Key takeaways:
- Businesses use sales proposal management software to generate sales proposals and send them to their prospects. A good sales proposal has a significant impact on business negotiations and deals
- Qwilr is a popular cloud-based sales proposal software. It offers features such as quoting, e-signatures, and customizable templates to create compelling proposals, quotes, and presentations
- Qwilr’s pricing makes it most suitable for large-scale businesses and not freelancers or small sales teams, but there are several capable Qwilr alternatives that can be considered, such as Cone, Proposify and Pandadoc, among others
A sales proposal has a singular purpose: Convince potential customers to buy your product or avail of your services. This incredible selling tool outlines what you've got to offer, why your prospects need it, why they should choose you, and what the cost is.
As a business, you must be careful! If done wrong, a bad sales proposal could ruin your deal and spoil your lead generation efforts.
But a good sales proposal will create a great experience for your potential customers and forge a lasting relationship that starts off on the right foot.
Qwilr, in this regard, has found popularity as a capable sales proposal tool. With essential features such as customizable templates, e-signatures, and analytics, businesses use this tool to create compelling sales proposals and then track their life cycle.
However, there are several alternatives that offer a lot more flexibility. With proposal tools flooding the software market, you can now choose one that fits your specific needs. In this blog, we assess Qwilr Alternatives that you can use to create, send, and win deals with your sales proposals.
Why Businesses Use Sales Proposal Software
A good sales proposal software can help your businesses automate and streamline the process of creating, sending, and tracking sales proposals. Such tools offer various features to increase efficiency, improve win rates, and close deals faster.
Here are some of the uses of sales proposal software:
- Easy proposal creation: The provision of pre-built templates, content libraries, and drag-and-drop functionalities helps the sales team to save time and maintain brand consistency.
- Automates follow-up actions: You can automatically follow up with clients after sending the sales proposals and even set reminders at regular intervals. Some software allows you to track proposal views and engagement.
- E-signature: Secure legally valid digital signatures, add multiple signatories, and track the document’s status in real time.
- Analytics: You can track open rates and engagement, analyze the number of deals you've made, and check which have converted to paying customers.
- Integrations: Seamless integration with existing CRM systems allows for easy access to customer data, automating your sales pipeline.
Selection Criteria for the Right Sales Proposal Software
Sales proposal software offers several functionalities apart from the basic proposal creation capability. You need to assess your needs, budget, and team size while finding the ideal sales proposal software.
When considering a sales proposal software, find out if it has these attributes:
- User-friendliness: Look for software with a user-friendly interface that your team can easily navigate. Intuitive features and clear instructions minimize training time and ensure quick adoption. If the tools are accessible across multiple device types, consider it a bonus.
- Automation and data enrichment: Look for features that automatically populate proposals with relevant data from your databases, reducing the need for manual entry and minimizing errors. See if the software can also send automatic reminders for easy follow-ups.
- Integration: Check if the software seamlessly integrates with CRM systems, marketing automation tools, work management software, and any other tools you may need to run your entire operation on one platform.
- Templates and customization: Choose a tool that offers a rich library of industry-specific templates and customization features that allow you to impress the proposals with your brand’s typeface, colors, logos, and motifs.
- Analytics: The software should provide data on proposal performance, including open rates, time spent viewing, and engagement metrics via dashboards that provide visual reports.
- Collaboration: Choose a tool that enables team members to work together on proposals in real time, track changes, facilitate feedback sharing, and prevent conflicts during collaborative editing.
- Integrated Billing and Payments: Look for a software which also integrates with your essential business software like accounting software(QBO, Xero) and payment gateways(like Stripe) so that you can automate your billing and payments as well seamlessly.
- Security: Ensure the software employs industry-standard security protocols to protect sensitive client information, compliance with relevant data privacy regulations, and access control to manage user permissions
If you want to learn more specifically about proposal software options depending on your business type , check out proposal management software designed for freelancers, proposal software for accountants, or best proposal software for small businesses.
