These days, sending an appealing business proposal is a breeze. Forget the horrible process of cobbling bits of old proposals and quotes together. Modern proposal management software turns it into a simple, painless process of sending quality proposals in less time.
Having started as a freelancer myself, I've tried pretty much every software from Word to Bidsketch trying to find something that'd work for me and have a reasonable pricing tag. Some of the software tools below were actually why we've started building Better Proposals – our proposal management software.
This article is meant to help you make that decision. I'm going to break down the pros and cons of each of the 8 best proposal software solutions and 2 old school methods in a fair and even way. Although I've tried to make it as unbiased as possible, you'll still want to evaluate some of the software solutions yourself but this will likely save you time evaluating something that was never right for you in the first place.
Regardless of where you work, what your business is, and how you send proposals, there's something in here for everyone. We know from our own conversations with our customers what things are important to proposal software buyers. We're going to use those things as a guide and review each of the major options fairly based on the following criteria:
Proposal management software is an application that helps with writing, managing, and sending business proposals. These web-based applications let users easily build proposals online and send them to prospective clients.
Compared to the traditional way of sending business proposals (within Word or PDF sales documents, for example), proposal software has a range of benefits. These include the ability to use proposal templates and various app integrations, the ability to track proposal analytics, have your proposals signed electronically, and get payments directly from the proposal.
Before we take a look at the best proposal management software tools you can get, let's see why you need business proposal software in the first place.
There are plenty of reasons why you should consider using business proposal software instead of writing your proposals in Word by hand. Here are some of them.
If you want to create proposals more quickly and effortlessly, you don't want to write them from scratch. Instead, use proposal templates, which are 90% finished proposals that just need the final touches added to them.
Digital proposal software allows your teams to automate much of the proposal creation by pulling customer details directly from your CRM and using existing content from your content library. Automation helps your solution providers shorten their sales cycle and land new business faster.
With а proposal management software, you can track exactly what the client is doing with your proposal. Using integrated document analytics, see how many times they opened it, when they read it, how much time they spent reading, which sections they took the most time with when they signed it, and much more. Proposal reporting features give you a wealth of data in one place that helps you better understand your sales pipeline and readjust your strategy for winning new business.
It's important to be able to connect your data from other apps. With integrations, you can connect your CRM, email marketing, time tracking, project management software, and many other tools with your proposal software. That way, you spend less time entering data and more time sending out proposals.
Modern proposal software lets you send links to a completed proposal instead of Word or PDF files. This means that your proposals will be optimized for different devices, they will look great, and they can be opened anywhere at any time.
Don't worry about the legal stuff. The best proposal tools now come with e-signature capabilities. Once your clients sign your proposal electronically, the integrated digital signature is just as legally binding as it would be on paper.
Connect various payment processors with your proposals and get paid through credit cards, Paypal, and many other payment features.
The first thing our product is going to be judged on is its design. We also know it's the first thing your clients are going to judge you on, so we make it our number one focus. We start with the proposal viewer and editor and make sure you're able to create world-class-looking proposal documents with no design skill whatsoever.
Better Proposals is priced for 3 levels of companies – freelancers, small businesses or agencies, and lastly, high senders and enterprise companies. We've designed our pricing to be the best value of anything out there.
You get more with our plans than with anyone else - and that's on purpose. Paid plans start at $19 per month for the most affordable plan, all the way to $49 per month for enterprise customers. You can find out more on our pricing page.
We've designed our product and subscription plans for companies of all sizes. From freelancers and small businesses to large sales teams, Better Proposals works for anyone wanting visual appeal coupled with functionality.
We grow on the strength of our product, which means we are constantly looking for ways to improve it. Currently, the businesses we sell to most are freelancers, agencies, service businesses, and companies that send a lot of quotes.
Every proposal sent through our business proposal software is completely responsive and will work on any device. That means no matter where your client is, they can read and sign your proposal, then pay.
