Proposify

Creating the perfect proposal is both an art and a science. You’ve taken extraordinary measures to close the deal, so make sure that your sales proposal follows your lead and delights your prospects. With Proposify, you get proposal management software that streamlines your sales proposal process.

In this review, you’re going to find out everything you need to know about Proposify:

• What features does Proposify have?
• What are the pros and cons of using Proposify?
• How much does Proposify cost?
• Who should use Proposify?
• Proposify alternatives

Let’s see what Proposify proposes.

What Is Proposify?

Proposify is a proposal software for modern sales teams. It helps your sales team automate and streamline the way they send proposals to prospects. 

Instead of starting from scratch every single time, your team can choose from a variety of brand templates from their content library, add the right figures, and the proposal will be ready in a second!

The faster and better your proposal process is, the faster will your prospects turn into customers. 

All the content in your Proposify content library will be pre-approved by managers, so salespersons know they are working with the right figures and information. This cuts back on email back-and-forths and keeps your team focused on closing.

Clients will also love features like interactive pricing and chat embedded directly into the proposals, so Proposify improves customer experience, as well. 

Proposify also has a tight integration with Salesforce. Your reps don’t have to leave their CRM to get beautiful and efficient proposals.

How Does Proposify Work?

Proposify Content Library

Proposify gives you an entire library to store your content in. The types of content you can keep in your library include:

• Proposal templates
• Images
• Case studies
• Product descriptions
• Fees and pricing charts

Basically, you have all the makings of a proposal right there in your Proposify content library. 

So when salespeople need to send a proposal, they can simply log in to the Proposify account, filter to find the right sections and figures, add them to the proposal, and presto! Their work is done. 

Proposal Design Editor

Proposify was one of the first proposal management software providers that started paying attention to the aesthetics of proposals. 

In addition to your proposal content, your visuals and branding also matter.

Impress prospects by using Proposify’s design editor:

• Customize sections, fonts, sizes, and colors
• Embed videos and images in your proposals
• Pick from a plethora of templates; from proposals and contracts to NDAs
• Create a custom brand style that’s applied to every proposal your sales team sends

Ultimately, you can customize your proposals to fit your brand so that even these documents look – and feel like you. This is incredibly important and helps you differentiate yourself from the rest of the companies in your industry. 

Proposify Proposal Templates

Since Proposify aims to streamline the way proposals are created and shared, it’s no wonder that they have an impressive library of proposal templates.

There are templates for a variety of business:

• Design
• Accounting
• Marketing

Additionally, you’ll get ready-made templates for everything from app design proposals to roofing proposal templates.

Proposify Quotes 

In addition to offering proposals, you can also create quotes in Proposify.

As a manager, you just have to add fixed figures (e.g. fees) into your content library. From there, your sales professionals can pull them into the quote document and send them over to the prospect. 

Your quotes can be as uniform or as customizable as you like. You can offer different options and pricing tables to the prospect, and they can pick the services that best fit their needs in a few clicks. From there, Proposify will automatically calculate their total.

This dynamic content approach definitely makes your quotes stand out. 

And if your prospects have questions, they can start a live chat with your reps from within the document.

Proposify Contracts

Proposify helps you cut back on the time spent assembling and signing contracts, as well. With its electronic signature tool, clients can e-sign documents on the spot. 

You can easily create contract templates, insert the right data to populate the fields, and send it to other parties for electronic signature.

You’ll also get plenty of templates such as commercial leasing agreements, NDAs, order forms, employment contracts, and more. 

Roles and Permissions

If you want to keep the email back-and-forths to a minimum while also making sure reps can’t accidentally make a mistake, you’ll love Proposify’s roles and permissions system.

As the admin, you can give every member of your team a specific role that grants and/or restricts access. 

You can choose which sections team members can edit, and which ones they can’t touch. This is especially handy for maintaining consistency.

You can even customize approval permissions. If you want to double-check that the proposal is correct, you can manually approve proposals before they’re sent to the prospect.

The approval workflow is completely automated so the right people will get the right proposals. 

Track Client Engagement

If you’ve dreamed about being a fly on your client’s wall when they open your proposal, now you can.

Proposify will show you how your prospects are engaging with your documents:

• When did the prospect open your document?
• What sections are prospects looking at the most?
• How many times did prospects open your proposal?

 Proposify will also integrate with your CRM to show you which proposals closed deals and which ones need changing.

You’ll also receive an immediate notification when a prospect accepts your proposal. This is great for making sure that your sales reps follow up at the right moment and show clients just how much your company cares about their needs. 