Using Qwilr for Sales
Qwilr is a popular cloud-based sales proposal software that allows users to create highly interactive proposals with features like interactive quoting, online signatures, and dynamic content blocks.
Here are some of the features that make it popular amongst sales teams and businesses:
- Create interactive proposals: You can create interactive sales proposals, contracts, service offerings, and more that give the users a webpage-like experience.
- Use rich media for personalization: You can embed videos, provide interactive pricing, facilitate e-signatures, add branding elements, and more.
- Customize with templates: The tool offers a comprehensive library of pre-made templates to help you create proposals, quotes, case studies, project plans, presentations, reports, and invoices. You can even make a repository of reusable content blocks.
- Streamline workflows: It can automate quoting, integrating with popular CRM systems to save time on document creation and approvals.
Even with its robust features, Qwilr still has some cons which you must take note of before choosing any proposal creation software.
- Higher pricing: Qwilr’s pricing may not fit freelancers and small to medium businesses because their monthly plan starts at $35 per user per month.
- Fewer payment integrations: This software majorly integrates with Stripe, but not with other players like GoCardless etc.
- Fewer accounting software integrations: Qwilr has fewer integrations than its competitors. For instance, QuickBooks is the only accounting software it directly integrates with. You need third-party services like Zapier to integrate other tools.
Keeping this in mind, Qwilr alternatives you choose must make up for the current set of limitations you face.
Qwilr Alternatives
We’ve listed a few great alternatives to Qwilr, many of which are cheaper, offer more integrations, and some more flexibility.
Cone
A great Qwilr alternative, Cone's Proposal-to-Payment software is an all-in-one platform that can automate your proposal creation, invoicing, and payments process to streamline your business workflow.
You can choose from a range of customizable proposal templates and easily put in your branding elements, images, videos, and more with its flexible editor.
Cost-effective solution for your businesses
With so many proposal softwares out there, Cone's proposal software is by far the most cost-effective compared to other options. You can potentially save up to 90%, a huge difference especially as freelancers or small/medium businesses.
Create beautiful proposals from pre-built templates
Cone Proposal Software is truly the best solution for sales teams who need pre-built templates and options to automate processes so that they don't have to waste time creating or following up while maintaining brand consistency and reducing errors. With Cone, you can create proposals that look like landing pages without writing any code. Customize the proposal layout, font, and color to match your brand and give your clients a modern proposal experience. Check out free proposal templates like these Freelance Graphic Design Proposal Template, Marketing Consulting Proposal Template, Bookkeeping Contract Template, SEO Proposal Template etc.
Stay on top of invoices
Automate invoice generation for both one-time and recurring payments. Once an invoice is generated, all you have to do is approve it for it to be sent to clients. Plus, Cone also integrates with top accounting software like Xero, QBO, and Zoho Books, so your customer data will be synced automatically. Freelancer? Learn how to invoice as a freelancer.
Cone Proposal Software best features
- Impressive proposals: Impress your prospects with impressive proposals using the modern proposal editor.
- Dynamic pricing table or quotes: Use Cone’s smart pricing tool to manage the pricing of all your packages and services and maintain consistency.
- Automated billing and invoicing: Automatically create invoices and manage billing from the same platform - everything you need to sell and collect money in the single platform.
- Payment reminders for clients: Send reminder emails to clients about upcoming payments like monthly subscription fees or contract renewals.
Cone's pricing
- Essentials: $8/month per user billed annually.
- Growth: $11/month per user billed annually.
Proposify
Proposify is a leading sales proposal software designed to streamline the sales process by simplifying and optimizing the creation, management, and tracking of proposals. Although priced higher than Qwilr, this software is mostly preferred by mid to large-scale businesses.
It offers a central content library where you can store and manage reusable content blocks such as product descriptions, pricing tables, and legal disclaimers. It also provides a wide range of professionally designed, industry-specific templates, which can be customized or reused with a drag-and-drop flexible editor for easy proposal creation.