You can log into Better Proposals on the go, too. That way, you can re-send any proposals or access them if you need to see what's in it while you're out and about.
How we write and design proposals today isn't how we're going to do it in 20 years' time and we're working hard to work out what that next level looks like. Our standout features are three-fold.
Firstly, we're all about the simplicity of our product. Everything we do goes through this filter. It has to be dead simple to use with no training. Everything should be natural and intuitive.
Secondly, we believe selling is a human-to-human thing. It's not a transaction at a supermarket or a shopping cart which is why one of our favourite features is the ability to integrate live chat.
Ever since we built it 6 years ago, this feature has been a crowd-pleaser. It enables you to communicate with your potential clients and answer their questions in real time, while they're reading your proposal. No other proposal software does this the way we do.
Finally, it's the education we provide. From the proposal creation books we write to the proposal design videos we create to the real-life winning proposals we review, we cover every possible method of teaching your sales teams to get better at professional proposal writing and design.
Currently, we have more than 40 integrations available, plus Zapier. From Pipedrive to Zoho to Salesforce. The list is endless. It's vital to us that you can connect as many of your favourite software tools as possible to create the most automated solution possible.
There are over 200 templates available in the Marketplace, 130 of which are proposal templates from a whole host of different industries. The other 70 or so are contract templates, brochure templates, statement of work templates, pricing quote templates, client sign-off templates, and job offer templates. While our company is called Better Proposals, our software is really just a better way of communicating with your clients.
The thing we get most questions about (being honest) is the PDF output looking different from the online version. If you think about it, this is obvious.
The PDF is a fixed size, whereas proposals in proper online proposal software are flexible and responsive. Nothing has a set size. We don't get complaints about this, more just questions as to why it displays differently in some cases.
If you're using business proposal software right now, there's a good chance you could switch to Better Proposals, pay less, and get more value. Want simple, yet powerful business proposal software that helps you win more business, gets you paid faster, and connects to your favourite software tools? Also don't want to end up paying a small fortune for all of it?
Then we're probably a great option. Get started with a 14-day free trial and see how you get on.
This is where Bidsketch falls down somewhat. They haven't kept up with design standards for even the last 10 years which, for a customer-facing product, could potentially have a negative effect on your ability to win work.
Bidsketch is priced pretty much in line with the other major players but lacks some of the features and design polish that justify that price. You'll need to pay $29 to get a fully unbranded experience. Fair price, but the design polish makes that a bit of a steep ask.
It's designed for and mainly marketed toward freelancers and web designers. Like any half-decent proposal software, you can customize the templates to suit any industry.
It's possibly down to the design being somewhat on the poor side, but the mobile viewer (if you can call it that) is very uninspiring. If your proposal was opened on a phone, it wouldn't be presenting your business in its best light.
Looking at their website and marketing, the feature they're still big on is the content library. This is standard across most proposal software these days and has been for years. They're also massive on variables or merge tags.
Think of it like a mail merge. You create 1 proposal and when sending it, it automatically replaces the name, company name, etc. Both are excellent, time-saving features when creating proposals, but far from groundbreaking.
Bidsketch is incredibly light on integrations. They seem to rely heavily on Zapier to expand their reach but in terms of proper, native integrations they have 6 with one of them being a side project of theirs.
All their templates are written for the web, marketing, and software industries. They don't have much in the way of templates written for other industries, and the design of the templates varies massively.
They've given a reasonable amount of attention to some templates and not to others. From a sales process perspective, many are questionable.
It's just old. What kind of complaints do you have about a 10-year-old car that hasn't been serviced? The major worrying complaint that pops up time and time again is the ‘Accept proposal' button not working for clients. This isn't something we've experienced personally, but a quick look on any review site and you'll see it in all different shapes and sizes.
We have a lot to thank them for. They were the pioneer of the proposal management software industry and they deserve the respect and success they've had. Despite the formidable content library, they haven't modernized the software and have been overtaken by younger and more hungry proposal software businesses.
