Bidsketch vs. Conga Composer vs. Proposify

I think Bidsketch would work well for any small business or freelancer looking for a low-cost, simple to use proposal software solution. It's quick and easy to set up and provides everything you need for more cases. If you're looking for something with more flexibility or features that Bidsketch does not offer then you may need to keep looking.

Incentivized

From my experience, Conga Composer is particularly well-suited for generating documents, such as quotes and contracts, directly from Salesforce. It saves us a great deal of time, which is remarkably beneficial for companies with sales teams. Not suitable for companies lacking significant Salesforce expertise or administrative support.

Incentivized

It is costly to properly set up Proposify and retain its use ongoing. If you have a plan to implement your proposals you can get some good cost-saving use from it. I cannot stress enough to have your assets, graphics, and snippets ready before you start. I also recommend that you fully understand templates and asset library or you will quickly be overwriting templates and themes with client-specific verbiage.

Incentivized

• Pre-written proposals for many scenarios.
• Integrations with 3rd party apps.
• Own domain for branding.

Incentivized

• One great feature of Conga Composer is the ability to create various document types, including Word files, PDFs, and even PowerPoint presentations.
• The ability to encrypt and share data is quite impressive with Conga Composer.
• The integration, especially with different email providers, is quite good with Conga Composer.

Incentivized

• TEMPLATES: The ability to work from customizable yet standardized templates allow for a consistent end-user experience for our clients, and elevates the perceived professionalism of our sales team.
• ANALYTICS: Unlike merely sending estimates or proposals via email, the tracking analytics available within Proposify's dashboard not only enables our project managers to more strategically engage with clients, but also gives our upper management an objective way to track the effectiveness of our sales team.
• EASE-OF-USE: Overall, Proposify's platform is easy to use and the UX is intuitive enough that the learning curve to use it is minimal.

Incentivized

• REALLY PRICEY for a small business/freelancer that doesn't do a lot of proposals each month. Would be nice if they offered a per proposal pricing for the smaller guys.
• Wish there was more customization of the design/layout to better fit in with branding.
• Also would like to be able to mark a proposal private.

Incentivized

• Not very intuitive. Once you know the system it's fine but there is a learning curve
• I would like to see training opportunities on features that I am not using or aware of
• I am sure I am only using about 3% of it's full potential

Incentivized

• Export into Word would be useful
• SFDC integration sometimes doesn’t seem to search/find contacts/opps perfectly
• Some of controls (editing proposals and templates) could be more clear/intuitive
• Difficult for businesses where redlined contracts/proposals may find this software does not support client/vendor collaboration

Incentivized

Though I love how easily Conga Composer ties into Salesforce and its given analytics, it takes a lot of data entry to get up and running. I don't love that sometimes queries can take a long time to pull. I like keeping our marketing templates consistent via templates in the system. Pulling multiple objects into one report is fantastic too.

Incentivized

We require a fair amount of back and forth of editing so this tool while helpful is not ideal for us

Incentivized

I'd say Bidsketch is very easy to use. I don't think most people would have any problem getting comfortable with this software. I was able to get up and running very quickly. Their template library is a great resource to get a professional proposal up and out the door fast.

Incentivized

It's a fairly simple tool to integrate into your current business structure. When we've had issues, we were able to resolve them extremely quickly. The users click a button and it can bring in all the quote lines, and our credit application seamlessly into our tool. I'd definitely recommend it to other colleagues

Incentivized

Overall it's great. There's definitely a learning curve, and I wish that some things were easier to use. For example, changing images isn't the easiest thing to do in it, but I'd love to be able to quickly add and change header images in my proposals. So far I've figured it out, but each time I do it I forget how it's done since it's not intuitive.

Incentivized

It was available, it just didn't always work depending on what glitches were happening within our app

Incentivized

This product appears to work well. It was not a fit for us this time, but we would consider in future

Although I didn't need to reach out to support much, they seemed to do a very good job. I've also heard great things about the team through people I've talked to so I wouldn't expect anyone to run into issues with regards to their support. Their support definitely was not a factor in my ultimately not sticking with the product.

Incentivized

It's been hit and miss depending on the issue. We use javascript to generate the urls which has confused many techs even though it generates a clean url - they are overwhelmed by the concept of code and can't understand that the url is all that matters.

Incentivized

I've actually never used Proposify support, so I'm unable to speak about it. I suppose that's a good thing. If I did need to use it, I would hope that they'd be responsive and intelligent, but, again, since everything has worked smoothly I don't really know how the support functions or how good it is.

Incentivized

It was painful internally to build out all of the templates, but the actual implementation of the product was okay.

Incentivized

We used DocSend to track our outgoing proposals but after testing Bidsketch we never returned back. It is simply better suited for us as we send out tens of proposals every week and the professional output and management of proposals won us over.

Incentivized

I think Nintex is the primary competitor for Conga Composer, but I have not personally used it. I was not present for the decision to purchase Conga but I would recommend it in future document automation vendor selection processes because I have seen how well it works! We are especially fond of complementary features in Conga Composer, including Conga Email Templates and Conga Global Merge.

Incentivized

It was highly recommended by an associate and we have been on the receiving end of Proposify proposals and impressed by it. I don't recall if we looked at others but if we did they paled in comparison. There was no question as to using Proposify. It met all the needs, was easy to use, looks great and was exactly what we wanted and needed.

Incentivized

Not fair. Its an upfront cost and then pay per use

Incentivized

We used it for something simple and it was still a pain to use

Incentivized

Needs additional training on what they are selling, how to install and use to explain to customers

Incentivized

• The proposals do look professional (even if you can't fully customize to your brand) and make a great impression on the potential client.
• The cost of Bidsketch is prohibitive if you don't do a lot of proposal writing on a regular basis.

Incentivized

• Could really use better error handling on the product when the document doesn't generate. Zero notifications are provided right now and have no idea where in a 20 page template the error is. Need to keep cutting the template into pieces to find the error.
• The report generates 90% of the time so far.
• Getting easier to generate templates when knowing how the JSON will be structured to add to merged fields.
• Use Work Plan Template Entries and Work Steps to dynamically generate many deliverables.

Incentivized

• The detailed proposal has saved me time explaining a game plan to potential clients.
• They have customizable tables where the client can choose how many of a certain item they desire. For instance, if they want to buy graphics from you, they can choose how many. This allows for increasing profits by putting the choice in the customer's hand.
• When you send a contract you are alerted when a customer views the proposal. This has saved me time and money trying to go back and forth with my customers.

Incentivized