Bidsketch is a sales proposal automation software solution offered by Bidsketch.
$149
per month
Conga Advantage CPQ
Score 8.9 out of 10
N/A
Conga CPQ empowers sales, partners, and customers to efficiently configure complex products and services offerings, and provide personalized prices and quotes, utilizing codified product and pricing information - to drive higher win rates and a more pleasurable buying experience. Conga CPQ also helps to maintain a single price book, discounting structure, and quoting structure across all channels. With an API-first approach, configuration, pricing, or quoting…
$35
per month per user
Proposify
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
Proposify is an online proposal software designed to give users control and visibility into the most important stage of a sales process: the close. From deal design to sign-off, the vendor states users get the confidence and flexibility to dominate deals, and further states users will: Create impressive sales documents that stay consistent and error-free. Receive the insights to scale a process, make timely engagements, and accurately…
$0
per month
Pricing
Bidsketch
Conga Advantage CPQ
Proposify
Editions & Modules
BidSketch
$149.00
per month
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No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bidsketch
Conga Advantage CPQ
Proposify
Free Trial
No
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Optional
Additional Details
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Get a free trial version of our Team Plan for 14 days. You're welcome to switch to our Free plan if you need more time with the product. No credit card required. No contracts. Pick the plan that meets your needs when you're ready.
Bidsketch was probably the quickest to get set up and working with, however, I feel it lacks some advanced functionality and customization that may be available in other products. There were some more expensive options I've tried that offered some of the additional features I …
We prefer the user interface and design more compared to Bidsketch. Probably the best advantage of Proposify is the detailed reporting and notifications of the actions by the recipients - we have a detailed breakdown of who has viewed our proposals, how many time it has been …
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.
It is well suited to providing quick pricing recommendations, allowing those who are quoting to get our agreements out efficiently. Where I find there may be some limitations is around the details that it uses to establish recommendations and the overrides. For example it would be nice to have a way to set overrides for those criteria like length of agreement, etc. and have it apply across the board
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.
The perceived power strength is that it is supposed to contain CPQ, Contract Management, Document generation and template manipulation, and cash/invoice process all in one wrapped package.
It was developed on the Force.com platform.
They provide multiple releases of their product per year.
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.
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.
Our number one complaint with Conga CPQ has been speed. In my experience, Conga CPQ is extremely slow, especially for large orders.
In my opinion, the configuration methods of Conga CPQ are outdated and error-prone. One literally puts configurations into string-based custom settings, including the API field names. This often leads to deployment issues and run-time configuration errors.
In my experience, Conga CPQ is everything but simple to develop. You need things like a 12-step pricing callback to support custom pricing.
In my experience, Conga CPQ support is not responsive.
When it comes time to lock in a renewal contract for Conga CPQ, in my experience, they delay engagement, so you are truly behind the 8 ball when it comes time to decide if you are going to continue with Conga CPQ.
The rating is based on several things: 1) Ongoing support requirements being able to be addressed by cross training existing Salesforce administrators 2) Apttus superior corporate vision for the quote to cash space 3) Apttus execution of the corporate vision with automated agents (Max), and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning offerings to leverage the investment in Configure Price Quote 4) Apttus corporate health and investment in the product line
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.
Conga CPQ is a great tool but lacks good support and [a] very limited knowledge base which doesn't include day to day errors which users face, thus leading us to support and take more time in turn. Also cart performance can be improved drastically which will enhance the user experience as the user doesn't have to wait for the pricing.
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.
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.
Tier1/tier 2 support can only handle native functionality. Customizations have to be escalated to developers which aren’t included in the support program.
I go ahead and copy the people I directly worked with on implementation for assistance. I would rate them an 8 for support assistance.
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.
Be iterative. Take the opportunity to build a catalog based on how Apttus works well. Learn the tool yourself or use an SI. Take the time to build a configuration / pricing migration tool with X-Author for Excel or roll your own. Stick with OOTB Apttus as any customization will cost you every time a new version is released
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.
We selected Apttus CPQ over SteelBrick due to the simplicity of SteelBrick's out of the box pricing and ability to customize quoted products. As a global organization with selling a highly configurable products, we felt the ability of Apttus to handle our requirements as standard functionalty rather than a customization was a material difference between the platforms.
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.
The ability to generate engineered configurations that is right by construction has reduced the cycle time of the customer engagement. The fact that we are able to guide the process and end up with a validated bill of material reduces the iterations with the customers.
As long as the validations rules are correct the generated bill of material is accurate. We are now looking at using Apttus to perform quality checks in our product rules since the tool is able to test different configurations quickly and efficiently.
Configuration that use to take weeks and consumed valuable engineering resources has been transformed to become a customer facing application that is simple enough for customer to self-service.
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.