Compare Bidsketch to Better Proposals
Proposify has, in a lot of ways, kept up with modern design standards to a point. Their software is appealing to look at and its proposal process is nice and user-friendly. Their proposal viewer (the bit your clients will look at) looks a little dated, but as long as your proposal itself looks good, this shouldn't be too much of a distraction.
Proposify's pricing has evolved considerably over time. It's been the agency's choice for years. Like any software business that is venture-backed, it's normal for pricing to creep up from time to time to keep investors happy. That's very much the case with Proposify.
We have heard from several of their customers that they are switching to an annual-only pricing model. Their Team plan starts at $49/month, but it comes without user roles and permissions. And if you want to integrate with Salesforce, you'll have to get their business plan. Besides a minimum of 10 users, you'll also have to contact their sales department to get an idea of what it's going to cost you.
It's typically for designers that love tinkering. Their drag-and-drop editor is incredibly involved. Think InDesign or Illustrator. It's more of a designer than a text editor, which will definitely suit certain individuals more.
Their proposal creation process allows you to generally customize every part of every element on the proposal. This obviously gives you an amazing level of control which is great for perfectionist designers but, naturally, there are a lot more decisions to make, so it's not best suited for busy people.
While they have an Android and iPhone app, the proposals their customers send to their clients aren't mobile-friendly, which is fundamental in our opinion. It's 2023 – not having a mobile-friendly document in this day and age is simply non-negotiable.
Their editor. It's their pride and joy, and for good reason - it's incredibly detailed and involved. We have heard it can be a little buggy, but that's to be expected when it does so much. If you don't mind spending time on your proposals and enjoy controlling every single element, you'll love this.
Proposify has a decent number of integrations. 40+ at the time of writing. They integrate with CRM software and invoicing software and have finally got around to integrating payments.
Proposify has a lot of proposal templates (77 currently), some of which are absolutely world-class. Then they have some which weren't given the same level of care and thought.
If you're in one of the lucky few industries that have been given the time and attention by Proposify, then you'll be a happy camper. If not, then you may want to get some professional assistance to bring the proposal up to scratch.
The main complaint you'll see is its lack of mobile support and buggy editor. It comes up time and time again. Occasionally, you see people talking about slow support.
We think this is a little unfair, to be honest. Getting back to people within 24 hours is above average in most cases, even with automatic follow-up reminders. We aim for a 15-minute response time 24 hours a day at Better Proposals but still, the next day is surprisingly good in comparison to other software companies.
On the whole, they have a great product with a great business. They were part of the golden age of proposal software and will be around for a good while until they're snapped up by DocuSign or someone similar. It's not the cheapest and can be buggy at times but in general, it's a great option.
Compare Proposify to Better Proposals
PandaDoc as a platform is a joy to use and looks great. Their branding is smart, professional, and friendly along with all their customer-facing material. The proposals are along the same line, but if there is a drawback, it's that they don't look like much. Every proposal built with PandaDoc looks like a regular document.
Even with the drag-and-drop editor, there's very little wow factor. It'll never offend and will likely look better than anything done in Microsoft Word. For some businesses that might be perfect, but if you're really trying to impress, it will fall short.
PandaDoc's pricing is somewhat of a mystery. Once you're through their free demo, they have pricing that ranges from $9/month to what can only be described as “drug dealer pricing”. You can read more about the truth of PandaDoc pricing here. They have a range of plans, but all of them have a PandaDoc badge on the final document which doesn't seem ideal in any case.
PandaDoc also follows the typical SaaS pricing playbook perfectly by luring you in with low pricing and then forcing an upgrade at a certain point. This follows the playbook perfectly for software companies selling to corporates who don't care about price, which brings us to our next point.
Corporates and Enterprise level sales managers. PandaDoc is really aiming to give some competition to DocuSign (we've included them in our list of DocuSign alternatives) and is going after the document signing market but with a built-in editor. There are pros and cons to this. Pros are you know the software is solid because corporates don't buy rubbish.
