What is the Best Proposal Builder in 2022? Our 6 Top Contenders

With over 8,000 happy customers and over $240,234 won using our templates in the last 24 hours, Better Proposals has become a preferred proposal builder for many small and medium businesses. 

The formidable proposal analytics and the most extensive template library in the world give our software an edge over the competition. However, the competition is restless. As we improve our software, so do they. 

Let’s take a look at what we’re up against in 2022.

Better Proposals

Before we take on our contenders, let’s see where we stand in 2022. Better Proposals is a web-based platform that allows users to create highly-personalized sales quotes, contracts, and proposals with digital signatures, 3rd party integrations, payment gateways, and much more.

With Better Proposals, you get an all-in-one editor that makes your job easier from start to finish. The process is intuitive and you’ll quickly get a grasp of it without having to read a manual. It boils down to click, type, drag, drop, and send. 

Better Proposals is also heavy on visual design. We understand that branding runs on consistency, so we give each proposal a custom domain. Now every proposal you send looks like an extension of your website, including your own content, colors, fonts, and images. 

Cutting-edge features

Realizing the importance of seamless customer experience, our proposals integrate live chat and instant messaging. You can engage your clients in real-time as they read your proposal, answer their concerns, and close the sale. 

The platform informs you when proposals are opened, downloaded, or forwarded so they can follow up accordingly and at the right time. 

Clients on their part can view and sign proposals online and make instant payments through Stripe, PayPal, and GoCardless. 

But our integrations don’t stop there. Apart from payment services, you can automate your sales process by connecting your favorite tools like your CRM, live chat, and project management tools. 

After the latest overhaul, our proposal editor is not only faster but also includes a ton of brand new features. 

Now you can add background videos from YouTube, Vimeo, or Wistia. All you have to do is pretty much copy and paste.

You can choose what method you’d like your client to sign with. If you want to draw their signature, you simply untick the typing option and it won’t be visible to them. 

Once you create a template that converts, you can save the best pieces from the proposal to the content library, so you don’t have to do it from scratch for future clients. 

Speaking of clients, Better Proposals has customers in over 150 countries and is available in 25 languages. 
We offer multi-currency and international tax support. So no matter where you’re located, you can send proposals using your language and the local currency system.

Proposify

Proposify is the online proposal software that gives SMBs control and insight into the most important stage of your sale process. Create engaging sales documents that are consistent and error-free, but also highly flexible to deliver a seamless sign-off experience. 

This platform is walking the line between true web-based proposals and using something like Microsoft Word. 

It allows you to include case studies, sections, and graphics with folders and filters on the backend, so everyone can find what they need. 

Proposify enables mass updates across templates to save admins time wasted on manual edits.  

In the visual department, you can impress your company’s unique style on all your sales documents. From the font style to bringing your offers to life with videos and images.

The software allows you to create user roles so that sales reps can access only what is needed. This makes the whole design process faster and reduces the room for error. 

Automate your deals by connecting your proposals with your CRM, such as HubSpot. 

Synchronize your contacts and pre-define custom variables to populate necessary fields in your documents.

Now let’s take a look at things that are not so good.

Word-like editor

Now let’s address the elephant in the room – the Proposify Editor. This is undoubtedly the part you’ll spend most of your time using. It’s a beehive of different options that you need quite some time to master. 

With Better Proposals, you don’t have such an issue. Our editor doesn't require you to choose from hundreds of fonts, or every color there is. 

Proposify’s editor has a ton of options – no arguing about that. But if you want full-scale flexibility in design, you don’t have to pay $100 a month for that. There’s an equally good tool that is free – Microsoft Word.

Paper-based layouts

Although marketed as web-based proposing software, their proposal design still revolves around a piece of paper. You need to adjust your proposal to sit on sheets of paper even on a computer screen. 

Nowadays, proposals get printed less and less. There’s even a good reason for that because our report shows that printing your proposals cuts the conversion chances by 88%. My point is that in this day and age, there’s no reason to constrain the proposal design into the A4 format. 

With Better Proposals, you get web pages so your content is infinite. Your text, images, and other elements are always delivered perfectly, whether the client opens them on the desktop or mobile. 