It also provides features for team collaboration, like real-time editing, electronic signatures, and proposal tracking.
Proposify's best features
- Content Library: This acts as your central hub for pre-written content, templates, and reusable sections to pull together winning proposals quickly and efficiently.
- Proposal Templates: Get a head start with customizable proposal templates tailored to different project types or client needs.
- Electronic Signatures: Streamline the closing process with legally binding electronic signatures.
- Collaboration Tools: Work seamlessly with your team on proposals. Assign tasks, share drafts, and collaborate in real-time to ensure everyone is on the same page.
- Analytics and Tracking: Gain valuable insights into proposal performance. Track how clients engage with your proposals and identify areas for improvement
Proposify's pricing
- Team Plan: $49 per user, per month
- Business Plan: Custom pricing
Better Proposals
Another popular Qwilr alternative, Better Proposals, prioritizes a simple and intuitive interface so people can use it without any heavy technical knowledge.
It offers a selection of pre-built customizable templates to let you add your brand’s colors and logos, add e-signatures from multiple authorities, and track changes or updates on the proposal.
Better Proposals allows you to monitor client engagement on the proposals—check how often they’ve been opened and viewed. By analyzing these insights, you can gain a better understanding of how clients interact with your proposals and identify areas where they might require additional information or clarification.
Better Proposals's best features
- Interactive Proposals: Engage clients with interactive elements like pricing tables, live chat, and e-signatures directly within the proposal
- Self-Service Portal: Empower clients to access proposals, review details, and even make payments directly through a self-service portal
- Engagement Tracking & Analytics: Gain in-depth insights into how clients interact with your proposals. See exactly which sections they viewed, for how long, and even identify any areas that might require clarification
- Focus on Client Experience: Craft a positive client experience throughout the proposal journey. From interactive elements to self-service options.
- Focus on Speed & Efficiency: Features like pre-built templates, drag-and-drop editing, and automated workflows allow you to create compelling proposals faster
Better Proposal's pricing
- Enterprise: $49 per user, per month
- Premium: $29 per user, per month
- Starter: $19 per user, per month
Bidsketch
Bidsketch, another Qwilr alternative, focuses on creating professional-looking proposals with a guided approach where users are prompted to answer specific questions and fill in pre-defined sections.
Customized templates, content libraries, and the inclusion of e-signatures make proposal creation a breeze.
With web-based proposal analytics and instant notifications, you'll know when clients open your proposals and then schedule your follow-ups. Bidsketch is most suitable for small businesses with sales teams that require efficiency and customization in their proposal workflow.
Bidsketch's best features
- Optional Fee Flexibility: Stand out by offering clients the power to customize project costs by marking specific fees as optional within proposals
- Salesforce Integration (even in basic plans): A game-changer for businesses already invested in the Salesforce ecosystem, eliminating the need for expensive add-ons or switching platforms
- Focus on Value Selling: Easily incorporate features and benefits directly within proposals, highlighting the unique value you bring to clients
- Content Library with Version Control: Build a robust content library with reusable text snippets, proposal sections, and images for easy access and consistent branding
- Proposal Expiry Dates: Set proposal expiry dates to gently nudge clients towards a decision
Bidsketch's pricing
- Business: $149 per month
- Team: $79 per month
- Solo: $29 per month
- Starter: $15 per month
GoProposal
GoProposal is a proposal software designed specifically for accounting services firms, but it can also be tailored to sales businesses. The software provides smart pricing tools that build a customized pricing card based on benchmarked accounting businesses in the market.
With a plethora of pre-built templates, work management tools and popular integrations, GoProposal is ideal for service-oriented sales teams looking to standardize their proposal process.