The cons are that it's designed for them and priced for them, so if you want the best features, you need to pay high prices. In addition, the features that are built aren't taking the small businesses into account as much as they would the larger companies.
PandaDoc, unlike Proposify, has all its bases covered on mobile. It's responsive in most cases, so any client of yours looking at a proposal sent through PandaDoc will be able to read it. This is non-negotiable in this day and age.
There's nothing that jumps out about PandaDoc. It's a good system across the board and does most things pretty well. Sometimes, it's good to have a non-offensive, solid option and PandaDoc is definitely that.
One of the benefits of having so much funding behind you and over 200 staff is that you can spend time building relationships with other software companies. PandaDoc has a huge range of integrations – 37 to be exact.
Another area where PandaDoc crushes it is the templates. They have hundreds. Now, let's not confuse quantity with quality here – most of them are very very weak from a sales perspective and are really just there to cover bases from an SEO point of view. The design of them is very elementary and is really just a text document with little to no design flair.
The biggest issue you see about PandaDoc is that they insist on having their branding on every single document sent. It's also on any downloaded or completed document. In our experience, having your own branding is crucial to presenting your business in the right light.
It seems a fair trade-off if you're using free software to be a walking advert, but when you're a premium paying customer? Sending branded proposals might be okay for you, but to us, this seems a bit much.
You're not going to get fired for choosing PandaDoc, in the same way, no one's getting fired for choosing Salesforce. Is it the best? It might be for some businesses.
If you're a large corporate and have 200/300 sales people I can't imagine how much it would transform a business like that. For a normal-sized agency or business that wants to impress its clients and save some time it's probably a bit much.
Compare PandaDoc to Better Proposals
Qwilr's design ability is almost unmatched in the proposal software industry. Classy, minimalist, modern – it's everything you want in personalized proposals, so when your software provides practices that it preaches, then you know you're off to a cracking start!
Not cheap by a long shot. They have two plans, only one of which can be billed monthly, which you'll find out only after going through their FAQs. If you're happy without a Salesforce integration, that's $39/month.
On the other hand, if you want a completely unbranded experience, you'll need to get their Enterprise plan with a 10-user minimum and an annual commitment. In practical terms, that means you'll have to pay $7,080 a year. Failure to do that will leave you sending your customers to yourcompany.qwilr.com for your proposals.
It contains the ease of use to be suitable across the board. The features aren't too heavy on the corporate side (like PandaDoc) and appeal to freelancers, too. However, it's clear from the pricing that they are favoring the bigger spenders.
Absolutely superb. Client proposals will look smart on phones and tablets, which is exactly how things should be. Qwilr definitely thinks of things in similar ways to us at Better Proposals – certainly when it comes to proposals being mobile-friendly.
Their design is world-class. And while they've adapted their viewer to look similar to ours, they've done it in their own way. They're certainly one of the front runners in the design department.
Rather disappointingly, they only have 28 integrations, which is incredibly low for a company of Qwilr's stature. You'd think this would be something they'd put more effort into moving forward.
With 70+ templates, there's certainly no shortage of design ideas. They all look outstanding, so you'll always look like you have your stuff together when pitching for more deals, at least from a design point of view. If there is a downside, it's the content of the templates.
It's clear design is a major focus, but there's a significant issue with the content – it's very very poor from a sales point of view. It is unclear if it's example content and not designed for use.
Maybe you're supposed to supply your own? Either way, it's important to check the templates and consider bringing in a proposal writing expert to polish it up.
The general consensus is it's pretty buggy and lots of things are “90% there”, which might be good enough for some. In fairness, people do seem happy with the workarounds. One chap said he spends a few hours making the PDF version upon request because it's not up to standard but in his own words admits it's not frequent enough to be a problem.
In summary, they have thought about the problem in the right way in our opinion and their execution of the solution is pretty solid. Yes, it's a bit buggy according to online reviews, but of all of the options out there, it's one of the better ones.
