Which proposal software should you pick in 2026?
For most teams, PandaDoc handles everything from proposal to payment. Depending on team size and CRM, another tool can cost half as much.
You build proposals in Google Docs or Canva, export a PDF, attach it to an email, and then wait. You have no idea whether the buyer opened it, which page they read, or who else they forwarded it to. Signing means print, scan and three follow-ups. Proposal software fixes that loop: one clean template, a tracked link, a signature in the browser, and often the deposit paid in the same click.
The short answer: go with PandaDoc if you want proposals, contracts, e-signature and payments in one place, with a real free plan to start. Better Proposals is the cheapest per user and includes payments on its entry plan. Qwilr turns your proposal into an interactive web page and shows you exactly what the buyer read. Proposify suits teams that want tight control over design and approvals. GetAccept fits a sales team of five or more selling to buying committees. Oneflow is the pick when the proposal is really a contract.
Every price on this page comes from the vendor's own pricing page, billed annually, before tax. We then turn each plan into one number you can budget: what a team of 1, 3 or 5 actually pays over twelve months.
The ranking is editorial: a sponsored spot is always flagged on its card, and no affiliate link changes a score.
Best proposal software by need
The 6 best proposal software tools compared
The full ranking. The "yearly cost" column shows what you pay over twelve months, before tax, for 1, then 3, then 5 users, on the plan that actually fits each team size (with payments included when the tool offers them). All prices are annual billing, which is the cheapest option at every vendor.
| Best for | Yearly cost: 1 / 3 / 5 users | Free plan | Team size | Visit | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PandaDoc | Best all-in-one | $228 (Starter); $1,764 / $2,940 (Business) | 3.9/5 | Free; Starter $19/seat/mo | ✓ | Freelancer to 20-person team | Visit → |
| 2 | Proposify | Best for design control and approvals | $468 / $1,404 / $2,340 | 3.9/5 | Build $39/user/mo | — | Agency or design-heavy sales team | Visit → |
| 3 | Qwilr | Best for buyer engagement tracking | $420 / $1,260 / $3,300 | 3.8/5 | Starter $35/user/mo | — | B2B team that sells on follow-up | Visit → |
| 4 | Better Proposals | Best on a budget | $156 (Starter); $756 / $1,260 (Premium) | 3.8/5 | From $13/user/mo | — | Freelancer or small agency | Visit → |
| 5 | GetAccept | Best for sales teams selling to committees | $300 (eSign); $900; $2,940 (Professional) | 3.6/5 | eSign $25/user/mo | — | Sales team of 5 or more | Visit → |
| 6 | Oneflow | Best when the proposal is a contract | €3,000 for up to 5 seats | 3.4/5 | From €250/mo for 5 seats | — | Team whose proposal is a contract | Visit → |
PandaDoc score taken from its Labs review. Prices before tax, read on each vendor's official pricing page in 2026, annual billing.
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How we compared and scored
Most of the pages ranking for this search are written by the vendors themselves, so the author's tool comes out on top. Several still quote PandaDoc at $35 and $65 a month, prices that no longer exist. None of them tells you that two of the plans you are reading about need five or ten seats minimum, and none works out what a three-person team pays in a year.
We read each vendor's pricing page line by line, with its seat minimums, document or send caps and paid add-ons. Then we went through user feedback, especially the angry kind: auto-renewals nobody saw coming, plans reshuffled at the same price, templates that fight you on layout, PDF exports that don't match the screen. Our target reader: a freelancer, an agency or a sales team of 2 to 15 people sending proposals worth a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of dollars.
RFP response platforms such as Loopio and Responsive are out: they serve enterprise bid teams, not a small business selling a project. HubSpot quotes stay a module of its CRM. DocuSign handles signatures only.
Value for money and feature depth carry the most weight, because that is where the gap reaches three times the price for the same team. Integrations weigh as much as ease of use: a signed proposal that never reaches your CRM is a deal you have to re-enter by hand.
- Ease of useLearning curve, template editor, and how it feels for the buyer who opens and signs.20%
- Value for moneyYearly cost for 1, 3 and 5 users, including caps, seat minimums and add-ons.25%
- Features and depthInteractive pricing, view tracking, e-signature, payments, internal approvals.25%
- SupportThe support channel on the plan a small team actually buys.10%
- IntegrationsCRM (HubSpot, Pipedrive, Salesforce), payments, automation, and what costs extra.20%
No affiliate link changes a score or a rank.
PandaDoc
PandaDoc is the most complete tool in this ranking for a small business. You start from a template, drop in a pricing table, send a link, see when it is opened, and the buyer signs in the browser. On Business, the buyer can also pay the deposit from the document and the deal syncs back to your CRM. It is the only tool here that does all of that and still gives you a genuine free plan to start.