Speaking of client engagement, Proposify proposals also have a live chat option, should the prospects have additional questions. Instead of mulling it over on their own, they can just click through to chat with your sales reps. 

Electronic Signatures

When you send a Proposify proposal, that’s literally everything you need to do.

Your prospects can accept your proposal/quote or sign a contract with a legally binding electronic signature system.

Break Down Data Silos with Integrations

Proposify integrates with major CRM providers such as Salesforce and Hubspot, as well as payment processors such as Stripe.

This gives you a single source of truth. You don’t have to go “hunting” for your data or waste dozens of hours analyzing it.

Instead, you’ll see how your proposals affect your win rate so you can easily optimize in the future. 

Similarly, you’ll be able to sync your CRM contacts with Proposify to populate an empty proposal, quote, and contract fields. This is another time-saving feature that’s great for sales teams that communicate with hundreds of prospects on the daily. 

And speaking of data…

Security

Since Proposify offers online documents, it’s only natural to wonder if your sensitive information is safe.

The answer is: yes.

Proposify encrypts all your data and links to make sure that it’s not intercepted.

Additionally, your data is backed up daily with offsite backups.

Proposify Pros and Cons

Proposify definitely offers plenty of features to help you streamline work. However, it’s not without its faults.

Proposify Cons

The main thing users complain about is the lack of integrations with project management software such as Asana and other tools. Proposify was created for sales teams but it’s a useful tool that’s used by project teams, designers, freelancers, and other business people, so it should have more integrations. 

Some users would even like the ability to customize the invoices they send. 

Users also often cite glitches as the main Proposify con. The design editor can be a bit buggy sometimes, changing styles and formatting as you work on creating your proposal. This isn’t a deal-breaker, but it’s something to keep an eye on, especially if you want your proposals to contain dynamic content and rich media.

Speaking of editing, it seems as though the editor isn’t as intuitive and easy to use as Proposify users would like it to be. Users frequently come across problems when trying to insert images or deleting pages. 

The interface is also “finicky,” as one reviewer states. It’s easy to make formatting mistakes within the document that completely off-set the entire proposal.

Proposify Pros

Proposify’s main pro is the fact that it’s a tool that helps you efficiently create beautiful proposals that close deals. This is pretty rare in terms of management software, and it’s incredibly helpful to sales teams that juggle lots of prospects.

If you’re not sure where to start, proposal templates are great. We like the fact that Proposify offers a variety of templates; from templates for industries like construction to the digitally native UX design.

Streamlining and automating approval workflows is also a nice touch. Instead of manually sending proposals for review, you can simply click-through to send them to a manager for approval. Similarly, a manager can decide how much they want the reps to be able to customize. 

The integrated electronic signature feature is a huge perk, too! No more printing out documents to sign them, then scanning them, or switching to other software to get that signature. It’s all right there within Proposify.

Finally, we love the fact that you can see how customers are interacting with your documents. It might be nice to get some more advanced features (i.e. see which options prospects thought about selecting in a customizable quote), but the ones we currently have work just as well. 

All in all, Proposify is a well-rounded proposal tool that lets you eliminate paperwork and maximize efficiency. For that, it has our vote of confidence! 

Proposify Pricing

All named after Starbucks coffee sizes, Proposify offers 3 plans.

Proposify Tall Plan Review

Proposify Tall Plan costs $19/user/month (with 3 users max), and allows you to:

• Use 5 active proposals, contracts, and agreements
• Create interactive quotes
• Get notifications and review metrics
• Create and use a content library
• Use online signatures

In short, it has everything you need. However, it’s best suited to individuals or small teams that don’t work with a lot of clients who need customized proposals, as you can only have 5 active proposals at once and no more than 3 users. 

It’s nice that you can still create interactive quotes (e.g. you can offer prospects more options, and they check the boxes next to the ones they want). If you’re just starting out, this can be a great way to show why you’re different from your competitors. 

This plan is a relatively affordable option for a small team that only has one person in charge of sending out proposals but again – the 5 proposal cap might become an obstacle.

Proposify Grande Plan Review

Proposify’s Grande Plan is $49/user/month, and you can onboard as many team members as you’d like. The same goes for proposals: feel free to create an unlimited number of documents! 

Other features in the Grande Plan include:

• Standard integrations (Salesforce not included)
• Custom fields and variables
• Client input forms
• Custom URLs

Unfortunately, this is quite a big leap in terms of pricing. 

Let’s say you have ten users. You’d have to pay $490 every month for what’s still just proposal software. If proposals are that important to your clients and you’ll earn 100x more money by using Proposify, then propose away!