Talking of mobile, Better Proposal documents are much better optimized for mobile view – not a small difference as we know that 70% of emails are opened on phones now.

The Showdown

Verdict

Proposify nails down the basics and provides an elaborate framework to build compelling proposals. However, the app lacks speed, integrations, AI, and cross-device experience. 

If you’re a professional designer who enjoys spending time perfecting your proposals, then Proposify is for you. If you need speed and ultimate customer experience that gets the job done, you’re better off with Better Proposals

Qwilr

Qwilr allows you to create polished proposals, pitches, sales quotes, and similar documents. Relying on design and automation to drive sales, the tool includes intelligence tracking and integrations. You see the recurring theme here, right?

Taking inspiration from Scandinavian minimalism, Qwilr is a sales document platform that relies on a powerful editor, easy-to-use templates, Unsplash image library, and modular building blocks for fast and hassle-free proposing. 

I especially like their dynamic content blocks. These interactive widgets allow you to show and hide content, embed a Google map, open up a calendar to book a meeting or access the pricing tab – all within one page.

The software fast tracks your sales process by integrations with your CRM or data source to automatically generate sales proposals, quotes, and contracts.

Qwilr’s accept-sign-pay process is simple and straightforward, reducing the steps to closing a deal.

Is Qwilr a perfect proposal software? Not so sure.

The devil is in the templates

Qwilr claims they have 150+ templates. We counted them and found only 94. That’s the first issue. 

Then it’s their customizability. You should always modify any template before using it for your business. But there’s little to customize on Qwilr’s templates. It’s pretty much from scratch every time.

The next one is something we’ve heard from sales professionals who switched from Qwilr to Better Proposals. From the sales perspective, their template layouts and content provides weak conversion. 

On the other hand, every single template in our library has won real business. 

Mobile could do better

From the mobile standpoint, both Qwilr and Better Proposals are optimized for mobile viewing but, we do it better. Open any of Qwilr’s templates and there’s always more white space than needed to create a seamless flow.

What else do I get?!

Qwilr is serious about branding. So much that they ask for a whopping $250 a month to remove all Qwilr branding from the proposals you send to your clients. If you don’t mind their badge, they'll charge you $70 per month of service. 
With Better Proposals, you have a completely branded proposal with your URL in the address bar on our Premium plan at $29 per month.

The Showdown

Verdict

Qwilr is a fine piece of software engineering. Their pricing, plans, and features are heavily leaning toward clients with deeper pockets. If you’re a member of the Dollar Club, you’ll love their IKEA-like content blocks. 

If you need a proposal tool that won’t make a sinkhole in your budget, can start small, and grow with you, give Better Proposals a call.

Bidsketch

Bidsketch allows users to create branded proposals based on reusable content, pricing, and visuals. You can customize any template with your own HTML/CSS designs. 

Bidsketch was the first who launched the online proposal form, we have to give them that. But all things must pass, and if you don't update your software, you fall out of trends before you know it. 

For example, they still highlight the possibility to “even embed images and video for online viewing” when this is already a standard for leading proposal templates. Better Proposals even let you use a video as a background. 

You can receive notifications when your client signs the proposal. From there, you can prompt for a deposit, send them a new client guide or show them the next steps. 

Just like Better Proposals, developers at Bidsketch have recognized the importance of having your company domain so everything is consistent with your brand.  

However, from there, Bidsketch and Better Proposals take different turns.

Antique editor

According to online reviews, the thing that most people hate about Bidsketch is its editor. The whole process is painstaking, as it’s not preview-on-the-fly, but you have to fill in text fields for each part of your proposal with no clue how it actually appears on the client-side. 

If you want to make everything snug and fit, prepare to hit “back” and “next” a lot.

On the other hand, in the Better Proposals editor, the frontend will look the same as you’re typing it. And everything looks just great by default.

Paper-based layout

Bidsketch might have started the paperless proposal revolution, but for some reason, their proposals are still based on a paper format. This means that you need to take care that your proposal breaks so that it sits on sheets of paper even on a computer screen.