Go Proposal's best features
- Focus on Accounting Integration: Offers a deep integration specifically designed for accounting software to streamline the workflow for accountants and eliminates the need for manual data entry between proposal creation and invoicing
- Automated Engagement Letters & Service Schedules: Save time and ensure consistency with automated generation of engagement letters and service schedules based on accepted proposals
- Client Identity Verification (KYC Checks): Prioritizes security and risk management by offering built-in Know Your Client (KYC) checks
- Pricing Wizard and Fee Templates: Develop accurate and consistent pricing for your services with Pricing Wizard and Fee Templates
- Unlimited Clients: Offers unlimited client capacity which is a significant advantage for growing accounting firms or those with a large client base
Go Proposal's pricing
- Custom pricing for users
PandaDoc
PandaDoc is a bit different than other Qwilr alternatives. It is not plainly a proposal management solution; it is a comprehensive document automation platform that provides insights into document engagement.
You can create proposals, engagement letters, contracts, quotes, service lists and more, plus add e-signatures from clients. With free and customizable templates, you can easily edit with a flexible editor.
Also, get real-time access to approvals, comments, and version tracking while seamlessly integrating with popular work management and CRM suites. This software should be an ideal choice for businesses seeking document management solutions with advanced workflow automation.
PandaDoc's best features
- Content Automation with Content Hub: Content Hub leverages conditional logic to automatically insert relevant content blocks into proposals based on specific selections
- eSignature Workflows with Real-Time Tracking: Offers advanced eSignature workflows that provide real-time tracking of the signing process
- Built-In Analytics with Actionable Insights: Gain valuable insights into how clients interact with your documents.
- AI-Powered Contract Analytics (PandaDoc for Enterprise): Offers a unique feature: AI-powered contract analytics wherein advanced functionality automatically extracts key data points from contracts, saving time and reducing the risk of human error during contract review
- Integrations with Popular Payment Gateways: Integrates seamlessly with popular payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal
PandaDoc's pricing
- Essentials: $35 per user, per month
- Business: $65 per user, per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
DocSend
DocSend is a secure document-sharing platform that allows users to share, manage, and track documents. It's a product of Dropbox, which acquired DocSend in 2021.
While you can share and track sales documents on this platform, you can’t build proposals. Even if you don't use this as your primary proposal software, you can still share the documents via DocSend and get insights, including metrics such as who viewed the document, how much time they spent on each page, and whether they shared or downloaded it.
DocSend's best features
- Dynamic Watermarking: Embeds traceable watermarks onto downloaded documents, identifying the viewer and deterring unauthorized sharing
- Detailed Document Tracking & Analytics: Gain granular insights into how your documents are being used
- Blind Rooms for Secure Negotiations: Facilitate secure back-and-forth communication with blind rooms which allows you to share documents with specific users while redacting your email address and other identifying information
- Password Exemptions and Expiry Dates: Set passwords for document access and define expiry dates to ensure information security
- Flexible Download Options: Empowers you to control how recipients interact with your documents. You can disable downloads completely, allow downloads with watermarks, or set download permissions based on user roles
DocSend's pricing
- Personal: $10 per month
- Standard: $45 per month
- Advanced: $150 per month
GetAccept
GetAccept is primarily a proposal software that provides sales enablement features such as document tracking, e-signatures, video introductions, and interactive presentations.
With its deal room feature, you can upload sales collaterals, track performance, create mutual action plans, and live chat with your buyers. Its contract room feature allows you to create, send, and optimize contracts and quotes with pre-built templates, branding control, and a flexible editor.
This software is a great fit for sales teams and businesses that rely heavily on document management and sales enablement processes.
GetAccept's best features
- Video Engagement & Personalized Explanations: Add recorded personalized video introductions or explanations alongside your documents.
- Interactive Content & CTAs: Embed interactive elements like polls, quizzes, and CTAs (calls to action) directly within your proposals.
- Real-Time Tracking & Analytics: Gain valuable insights into how clients interact with your proposals and videos.
- Mutual Action Plans (MAPs): MAPs feature allows you to create and share action plans with clients directly within the platform, ensuring everyone is on the same page about next steps.
- Sales Automation Workflows: Automate repetitive tasks and streamline your sales process with workflow builder.