The free plan lets you send a few documents for signature with no credit card. It does not connect payments or a CRM. Starter, at $19 per seat per month billed annually, fits a freelancer who sends a lot but doesn't need online payment. Business, at $49 per seat billed annually, is where most teams end up: payments, CRM sync, shared templates. Enterprise, on quote, adds optional EU data hosting. Salesforce stays a paid add-on even on Business.
The catch is billing. PandaDoc doesn't show monthly prices on its pricing page: the number you see is the annual one, sold as "save up to 46%". The vendor has also migrated legacy plans, with a price increase for some customers. The harshest user feedback mentions renewals charged and refunds refused, and API access that became a paid extra. A few buyers report signing links landing in spam.
Tip: put the renewal date in your calendar the day you buy, with a reminder a month ahead. If you never use built-in payments, Starter saves you $360 per seat per year compared with Business.
- Free plan with e-signature, no card needed
- Deposit paid straight from the proposal
- Optional EU data hosting on Enterprise
- ✓The whole loop in a single tool
- ✓Easy for you and for the signer
- ✓Starter at $19 is clear for a freelancer
- ✗Payments and CRM sync locked to Business
- ✗Salesforce is a paid add-on
- ✗Renewals and plan changes need watching
The best pick for most teams that want one tool from proposal to payment. On a tight budget, Better Proposals covers the essentials for far less.
Proposify
Proposify is built for teams that care about how they look. Its editor lets you place every block precisely, lock the sections reps shouldn't touch, and route a discount to a manager for approval before it goes out. Documents and e-signatures are unlimited from the first plan, so you never count sends.
Build costs $39 per user per month billed annually ($468 a year) or $49 month to month. Grow, at $65 billed annually, adds roles, approval workflows and the API, but comes with a $2,000 onboarding package. Scale, at $107, carries a $12,800 yearly platform fee for 10 users: that is a plan for structured sales orgs. Proposify also sells custom template design for about $1,500. The Salesforce integration is an add-on.
Users praise the polish of the output and the proposal tracking. Their complaints: expensive if you send few proposals, template layout that takes patience early on, differences between what you see on screen and the exported PDF, and bugs a bit more often than at competitors.
Tip: build one master template with optional sections instead of one template per offer. You save layout time, and reps can't break the design.
- Unlimited documents and signatures from Build
- Approval workflows before sending
- Fine-grained layout control
- ✓Very polished proposals
- ✓No send counter to watch
- ✓14-day trial with no card
- ✗Grow and Scale carry onboarding or platform fees
- ✗Screen and PDF can differ
- ✗Costly at low volume
A strong pick for an agency that sends a lot and wants flawless output. For a team that sends a handful a month, the per-user price weighs more than PandaDoc Starter or Better Proposals.
Qwilr
Qwilr doesn't produce a PDF. Your proposal becomes a web page with video, tabs and a pricing table the buyer adjusts by ticking options. Its analytics are the most detailed in this ranking: who opened it, how long they spent on each section, who they forwarded it to. For a rep, that is the best signal of when to follow up and what to talk about.
Starter costs $35 per user per month billed annually, or $49 monthly, from a single seat. It includes 40 documents. Past that, each document costs $2.50, or you buy credit packs. Growth, at $55, requires 5 seats and includes 200 documents; Scale, at $75, requires 10 seats and includes 600. E-signature is included everywhere. Payments go through QwilrPay, which takes 0.09% on Starter and 0% above, on top of Stripe fees.
Integrations follow the plans: HubSpot, Zoho and Pipedrive from Starter, Microsoft Dynamics on Growth, Salesforce only on Scale. Users find it pricey for a small business, with big jumps between plans and key features locked behind the 5- and 10-seat minimums.
Tip: count your proposals over the last six months before you choose. At 60 a month on Starter, the 20 extra documents add $50 to every bill.
- Proposals as interactive web pages
- Section-by-section read analytics
- E-signature on every plan
- ✓Buyers pick their own options
- ✓HubSpot and Pipedrive from Starter
- ✓Reads well on a phone
- ✗40 documents on Starter, then $2.50 each
- ✗Growth and Scale need 5 and 10 seats
- ✗Salesforce only on Scale
The best tool if your deals hinge on following up at the right moment. If you send more than 40 proposals a month on your own, rerun the numbers: PandaDoc or Proposify may come out cheaper.
Better Proposals
Better Proposals is the cheapest tool in this ranking per user, and the only one with e-signature and online payment (Stripe, GoCardless, PayPal) on its entry plan. For a freelancer who wants the deposit the moment the client says yes, the maths is simple. The template library is large and looks good from the first proposal.