With Better Proposals, you get web pages with infinite content that look just as good on mobile as it does on desktop.

Weak template content

From a sales perspective, the original content in templates provided by Bidsketch is very weak. Even if you want to stick with their app, do yourself a service and hire a professional to rewrite the proposal content. 

It appears to be more of a placeholder rather than content that closes the deal. 

Sure, you need to tailor the content for each client in any of the proposal tools reviewed here. However, every template from Better Proposals has winning results behind it.

The Showdown

Verdict

We must give Bidsketch credit for staying in business for the amount of time they did. They have pioneered some of the features all online proposal platforms use. 

But one can’t notice that they have stayed behind on many features customers expect today. I hope they relaunch one day as a valuable competitor that can truly save your time and make an impression on your clients 

Until then, check out Better Proposals’ free 14-day trial.

Loopio

Loopio is unique proposal software that lets you build an RFP (request-for-proposal) response library, tag this content and then have the automated engine pull the content for each client and fill in a proposal.

Thanks to Loopio’s RFP answer library, you can structure your content and keep it always up to date using smart automation solutions. 
The library is supported by powerful search capabilities, so you can find the right content faster, while the duplicate detection keeps the content storage clean and uncluttered.

And when you need to create a new proposal, the RFP automation tool helps you find the content you need and export it to the original RFP document, a web portal, or a custom template. 

All these features make Loopio a superb platform for answering RFPs. But when it comes to sales proposals and contracts, things are not so great. 

Why?

No templates

The first thing that sets Loopio apart from any proposal software on this list is the templates. 

While Better Proposals has 200+ templates in its library, Loopio has zero. 
You can create project templates for handling your RFPs, but since the editor doesn't let you see what’s happening in real-time, you can easily lose a lot of time there.

Only two integrations

Another big selling point of Better Proposals is the 40+ integrations that are available. 

Add your preferred CRM software as well as dozens of project management tools. 

Our live chat integration is especially useful for clients who can provide feedback instantly, eliminating the need for an endless exchange of emails. 

Loopio only integrates with Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. It also supports Slack and online storage platforms, and that’s about it.

The Showdown

Verdict

If you need a tool that specializes in answering RFPs, you’ll be more than happy with Loopio.

Yet, if you want to speed up your entire sales process and produce amazing documents that convert, give our 14-day trial a shot, and you’ll be coming for more.

PandaDoc

PandaDoc is an all-in-one document automation software designed to streamline the process of creating, approving, and e-signing proposals, quotes, and contracts. The platform has helped over 40,000 customers increase efficiency by integrating their CRM, payment, and file storage apps into a single workflow. 

PandaDoc allows you to automate the creation of highly-customized and legally-approved documents. 

Administering a huge library of 750+ templates, PandaDoc has you covered whatever industry and line of work you’re in. 

When it comes to integrations, PandaDoc is a worthy rival to Better Proposals. It supports 38 integrations including every major CRM and plenty of other marketing and sales tools. 

Just like Better Proposals, PandaDoc allows you to track the recipient’s behavior once they open the proposal, so you know exactly when and how to follow up. 

Documents analytics helps you understand how your document performs, so you can tweak them for better results. 

So PandaDoc offers a truckload of templates, automated workflows, 3rd party integrations, and powerful analytics. There’s the electronic signature to speed things up, several payment options and on top of it, their proposals are mobile-friendly.  

It seems we have the winner. 

The problem is that PandaDoc is just…

Too darn big for most users

PandaDoc is a great software for corporations. There are lots of different options with signature rules, permission, and user roles that enable collaboration with people outside your team and even your company. There are the 256-bit encryption and SOC2 Type II certificates. 

That’s all great for organizations with 100+ people on the salesforce who are often targeted by cyber attacks. 

Pro tip: it is valuable to use VPN service to increase overall cybersecurity of your organization. When it comes to securing your online activities, it's crucial to use a reliable VPN service like Surfshark.

But if you need proposal software to help you grow your business and speed up the sales process, Better Proposals is a more elegant option. 

Over here at Better Proposals, we love simple solutions. In our platform, setting up user permissions and workflow approvals is as simple as using the editor. You don’t need help or a user manual for that – it’s done in a few clicks.

