| Live chat integration | ||
| Live chat integration | |
|
| Document Checker | ||
| Document Checker | |
|
| Payment integrations | ||
| Payment integrations |
Stripe, PayPal |
Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal |
At the core of it, PandaDoc is great for corporates. Lots of different options with signature rules, permissions and user roles. All things that companies with 100+ salespeople need. They’re great for that. But if you’re looking for software that can help you scale your business and take care of you as you grow, Better Proposals is the way to go.
In Better Proposals, setting up user permissions and workflow approvals is as simple as the editor. We don’t like complicating things, so you’ll be ready to go in just a few clicks. We’re designed for helping small businesses scale and automating sales workflows for the big ones.
When you’re sending a proposal, who are you trying to impress? Your potential customer we should hope. The main fallback with PandaDoc is the fact that their document builder / proposal designer doesn’t actually allow you to create anything that looks very visually impressive. It’s a document signing service for big corporations. Fancy design isn’t something that is typically required.
Every business is struggling in some way or another at the moment but one thing we're finding easy is get proposals signed and deals done thanks to how quick and easy it is for us to create proposals and our clients to sign them
Of course, design is subjective but from a visual perspective, which do you think is going to do you more good when sending to your client?
This is one of their public showcase templates
When sending a proposal to a potential client, you want to build trust and the quickest way to do that (all things being equal) is by sending through an amazing looking proposal. If you send something that looks like a legal document with an attempt to win the business, it’s always going to be an uphill struggle.
Process, share, and store your proposals quicker, easier, and more securely than ever.
And the best part is, you won't need a team to make it perfect.
Scroll through one of our proposals on the left, compare it to PadaDoc's on the right
Right now in the Better Proposals library, there are over 200 templates and 40+ integrations to choose from with more being added regularly.
There’s always going to be a compromise. If you had unlimited time, you could make something look good in PandaDoc but what you really want are fast, efficient, quality proposals sent in minutes. That’s exactly what Better Proposals will give you.
You set all your branding up in one place and simply alter the content for your client each time. We have an unofficial tagline here which is ‘Just Write’. That’s all you’ll need to do - just focus on your client and their problems and explaining how you’ll solve them. Let us worry about the rest.
Zero learning, automatically designed, lightning fast.
PandaDoc is not aimed at the freelancer / small business. That is evident and they brutally punish you in their pricing. You can read more about PandaDoc Pricing here but the upshot is they hook you in with crazy low pricing on a plan that isn't sustainable then force you to pay 5x just to continue using it as you were. It's not a scam but it is very clever on their part.