Compare Qwilr to Better Proposals
The design of Nusii and their proposal viewer is pretty harmless. Like PandaDoc, it's unoffensive but doesn't exactly light the world up either. It's unlikely to cause issues but could look better. It can look a bit 2004 in some places. It depends on the look you're going for with your clients. If you make furniture, no issue. Websites? Not so much.
Outrageously expensive for what it is. With plans starting at $29/mo that don't include any integrations at all and no custom domain, it's not a good option for low senders. You have to spend $49/mo to get a business plan worth having.
It seems freelancers and web professionals, but then their pricing doesn't seem to support the idea that they're targeting those users. It's sort of for agencies but if you were in the market for it and you were a small to medium-sized agency, you'd probably opt to go with Better Proposals or Qwilr because you'd get a more modern product and more for your money in terms of features.
Nusii appears to support mobile proposals, which is great.
They have automatic reminders which many of the others don't. In truth, it's something you can do easily by using any basic email marketing platform and Zapier but it's cool to have it built in. It's not praised much by reviewers, so we have to wonder if it works well or maybe just isn't as useful.
They have gone “all in” with Zapier. Don't get me wrong - Zapier is great, but it's not a true integration. They have no payment integrations, no live chat integrations, only 3 CRM integrations, and 9 in total (including Zapier). Pretty poor showing in this department.
Another poor show here. 8 templates in total with the design and content being very very poor indeed. Much like with Qwilr, we'd recommend a sales team or a proposal writing professional to look at any of these templates before you use them in the wild. There's simply not enough to be helpful here – you'd need to do almost everything by yourself.
Buggy, poor templates, slow support, lack of integrations, no development on new features.
Your money will be better spent elsewhere.
Compare Nusii to Better Proposals
Proposable has suffered from a lack of development over the last few years and its design has highlighted it like holding a stadium floodlight over an insect. The design wouldn't look out of place in 2002. Good design isn't something that comes naturally it seems but there are a few positives.
Definitely on the high side. Their plans start at $19/user/month and go up rapidly from there. What you get for your money appears decent even on their lowest plan, but the presentation of the software lets it down.
It would seem that their distribution model is to sell to resellers who then get in front of clients and get them over the line. This approach is unique and doesn't appear to be a model used elsewhere. It's hard to say how that transpires when interacting with the company and using its product.
Non-existent. The product is built on the idea that proposals are sheets of paper. When designing for a fixed size bigger than the screen of a phone, you're going to have issues. It's the same problem Proposify and Bidsketch have.
They do offer a white-labeled version of their product, which is fairly unusual. However, it seems to suit their distribution model.
With only 9 integrations, there's definitely more flexibility with some of the other proposal software options.
They have 30 templates, which is considerably better than some, but not the biggest range. Their quality leaves a lot to be desired, too. It's 50/50 – some are pretty good, and some are very weak indeed. Design-wise, they're not awful, but they don't have that modern design flair and the pop you'd expect them to have.
Most of the reviews are from 2012, so it’s a little difficult to judge fairly.
It's just old. It's not to say it wasn't way ahead of its time, which we believe it absolutely was back in the day but times have changed and it hasn't. If they were to relaunch, it would be exciting to see what such an experienced founder could come up with. But who knows if they'll ever be able to catch the “big 4” of Better Proposals, Proposify, Qwilr, and PandaDoc.
Compare Proposable to Better Proposals
None. There's no design to a blank page, so you'll have to bring everything to the party yourself.
It’s not free, but it might as well be as you probably have it on your computer already.
We don't believe anyone should be using Word to send proposals. That said, if it was suitable for anyone, perhaps it would be a company selling a service that is very technical where maybe the principle sale was already done. It's not super effective as there's no tracking, no way of seeing who's read what, and no easy way to get them to sign it.
It'll look horrible opening any Word Document or PDF on a phone. Not only do you have to download the document first which would be a challenge in low signal areas but when you do download it, you'd need to pinch and zoom your way through it. If you've ever had to do that, it's annoying to say the least.
