Have you ever heard the term “there are only two guarantees in life”?
Those are, of course:
- Death
- Taxes
For (high ticket) service businesses, there’s a third guarantee:
You have to send proposals and they’re not fun to make or send and prospects hate receiving them.
This is a guarantee so I’m not going to tell you otherwise, but there is good news.
The proposal software industry is extremely crowded and popular, and that means that they’re having to compete on features as well as the results that you get from using their software instead of a competitor’s.
If you’re looking for the best proposal software on the market, this article is a great place to start.
I’ve sent and received many proposals over the years, both created in Google Docs and sent via proposal software, and I can tell you that proposal software is a much better experience for everyone involved.
I should also be upfront that I know the founders of a few of the mentioned options below. We’ve also helped some find a marketing agency via Credo, and Credo is an affiliate for one.
That said, I have tried to be as unbiased as possible, and any affiliations have not affected our rankings.
Table of Contents
Top Proposal Software
Here are our rankings for the best proposal software:
- Proposify
- BidSketch
- Qwilr
- BetterProposals
- PandaDoc
Proposify
Proposify is one of the original proposal software players in the market, and also the leader for a reason. Based in Canada and trusted by industry leading brands across many industries, Proposify is known for providing best-in-class proposal software that is well designed and usable and leads to more work being closed.
In fact, they’ve invested a lot of time and effort into their annual State of Proposals report that gives insights like “proposals that include a signature close at an 18% higher rate than those that do not.”
Pricing is on a per-user basis, starting at $19 and going up to enterprise, with varying levels of features by plan type.
BidSketch
BidSketch is a bootstrapped proposal software company, with the founder based in Portland Oregon.
The platform offers an easy way to create and send proposals while collaborating with your team members if on a multi-user plan.
It also offers a wide variety of direct integrations as well as integrations to pretty much any software you might use. Customers say Bidsketch saves them time and helps them run a more sane business.
Pricing is based on the number of users.
PandaDoc
PandaDoc is originally a proposal software company but now talks about itself as “Document automation for fast-moving teams”.
As they say, “PandaDoc simply allows revenue teams to get more deals done” by making it fast to create proposals, make decisions during the sales process, and ultimately get a deal closed.
With templates spanning many industries and integrations to connect your various software tools, PandaDoc is the only one of the proposal software tools mentioned here that offers a free bottom level.
Their pricing is then $19 to “Let’s Talk” on the enterprise level, based on users and features (like integrations).
Qwilr
Qwilr is also beautiful proposal software, founded in 2014 out of Sydney Australia. Qwilr’s pricing is all team focused, either 3 or 10 users, which means its best for companies with multiple people creating proposals.
They offer some specific use cases for their core audiences (B2B, agencies, and recruiters) as well as a number of ready-to-use templates that can be used to quickly create proposals.
You can also easily accept payments via Stripe, making having another invoicing system not necessary!
BetterProposals
BetterProposals is built by a team out of the United Kingdom. Like their competitors, BetterProposals talks about creating great looking proposals that get signed and paid quickly.
BetterProposals also leans on the ability to se where your proposals are in the process of being signed (draft, sent, viewed, to update, won/lost) as well as quickly updating or creating your own templates to send.
BetterProposals pricing starts at $19 a month and goes up to $49. Pricing is based off of number of proposals sent as well as number of users.
In our opinion, BetterProposals doesn’t have as smooth of design as their competitors, so it’s ranked lower.
