HotDocs by CARET vs. Proposify

It is well suited in the organisations which deals with lots of paper work like legal, teaching, research, etc as they need similar kind of documents again and again. In a typical office set up it is of great use by human resource, marketing and legal department. Hot docs is not suitable if you have a proprietary or solo business as it do not caters to them.

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

• Personalized training. We were able to get an expert on a video call who walked us through solutions to each of our unique problems (i.e. all fifty states have different notary blocks, how can we auto-populate it when the state of the deal is selected?).
• Team access. Multiple people can work with the templates at once, thus allowing the members of our team who deal with financials to work on their documents while others focus on the organizational and legal documents.
• Once you have successfully drafted your templates, it runs incredibly smooth (barring any minor hiccups that happen with software updates) and efficiently.

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

• Most HotDocs templates demand high-level code. This includes complicated Word codes
• Using HotDocs is incredibly user-friendly. Creating and maintaining templates is a programming task

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

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

Incentivized

If I cannot get tech support (especially at the supervisory level) during my work hours, then what good is their program?

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

The support is fine, but make no mistake it is PAID support because you have to purchase it each year in order to keep the updates.

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

If you use WordPerfect X9 - choose"no word-processing software."

Incentivized

I haven't evaluated other products. We are so used to HotDocs that it would be difficult for us to switch to something else. We continue to use HotDocs because switching cost is high once you have already started. Be careful before beginning to use this program, as it is hard to breakaway.

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

• Positive - Quicker turn around on producing standard documents tailored to the client's specific needs.
• Negative - Long learning curve. Not an "out of the box" program. It has to be customized.

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