GetAccept's pricing
- Essential: $15 per month
- Professional: $39 per month
- Enterprise: Custom pricing
QuoteWerks
QuoteWerks stands apart from other Qwilr alternatives as it specializes in both quote and proposal creation. The tool also offers an optional QuoteValet cloud service to electronically deliver interactive quotes. Customers can select options, electronically sign and accept quotes, and even make payments by credit card.
You can integrate product catalogs, run full-service quote tracking, and seamlessly connect your CRM systems to streamline the sales process.
This software is most suitable for large-scale businesses that require robust quoting and proposal capabilities integrated with their existing CRM system.
QuoteWerks's best features
- Distributor Real-Time Pricing & Availability: Get instant access to accurate pricing and availability information from over 15 supported distributors directly
- Procurement - Submit Orders Electronically: Streamline your procurement process by electronically submitting purchase orders directly to distributors like Ingram Micro, Tech Data, Synnex, and D&H
- Strong Customization Options: Tailor product catalogs, pricing rules, workflows, and even the user interface to match your existing processes, minimizing disruption and maximizing user adoption.
- Focus on Complex Quotes: Caters to businesses that deal with complex quotes with multiple components, options, and configurations.
- Offline Functionality: Create and edit quotes even without an internet connection, a valuable feature for businesses with unreliable internet access or those requiring occasional offline work.
QuoteWerks's pricing
- Standard: $15 per month
- Professional: $21 per month
- Corporate: $30 per month
Proposable
Proposable is a cloud-based proposal solution that enables users to quickly create professional-looking proposals using customizable templates.
Easily integrate with the products you already use to manage your sales data and enable a seamless sales proposal workflow. Get instant updates via texts and emails on clients who view your proposal.
Proposable as a Qwilr alternative is best suited for small businesses that prioritize simplicity and efficiency in their proposal creation process.
Proposable's best features
- Simple, User-Friendly Interface: Even those with limited technical expertise can create compelling proposals quickly and efficiently, minimizing the learning curve and maximizing user adoption within your team.
- Electronically Signed Proposals with Legally Binding Validity: Allows clients to easily sign off on proposals electronically, eliminating the need for printing, scanning, and physical signatures
- Centralized Content Library with Version Control: Build a robust content library, store reusable text snippets, proposal sections, and branding elements for easy access and consistent proposal creation.
- Integration with Popular CRM and Marketing Automation Tools: Connect with popular CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and marketing automation tools you already use.
- Proposal Analytics with Actionable Insights: Gain valuable insights into how clients interact with your proposals. See which sections they viewed, for how long, and identify any areas that might require clarification.
Proposable's pricing
- Solo: $19 per user, per month
- Team: $39 per user, per month
- Enterprise: $500+ per month
Why Users love Cone Proposal Software as a Qwilr Alternative
Cone's Proposal-to-Payment software doesn't just create beautiful proposals but also gives you complete control over the sales journey.
The best part is that whether you're a freelance, small or large-scale business, or a boutique professional services firm, this software is capable of doing it all.
Let's see what else this software can help you do.
Automated Invoicing
You'll never miss a recurring or one-off invoice with Cone’s automated invoicing feature, ultimately freeing up 30+ hours every month to make your sales efforts stronger. Create automatic reminders, and even update your clients on any proposal changes you've made. Freelancer? Learn how to invoice as a freelancer.
Accept and Track your Payments
Choose to recieve payments from multiple options such as direct debit, banks, credit cards, debit cards, ACH (automated clearing house), Stripe and more. Get paid faster and through any digital means necessary—The Cone Proposal Software will track payments automatically.
The Best Choice for Your Business
Ultimately, what makes the best Qwilr alternative will depend on the specific needs of your business—it could be team size, budgets, organization size, number of clients, the nature of your service, and the integrations you need.
This is where Cone's Proposal-to-Payment can help with its comprehensive and unified workflow solution that can cater to the needs of virtually any business.