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Pop quiz! Which is better? Being the first agency to reach a potential client with a quote, or the last one to get back with them?
In most situations, the answer’s so obvious we can hardly call this a quiz: Being the first to make a first impression is almost always best.
But in the agency world, getting a custom quote together isn’t exactly simple. It takes time and careful planning, and in some cases, the quote itself is a fully designed proposal — more like a first deliverable.
Because it pays to be the first in line, many agencies turn to one or more types of quoting software (often called configure, price, and quote software, or CPQ software), products that help improve quality and accuracy or decrease the time it takes to build quotes (or both).
These are nine of the best solutions on the market to help your agency streamline and improve your quote and proposal processes.
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1. Teamwork.com: For streamlining campaign spend and project management
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Teamwork.com is a must-have marketing agency software built for project management — the way projects actually run in agencies.
It has billable hours functionality built in that’s as intuitive as it is powerful, helping your agency assess project duration and assign a suitable project-based spend.
Teamwork.com is perfect for all of project management and project planning, keeping your team organized and on track throughout the proposal process.
While Teamwork.com doesn’t include any features tailor-made for creating quotes or proposals, it integrates nicely with numerous other industry tools. Think of Teamwork.com as the central nervous system for all your agency project data: It’s where you’ll find most of the information that goes into your quotes and proposals.
Paired with another quoting tool, Teamwork.com is project management software that creates a powerful ecosystem for success, starting with the quoting process and continuing into winning contracts and delivering project results.
Pricing
Teamwork.com includes a Free Forever plan for up to five users, then several paid plans starting at $5.99/user/month.
2. Pandadoc: For simplifying document automation
Pandadoc is a drag-and-drop quote builder and e-signature platform that greatly simplifies the process of building document-based quotes. With Pandadoc, your agency can simplify the document automation process, drastically reducing manual inputs.
Pandadoc is a great product, but it has one potential weakness for agencies: it isn’t easy to make proposals pretty in Pandadoc. They’re going to feel very businesslike and, well, Word document-like?
But if that’s not a concern for your agency (or if you need a secure e-signature solution to go alongside your richly designed proposals), Pandadoc is worth a look.
Key features:
Drag-and-drop editor
Interactive pricing table
In-document chat
Secure document signatures
Advanced analytics for every quote
Pricing
Pandadoc’s Essentials tier (max two seats) is $35/seat/month or $228/seat annually. The business plan adds integrations, custom branding, more automations, and much more for $588/seat annually or $65/seat/month.
3. Qwilr: For crafting compelling proposals
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It’s almost like Qwilr was built to directly solve Pandadoc’s biggest flaw: ugly proposals. Qwilr doesn’t create a PDF for your clients to sign; instead, it creates a responsive dynamic web page that looks as beautiful and compelling as you choose to make it.
This web-based tool is a great option for agencies — as long as your clients (and their workflows) don’t require text-heavy documents here. While it’s possible to export a Qwilr proposal as a PDF, the tool doesn’t work as well in that mode.
Qwilr also has a payment gateway that allows clients to pay directly from their proposal, and (like Pandadocs) it has a dynamic pricing table, allowing clients to choose quantities or packages within whatever parameters you allow.
Key features:
Robust content editor
Potential for beautiful, compelling proposals
Dynamic pricing table
HubSpot CRM
Custom domain (Enterprise only)
Salesforce integration (Enterprise only)
Pricing
Qwilr’s Business plan costs $35/user/month, while the Enterprise plan (minimum of five users) costs $59/user/month (both billed annually).
4. Proposify: For managing proposals seamlessly
Proposify isn’t built expressly for agencies, though the design-heavy approach may have quite a bit of appeal. Instead, it’s built for more sales-oriented businesses, or those with bigger sales teams (and another group doing the design work).
The platform arms the sales team with tools they’ll enjoy using, but it also locks down designs and options in those proposal templates so that every proposal looks the way it should.
If marketing teams are worried about sales reps ruining the brand reputation or if sales teams want something less detail-heavy so they can focus on closing the sale, then Proposify is a good middle ground.
Key features:
Content and brand management tools
Customized client journeys
Interactive quotes with client previews
Effective controls over roles and permissions (Business only)
Pricing
Proposify costs $49/user/month (billed annually). Custom pricing is available for a Business plan, which adds premium support and onboarding, Salesforce integration, and roles, permissions, and approval workflows.
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5. Nusii: For empowering sales enablement
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Nusii is lightweight proposal software designed to meet the needs of freelancers and agencies. It’s designed to quickly create beautiful professional proposals that would make the toughest graphic designer proud.
You can even add video to your proposals with YouTube and Vimeo embedding or even Nusii hosting.
Nusii proposals are browser-based, allowing your clients to e-sign without opening PDFs or printing anything at all.
If Proposify and some others are too “big” for agencies, Nusii runs the risk of going in the other direction. It’s built for creatives, but it’s a very small operation — as in “the founder still handles all the customer service himself” small.
