Great Software for Sales with Great Support
May 24, 2019

Great Software for Sales with Great Support

Garrett Genest | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with PandaDoc

We use PandaDoc to streamline our proposal process. Whenever a proposal needs to be sent out to a potential client, instead of sending a static document or PDF, we author up proposals and send them using PandaDoc. The main challenge that PandaDoc addresses is reducing the time spent authoring and following-up on proposals. This application has cut the amount of time each sales team member needs to spend on proposals by hours each week.

Pros

  • Great looking proposals. PandaDoc does an exceptional job converting existing templates into HTML format so the PD version looks and feels identical.
  • The automations and integrations are awesome. Having automated reminders sent to clients helps keep things moving without taking time away from the sales team and the numerous integrations available through Zapier make it easy to do everything from sync data to Salesforce or send notifications into Slack.
  • The support from PandaDoc is impressive. Same-day response, ongoing support, and a knowledgeable support team.

Cons

  • The file management system is quite clunky. Proposals go into the root directory by default and we often find ourselves having to do a major cleanup of proposals into folders after-the-fact. Would be nice if folder selection could have a default defined for each user.
  • Lack of proper two-way data sync from Salesforce is a bit of a pain. In order to push data back into Salesforce when it's changed in a proposal, you have to set up a Zapier integration which isn't ideal.
  • PandaDoc's proposal structure isn't well-suited to multi-year proposals. We often have to create proposals with static tables instead of summary fields in order to provide pricing on a per-year basis. This is annoying and error-prone, but necessary until they enable us to create pricing table sections.
  • If you accidentally drag a module into the proposal, you have to manually delete every component in the erroneous section one-by-one. This is a HUGE pain, especially if you accidentally drag a multi-page appendix into your proposal by accident. This will almost assuredly happen at some point.
  • PandaDoc has saved our sales team hours each week in time spent creating, formatting, sending, and following-up on proposals.
  • Automated reminders and open notifications have made it easier for our team to manage large quantities of proposals.
  • By putting our templates into PandaDoc, we can now control the consistency of style in our proposals which is good from a brand standpoint.
We looked at Conga as an alternative for PandaDoc. While we found that more or less the two solutions had feature parity, with a few exceptions on both sides. Pricing was similar between both platforms with differences based on feature requirements. The deciding factor ultimately was the user experience for our team with the PandaDoc software looking more user-friendly. Additionally, PandaDoc had the ability to build a catalog of products within PandaDoc which could be used for adding into quotes. This allowed us to circumvent issues with pulling pricing from products in Salesforce.
Any business where proposals need to be sent to potential clients will find PandaDoc useful. It's especially handy and useful if your proposals follow the typical proposal format offered by PandaDoc and don't require any weirdness like multi-year proposals or proposals with multiple pricing scenarios offered. This is also something that you'll want for a team that is open to and has an affinity for using new technology as there are just enough annoyances that the most resistant of users might not use it.

Comments

More Reviews of PandaDoc