We're not impressed

The main gripe about PandaDoc is that their proposal builder does not allow users to create anything that looks engaging. 

Mind you, they’ve designed their 750+ templates for document signing at big corporations. No stunning design is required there, just the bottom line. 

See it for yourself. 

Compare the PandaDoc Interior Design Template

with the Interior Design Template made by Better Proposals.

The quickest way to build trust with a potential client is to send an amazing-looking proposal. If you send your clients something that looks like a legal document and attempt to win their business, an offer created by Better Proposals will always be a horse length ahead of you.

The Showdown

Verdict

If you run a sales department 100+ strong and most of your clients are other corporations, where dozens of people must go through each proposal to check the legality and validate every signature, then PandaDoc is the tool for you. 

On the other hand, if you can’t see a point in buying 750 bleak-looking templates that look pretty much all the same, and don’t want to bother your clients with security certificates, you know where to find Better Proposals. We have coffee and cakes.

Nusii

Nusii is an online proposal management software that includes variable modules that allow you to automatically upload clients’ personal or company information in proposals. The other features include automated reminders, proposal tracking, electronic signatures, multi-language support, etc.

This platform includes a series of professionally designed templates that you can use straight from the box or customize to your needs. With the system of variables, filling out the client information becomes a breeze. 

Just add the client to the new proposal and all their information is automatically uploaded. 

Using native support for 35 languages, Nusii has you covered no matter where you’re located. If your language is not on the list, just give them a call and they’ll add it for you. 

The same applies to client currencies. You have the option to set one general currency, or set them on a per-client basis.

The whole package is very simple to use and you can have your proposal in the client’s inbox in a matter of minutes. 

So far, Nusii seems like a reasonable choice. But is it?

Only basic analytics 

Nusii dashboard is intuitive to use, and their approach to sales using a client-focused overview instead of a proposal-focused overview is a genuine feature.

However, we discovered that other proposal platforms, Better Proposals included, provide much more client data. Nusii covers the basics: when a client opens the email, opens the proposal, approves it, etc.

Better Proposals analytics, on the other hand, blows Nusii out of the water. 

Using our proposal monitoring, you know instantly who has opened your proposal, on what device, how long have they spent on individual sections, etc. 

All these reports give you valuable info for the next step. Pop the Better Proposals live chat and you have the tools to deal with any client queries instantly and get the proposal signed off that very day. 

Turn-based editor

A major difference between Nusii and Better Proposals is that with Nusii there’s a lot of dead reckoning. You type text or add a picture and hope it looks right in the preview. The whole process is time-consuming and annoying.

With Better Proposals, there is no guesswork. Everything you do in the editor is how it appears in the proposals. We call this Preview-on-the-fly.

As a whole, the platform looks decent but still needs to grow. At the moment, it offers just 8 proposal templates and 4 integrations.

No way to pay

One of the best features of Better Proposals is integrated payment options. Your clients can sign the proposal, but that's just half the job done. The other half is getting the money. 

Nusii doesn’t have this feature. Unfortunately, your clients need to use a separate banking or payment app to get the money through, one of these days.

The Showdown

Verdict

There’s no point lying. Call us biased but who are we to tell you where to put your money. Nusii is a handy little app that is definitely an upgrade from using Word. But when it comes to the number of templates, payments, and analytics, it can’t beat Better Proposals.

Final verdict

We’ve tested 6 of our toughest competitors and if you’re already a Better Proposals client, we have good news. We’re still pretty much rocking! 

In 2022, Better Proposals beats its rivals in almost every field thanks to our breathtaking template design, 3rd party integrations, simple editor, and rich analytics. 

Judging by the number of templates and integrations, PandaDoc is right behind us. However, it’s a complex platform with much more functionalities than an average SMB needs. 

The beauty of Better Proposals is that it provides everything you need to speedway your entire sales process, and yet allows you to start small and then scale up as your business expands. 

If you like what you’ve heard, sign-up for a free 14-day trial, and soon you’ll realize why Better Proposals is still the best proposal builder.