So feature requests, bug fixes, customer support — it’s all coming from a very small team.
Nusii might be perfect for you as-is. But if it isn’t, we wouldn’t hold out hope that drastic changes and big new features are coming soon.,
Key features:
Highly praised proposal editor
Ability to integrate custom graphics and even video
Instant notifications
Interactive pricing (offer A/B/C, not “take it or leave it”)
Pricing
Nusii is refreshingly affordable: the Freelancer plan is $29/month for a single user. The Agency plan ($49/month for five users) adds a custom domain and lots of integrations. The Business plan is $129/month and includes 10 seats (additional users $19/month).
6. Scoro: For unifying business management and quote creation
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Scoro seeks to be an all-in–one solution that lets businesses roll a bunch of functions (each of which theoretically might need a separate tool) into a single interface. Scoro builds and sends quotes, manages contacts (CRM), handles billing (including with automation), and even has some project management and work management features.
It’s a powerful suite that does more than most, including cost management, time tracking, budgeting, and resource and capacity planning.
Scoro includes agencies as one of its core constituencies, though given the breadth of what’s here, smaller agencies might find it overpriced or over-featured.
Key features:
Deeper set of integrations than most
Project management features (including resource planning, work management, and time tracking)
Automations with triggers and actions
Wider range of financial tools
Pricing
Scoro’s Essential plan is $26/user/month (minimum five users). Standard bumps that to $37, and Pro jumps to $63. Be aware that Scoro also sells an onboarding experience. It’s technically possible to self-onboard (for free), but if you need more support, be ready to pull out your credit card.
7. Bitrix24: For elevating your CRM strategy
Bitrix24 is a powerful business software with an extremely wide feature set that includes both quoting and CRM (as well as internal comms, project management, and a laundry list of others). The feature set is so extensive that Bitrix is hard to classify as sales quote software; it borders ERP territory.
If your agency is large or is growing rapidly and it feels like you're outgrowing your current software solutions, Bitrix24 might be the next step in your journey.
If Bitrix24 falters anywhere, it’s in the same place as most other all-in-one platforms. It’s great at certain things, but other feature areas are less developed and might even feel like an afterthought. It can also be just too much software: something this powerful requires a hefty resource load.
Key features:
Does just about everything a business needs
Powerful, complex CRM
Mobile-friendly task management
Centralized collaboration with dozens of tools
Offers an on-premises edition (in addition to cloud-based)
Pricing
Bitrix24 offers four paid plans, and included capabilities vary widely between them. At the low end is the Basic plan ($61/month for five users), followed by Standard ($124/month for up to 50 users). Professional jumps to $249 for up to 100 users, and Enterprise starts at $499/month and scales upward based on how many users a company needs.
8. Osmosis: For intuitive quoting
Your high school classmates probably overstated the virtues of learning by osmosis, but a version of it is real — one where learning happens by gathering information from people who know more than you about a topic.
That’s the hook behind Osmosis (the software). Using its robust questionnaire capabilities, you can gather data from clients more directly and with greater precision, than before. Armed with better data from people who know more than you (about their own business), you’ll get from point A to a completed, delivered proposal faster.
Key features:
Client questionnaires
Project questionnaire
Work agreements
Collaborative proposals
Pricing
Osmosis offers a $99/month Agency plan for up to 10 users and 2,000 active questionnaires/proposals as well as a $49/month Team plan for up to five users and 35 active questionnaires/proposals.
9. Bidsketch: For crafting persuasive proposals
Bidsketch is another solution that enables businesses to create interactive landing page proposals rather than static PDFs. The platform focuses on small businesses, which includes most digital agencies and other creatives, helping them automate the basics of the proposal creation process.
Helpful quote templates can reduce the time it takes to build quotes, and an upselling (”optional fee”) feature helps businesses make more money with not a whole lot more effort.
The weak point for Bidsketch? It’s tough to see where it does more than the competition or stands out particularly well, yet the pricing is relatively steep. Any
Key features:
Conversion-oriented landing pages
Automated new client workflows
Proposal read receipts that clients can’t bypass
Templated designs and text fields
Pricing
Bidsketch’s Business plan costs $119/month for four to eight users if billed annually. You’ll pay less if you need only one to three users, and the company doesn’t say how it prices seats nine and above.
Elevate your client projects with the power of Teamwork.com
Generating new business as a digital agency works a little differently than the sales process your clients use, but many of the pieces are similar: you still need professional quotes and proposals, the ability to nurture your sales pipeline, and tools to keep you organized and on track throughout the client relationship.
Most importantly, as a service-oriented business, you need to deliver results once you win that bid.
Teamwork.com is creative-focused project management software that helps you define the projects you’re building quotes and proposals for. By tracking billables and understanding project costs, you’ll be in a better position to deliver accurate, compelling, timely client proposals.
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