But for the majority of businesses, $49/user/mo presents a significant and unnecessary cost.  

Additionally, you’re still not getting a Salesforce integration. In order to do that, you’ll have to upgrade to the Venti plan. This is a custom plan, and your price can depend on a number of factors. 

The other two things you are not getting are user roles and permissions, and approval workflows.

This is a big letdown. Being able to adjust roles and permissions, and streamline approval workflows are the two main features making Proposify a veritable enterprise solution.

Without them, it’s hard to justify the cost.

All in all, we’re not impressed. Yes, Proposify is useful, but with this kind of pricing, it’s keeping out a lot of teams. 

What and Who Is Proposify Best For?

While everyone who creates sales documents can use Proposify, it specifically caters to:

Sales

If you and your sales team are handling dozens (or hundreds) of proposals every day, then Proposify is going to help you make sure everything looks good.

The content library is perfect for sending the freshest information even if you’re constantly getting new products, and you can easily navigate through the internal feedback process with approval workflows.

Proposify will also help sales teams improve the sales pipeline in the long term since it tracks prospect behavior. If you know what’s working in your proposals and what’s not, it’ll be much easier to improve.

You’ll also get access to Proposify companion app to stay in the loop even when you’re on the go. 

Proposify works especially well for enterprise-level sales teams. However, that convenience calls for enterprise-level pricing.

Marketing

When it comes to potential uses for Proposify, we can’t forget about marketing. Since you can customize every bit of your proposal’s look, it’s really easy to maintain your brand identity.

Additionally, you can present your offers with incredible ease and interactivity, which definitely works wonders for your close rate. It’s a great differentiator, too! Not many companies create unique and interactive proposals that improve the customer experience. 

If you’re working closely with sales, you can simply create the templates and then let sales take over, closing the deal. This means less work for both teams and more sales. 

Similarly, you can create all the content sales teams need; from sales and product copy to approved visuals. This way, you’re making sure everything is 100% optimized (without having to reinvent the wheel). 

Day-to-Day Operations

Proposify can also be useful for day-to-day operations, especially if you’re a sales-heavy company. 

Features like approval workflow automation, custom roles and permissions, as well as others will make your work a piece of cake. It’ll also help you cut down on paperwork since Proposify comes with integrated electronic signatures. 

With the enterprise plan, you can also create workspaces for different teams so everyone is on the same page. 

In general, Proposify is really useful if you need your proposals or quotes to really shine, i.e. if you’re a service business.

If you often field questions like, “Why is the price so high?” or “Why do you charge $500 for this when your competitor charges $100?” having a structured proposal can really help you show your customers why you’re that good.

Regular proposals don’t leave a lot of room for explanations, but Proposify lets you explain your value with dynamic and engaging proposals. 

Proposify Alternatives

There are other options available online besides Proposify that can help streamline your business's proposal and documentation needs.

Proposify vs PandaDoc

PandaDoc is one of the most popular proposal platforms. It offers features similar to Proposify:

• Create and customize proposal/quote/contract templates, then reuse them
• Collect eSignatures
• Simplify approval
• Track customer engagement
• Get real-time notifications 

The main benefit that PandaDoc offers and Proposify does not is collecting payments. PandaDoc lets you automate payments two days after the proposal signature. 

PandaDoc also has a free plan that lets you collect electronic signatures and payments, so it’s a good alternative if you just need electronic signatures. 

Paid plans start at $19/user/month.

Proposify vs Bidsketch

Similarly to both Proposify and PandaDoc, Bidsketch offers reusable proposal templates. Similarly to Proposify, Bidsketch lets you add optional services to your quotes so you can upsell clients. 

And just like the previous two competitors, Bidsketch offers:

• Electronic signatures
• Client engagement tracking
• Approval and proposal workflows

Pricing for Bidsketch starts at $29/mo for 1 user (unlimited proposals and clients).

How to Write a Winning Proposal

Once you’ve picked the right proposal tool, it’s time to create that proposal. Here are a few tips that we swear by:

1. Customize Your Proposal

The best way to turn a prospect into a client is by personalizing your proposal. Instead of explaining your services with a name, make sure you add a line that explains how that service helps them achieve their goals.

2. Emphasize the Benefits

Don’t focus on theory – show your clients how it works in practice. Case studies are always a great addition that will convince prospects to take the plunge, especially if they’re relevant to that particular client.

3. Give Prospects More Options

Give your prospects more options by letting them choose which services they need, and which ones they don’t. This is really easy to do with customizable quotes. 

It’s time to close that deal!