The pricing page shows two numbers per plan, one for an annual commitment and one month to month. Starter runs from $13 to $19 per user per month, for one seat and 10 sends a month. Premium, $21 to $29, raises that to 50 sends and adds your own domain, CRM sync, the API and Zapier. Enterprise, $42 to $49, removes the send cap and adds approvals and permissions. Check at sign-up which price applies to your billing term: it is the difference between $156 and $228 a year on Starter.
Two extras push the bill up: automatic "Nudge" follow-ups at $10 per user per month, and custom template design from $1,495. Users like the simplicity and the templates, but find setup a little fiddly at first, the PDF export less clean than the web version, and the analytics thinner than Qwilr's.
Tip: the cap counts sends, not drafts. Build your variants freely and only send the final one.
- Stripe, GoCardless and PayPal from Starter
- E-signature built for EU and US rules
- Lowest price per user
- ✓Lowest yearly cost for 1 to 5 people
- ✓Polished templates ready to use
- ✓14-day trial with no card
- ✗10 sends a month on Starter
- ✗Automatic follow-ups cost extra
- ✗Analytics and PDF export lag behind
The best value for a freelancer or small agency that wants the deposit collected at signature. Above 50 sends per person per month, look at Proposify, where sends are unlimited.
GetAccept
GetAccept is a Swedish vendor. The proposal doesn't travel alone: it lives in a shared space with the buyer, alongside a personal video from the rep, supporting documents, the signature and the conversation history. When several people on the buyer's side need to sign off, that beats attachments lost in inboxes.
The eSign plan, at $25 per user per month, mostly covers signatures. Professional, at $49 per user per month, is the real proposal plan, but it needs 5 users minimum: $2,940 a year at the lowest. Payments and advanced CRM integrations sit on Enterprise, on quote. Every plan is a 12-month contract. GetAccept bills in USD, GBP, EUR and Nordic currencies.
It is a tool for a structured team. A freelancer or a three-person agency would pay for five seats it doesn't use. And a 12-month contract leaves little room for a wrong call: run the free trial on a live deal before committing.
Tip: personal video only helps when it is short. One minute about the buyer's problem beats five minutes about your company.
- Shared deal room with the buyer
- Personal video inside the proposal
- European vendor
- ✓Built for multi-stakeholder deals
- ✓Several billing currencies
- ✓Free trial available
- ✗Professional needs 5 users minimum
- ✗12-month contract on every plan
- ✗Payments only on Enterprise
A good pick for a sales team of five or more selling to committees. Below that, PandaDoc Business costs about the same and is sold per seat.
Oneflow
Oneflow, also Swedish, is a contract tool first and a proposal tool second. That is why it ranks last here, and why it might still be your best fit. If what you send is less a pitch and more an agreement that gets negotiated, edited and signed, Oneflow keeps it as a live document both sides can work on, rather than a PDF bounced back and forth.
Pricing starts at €250 a month for 5 seats, billed annually only, so €3,000 a year whether you are one user or five. Advanced e-signature and a qualified seal are included, with eID and SMS verification as add-ons. A content library is an option on the Business plan. A 14-day trial is available.
The limit is the pitch. There is no interactive pricing page or section-level read analytics like Qwilr's. For a freelancer or a team of two, five seats is a lot to pay for.
Tip: if your sales process ends in a negotiated contract, pair a lighter proposal tool for the pitch with Oneflow for the contract, rather than forcing one tool to do both.
- Advanced e-signature and qualified seal included
- Contracts edited live by both sides
- European vendor, prices in euros
- ✓Strongest signature options in this ranking
- ✓Clear euro pricing
- ✓14-day trial
- ✗5 seats minimum, annual only
- ✗Weak on pitch and pricing tables
- ✗Expensive for a solo user
The right call when what you send is a contract to negotiate, not a pitch. For a classic sales proposal, PandaDoc or Qwilr do more for less.
What proposal software really costs, and what the signature is worth
First, who does what. Quoting software produces a priced document that becomes an invoice. E-signature software gets any document signed. Proposal software does half of both and adds what sells: presentation, interactive pricing, view tracking and follow-ups. After that, three questions matter more than the size of the template library: what your actual team pays, what the plan counts, and what the built-in signature is worth.
Yearly cost for 1, 3 and 5 users
The caps the pricing page doesn't shout about
Is an e-signed proposal legally binding?
- Count the proposals you sent over the last six months, on average and in your busiest month.
- Count who actually sends proposals, not who might need a seat someday.
- Check the seat minimum and contract length before comparing per-user prices.
- List your CRM and confirm which plan includes its integration, Salesforce above all.
- Decide whether buyers should pay a deposit from the proposal: that rules out several entry plans.
- Add sales tax and payment processing fees to the vendor's sticker price.