It's not a feature, but you at least know how to use it – there's no learning curve.
None that are relevant.
Over 200 various templates, but as soon as you start editing them, they fall apart.
Common complaints in general are you can't sign it electronically, hard to get it looking right, you'll spend your life formatting it, and you have no idea when anyone's opened it. The list is endless but you get the idea.
It's not a proposal tool, so naturally, it's no good for proposals.
Ditch Microsoft Word and see what to do instead
You start with a blank page just like Microsoft Word. However, you do at least have the ability to create proposals that look nice and design them well if you have design knowledge.
Starts at $49/mo if you don’t have it already.
Designers. Anyone else won’t know how to use it.
Awful. It exports as a paper-sized PDF which will naturally be a large file that isn't great for mobile devices. You'll then have to pinch and zoom your way through it. Not a nice hoop to make your client jump through.
If you are a designer and it's your program of choice, then it's going to be something you naturally know how to use. If that's the case, the fact that there's no learning curve is a massive selling point. You also have 100% control over every design element.
None
None – you're starting with a blank sheet of paper each time. You can download templates for about $50, which is a starting point.
None from review sites, but from the perspective of the proposal writing process, it just takes too long. In addition to that, the output is outdated and poor, file sizes are too big, the formatting is a nightmare, and the end result is like sending it into a black hole with no idea what happens after pressing send.
It's a great design tool for print, but it's not a proposal tool because it lacks the nuance of what makes a good proposal tool great. No electronic signature capabilities, rubbish PDF output, no streamlining, not mobile responsive – it's just not a suitable or practical proposal tool.
Prospero is one of the latest tools in the proposal software niche and it seems to be catering to freelancers and businesses whose main goal is to create functional proposals more quickly. Boasting a very simple pricing structure, it just may be the option that you're looking for.
While the designs do look modern, they are very minimalistic compared to the rest of the entries here. In general, it feels like a Word document transferred to a web format.
At the moment of writing, there are only two pricing plans with Prospero. In fact, it may be considered just one plan. For $10 per month, you get unlimited proposals on the platform.
If you want to pay annually, the price is $8 per month. This makes Prospero one of the most affordable entries on this list. You can also try it for free for 14 days. All in all, a very budget-friendly solution.
Given its pricing and the number of proposals that can be sent, Prospero is designed for freelancers and agencies that need to send massive amounts of proposals every month. If you depend on the pitches you send to your clients every month and if you send professional-looking proposals every day, this is the solution for you.
Prospero integrations
Reviewers online mostly complain about the lack of integrations, particularly when it comes to payments. Some users complain about minor design faults with the arrangement of text and page elements. There are not as many reviews on Prospero as there are on other apps so we have yet to see what the market has to say about this app.
Although it's new in the market, Prospero has done a lot of things well. If you need a drag-and-drop tool with affordable pricing and an unlimited number of proposals you can send, this is the option you should look into.
Compare Prospero to Better Proposals
I've covered the 8 top players in the field of proposal management software as well as the 2 historically most popular methods of sending proposals in this post. Trying to be as objective as I can, I've evaluated their most prominent pros and cons. Still, you might want to check out some of them yourself but if you've whittled it down to 2 or 3 then you've saved some time there.
So what's the best proposal software you can get today?
If you are a freelancer, an agency, or a service company of any sort, I think you'd get a lot of value from giving Better Proposals a spin. Better Proposals is built with one primary task and that is getting your proposals signed by your clients. Everything that goes into that from thinking about conversion, best practices, and world-class design is what we obsess over as a company.
We're proud to be the default choice for freelancers, agencies, and service businesses and a lot of the reason for this is our price point. We're happy people buying our lowest plan and that being right for them.
Whether it's a new employee or a new client, your documents say a lot about your business. If you don't see every document as a proposal, you're missing the point.
Let's settle the battle of electronic vs traditional contracts once and for all. Here's everything you need to choose the right option for your business.