PandaDoc have created a great business. They’ve got thousands of customers, probably tens of millions in revenue. It’s a very good product.
Better Proposals is similar in that sense. However, we’ve made some different choices about how we approach pricing and our plans. We believe you should know what you’re paying before you sign up and be able to count on that price and those features for as long as you’re a customer.
On a daily basis, our customer team speaks to a lot of people who want to switch from PandaDoc. By all accounts, it’s a decent product. It does a lot, and you could do a lot worse than using it. That said, there are some very common reasons why people want to switch.
A discounted quote isn’t your renewal price
When it comes to negotiated subscriptions, we’ve heard the same story from prospective customers more than once. They were asked what other software they were considering, then PandaDoc came back with a quote below the competing price.
That can make PandaDoc look like the obvious choice. But PandaDoc’s own Master Services Agreement says promotional pricing and discounts do not apply to the renewal term. For annual orders, it also provides for another one-year term unless written notice of non-renewal is given at least 30 days before the current term ends.
A year later, the initial discount disappears. You can switch, but by then you have templates to move and people to train.
The features on your plan are subject to change
Another common concern is choosing a plan, getting used to its features, and then finding that something you rely on has moved to a higher plan. At that point, your options are to upgrade or lose a feature you previously had.
For example, PandaDoc’s Essentials plan used to include unlimited templates and pricing tables. It has since given way to Starter, which now limits you to five templates and doesn’t include pricing tables. Those proposal features require Business.
For a new customer, that’s a limit to consider before signing up.
For an existing customer who built their work around the previous allowance, it means paying more to keep working the same way.
One team had been on Starter Annual for nearly three years. They’d built over a dozen templates - exactly what you’d expect people to do with software they use regularly.
Then, PandaDoc enforced the new five-template limit. The team couldn’t create any new templates, and using the ones they already had brought up prompts to upgrade.
Another PandaDoc customer says they didn’t even realize their plan had changed until they were working on a client proposal and found they could no longer use a feature they relied on. Their monthly price hadn’t gone down.
When they contacted support, they were told the change had happened months earlier. They could pay more to get the feature back or keep paying the same amount for a plan that did less.
And it’s not just the lower plans, either.
A business that had used PandaDoc’s production API every day for four years says it was suddenly cut off when PandaDoc deprecated their plan.
Another user reports an add-on they used with the Business plan suddenly moved to Enterprise, ultimately making them move away from PandaDoc.
You can keep the number on an invoice unchanged and still make a product more expensive.
If keeping the features you already use requires an upgrade, that’s an increase in the cost of doing the same work.
Switching from PandaDoc?
A guide to help you bring your PandaDoc template to Better Proposals
Read the guideThe subscription price doesn’t cover everything
PandaDoc’s lowest plan starts at $35 per user per month on monthly billing, but pricing tables, custom branding, and CRM integrations require Business. That takes you to $65 per user per month, or $49 per user per month billed annually.
For a five-person team, that’s $325 a month or $2,940 paid upfront for the year. Depending on how you use the software, there may be more to pay on top.
For example, PandaDoc lists web forms, bulk send, and other features on Business with asterisks, indicating additional costs apply. Their Salesforce integration is also an optional extra. Sending document emails from your own domain is a paid add-on on Business Annual, with a possible setup fee on Enterprise. Even then, your document links still use app.pandadoc.com.
Forms are another good example of how the cost can change after the first year. Every time someone fills out your Form, PandaDoc generates a document from their response. Each document generated this way uses a credit.
Business Annual includes 120 of those credits for the account’s first year. After 12 months, that free recurring allowance stops. So a process that worked within your subscription in year one can start adding to your bill in year two.
The Freedom to do things differently
For a bit of context, PandaDoc is a venture-backed company. It has investors who expect a return, which means it operates under pressures we don’t have.
Our funding comes from our customers, not from a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. That gives us the freedom to make decisions we believe are fair to the people using our software.
At Better Proposals, we grandfather your plan for as long as you’re a customer. The price you sign up for stays your price.
We’ll add new features as we develop them. We won’t rename your plan and take away something you use every day, then ask you to upgrade to get it back.
Does that make billing more complicated for our support team?
Sometimes, but it’s a small price to pay to be fair.
Our pricing is on our pricing page. There are no secret codes, special deals, or negotiations behind the scenes. The only discount is for choosing an annual plan, and it’s available to everyone. A year from now, you’ll still know what you’re paying for.
Our approach is simple: Keep our customers happy. If we don’t, we’re gone.