Six settings that get your proposal signed faster
No tool signs deals for you. These settings, available across the tools in this ranking, make the difference between a proposal that gets opened and one that gets signed.
Build one master template before your first proposal
BeforeOne template with your intro, case studies, terms and optional sections per offer. Every new proposal starts from it. You avoid proposals that change style from rep to rep, and you don't pay $1,500 for a custom template before you know the editor.
- Templates to build
- 1 master, then variants
Put pricing in the middle, with options
ConversionA pricing table where the buyer ticks an option or two changes the conversation: they compare your packages with each other, not just your price with a competitor's. Offer three tiers at most. PandaDoc, Qwilr and Proposify all handle interactive pricing tables.
- Tiers
- 3 at most
Follow up when the buyer rereads, not at random
Follow-upTurn on view alerts. A buyer who returns to the pricing section a third time has a question. That is when you call. A buyer who hasn't opened it in three days doesn't need a nudge about price, but a shorter message and a fresh link.
- Signal to watch
- Return visits to pricing
Collect the deposit at signature
PaymentsWhen the tool allows it, ask for the deposit in the same step as the signature. A buyer who just said yes is at peak commitment. Better Proposals offers it from Starter, PandaDoc on Business, Qwilr through QwilrPay. Add Stripe's fees to the tool's.
- Included on entry plan
- Better Proposals
Connect your CRM before your first deal
IntegrationA signed proposal should move the deal forward in your CRM on its own. Connect the integration during the trial and check which way data flows: from CRM to proposal for the buyer's name and address, from proposal to CRM for status and signed amount.
- To check
- Sync direction
Set a reminder before renewal
BudgetMost plans are billed yearly and renew automatically. It is the top user complaint: a renewal charged for seats nobody uses anymore. Write down the date and notice period on day one, and review your seat count a month before.
- Reminder
- 1 month before renewal
Need something more specific? The right page
A proposal touches quoting, signing and your CRM. These pages go deep on each.
Quotes, estimates and invoicing.
You only need signaturesBest e-signature softwareSignature-only tools.
You're still weighing PandaDocOur PandaDoc reviewPlans, strengths and limits.
You want to leave PandaDocPandaDoc alternativesOptions if PandaDoc no longer fits.
You haven't picked a CRM yetBest CRMThe system your proposals will feed.
You're moving off DocuSignSwitch from DocuSignWhere to go, and how.
Best proposal software · FAQ
What is the best free proposal software?
PandaDoc is the only tool here with a real free plan: no credit card, e-signature included. It works for sending a few documents a month, but it doesn't connect payments or a CRM. The others offer trials instead, 14 days at Proposify, Qwilr and Better Proposals.PandaDoc or Proposify: which one should you pick?
PandaDoc if you want proposal, contract, signature and payment in one tool, from $19 per seat. Proposify if design control, approvals and unlimited sends matter most, from $39 per user. For a team of three, PandaDoc Business costs $1,764 a year and Proposify Build $1,404.How much does proposal software cost for a team of 3?
Between $756 and $1,764 a year before tax. Better Proposals Premium comes to $756, Qwilr Starter $1,260, Proposify Build $1,404 and PandaDoc Business $1,764. Add sales tax, and payment processing fees if buyers pay deposits online.Which proposal software integrates with HubSpot?
Qwilr connects to HubSpot from its Starter plan, PandaDoc on Business, and Better Proposals adds CRM sync on Premium. If you already pay for HubSpot Sales Hub, its built-in quotes may be enough for simple proposals. Watch Salesforce: it is a paid add-on at PandaDoc and Proposify and top-plan only at Qwilr.Are e-signed proposals legally binding?
Generally, yes. Electronic signatures are widely accepted as evidence, and in the EU the eIDAS regulation says they can't be rejected just for being electronic. Keep the signature certificate the tool generates: it proves who signed and when. For high-stakes contracts, check with a lawyer.Can buyers pay a deposit straight from the proposal?
Yes, with three tools in this ranking. Better Proposals takes Stripe, GoCardless and PayPal on every plan. PandaDoc reserves payments for Business. Qwilr uses QwilrPay, at 0.09% on Starter and 0% above, plus Stripe fees. GetAccept keeps payments for Enterprise.How do I know if a client read my proposal?
Send a link, not an attachment. Every tool here alerts you when the proposal is opened. Qwilr goes furthest, with time spent per section and forwards to other people. A PDF attached to an email tells you nothing, which is the main reason teams switch.Is there European proposal software?
Yes. GetAccept and Oneflow are Swedish; Oneflow lists prices in euros, from €250 a month for five seats. In France, Sellsy covers quotes, e-signature and invoicing in euros. EU data hosting is also an option on PandaDoc Enterprise.