Comparison · 13 tools
Best proposal software in 2026.
Thirteen tools grouped by what they actually are. Not ranked, because we make one of them.
Who wrote this
ApeiroCraft publishes this page and makes one of the thirteen tools on it. So: nothing is ranked, every description of a competitor is quoted word for word from the head-to-head comparison it links to, and there is a section below listing the five situations where a competitor is the better buy. Three of these tools are cheaper than ours for a single freelancer, and the page says which.
What is the best proposal software in 2026?
There is no single best proposal tool, because the category splits three ways. All-in-one suites (HoneyBook, Dubsado, Bonsai, Plutio, Moxie, 17hats) bundle proposals with CRM and invoicing. Proposal specialists (Proposify, Qwilr, PandaDoc, Nusii, Prospero) build better documents and leave the rest to other tools. The right pick depends on whether you need the document or the whole client workflow, and on whether the vendor bills per seat or per account.
This page is published by ApeiroCraft, which makes one of the thirteen tools listed. Nothing is ranked, and every description of a competitor is quoted from the head-to-head comparison it links to. The section on where ApeiroCraft is the wrong choice is not a formality — three of the tools here are cheaper for a single freelancer.
Prices are list prices in USD, read off each vendor's own pricing page by hand, with the month checked shown on the comparison page each figure links to.
All-in-one suites
Proposals are one feature among several — CRM, invoicing, sometimes scheduling and time tracking. You are buying one subscription instead of four, and accepting that no single part is best in class.
17hats
a long-running business-management suite for solo service providers
- Choose it if
- You want light bookkeeping and expense tracking in the same tool as your invoices.
- Price
- $60/mo, or $600/yr prepaid (~$50/mo) · $80/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- Time tracking, scheduling, recurring billing and QuickBooks sync are paid add-ons
Prices checked July 2026
Dubsado
client management for creatives
- Choose it if
- Your business runs on deeply customized automated workflows (multi-step onboarding sequences, conditional form logic).
- Price
- $335/yr Starter (~$28/mo); $525/yr Premier (~$44/mo)
- The cap that bites
- Setup: workflows take days to weeks to build before the first proposal
Prices checked July 2026
Hello Bonsai
the freelancer suite
- Choose it if
- You bill hourly and need built-in time tracking tied to invoices.
- Price
- $15–$59 per user/mo · $195/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- Proposals and invoicing sit in the higher tiers
Prices checked July 2026
HoneyBook
clientflow management for independents
- Choose it if
- You're US-based and want HoneyBook's built-in scheduling and payment plans in one flow.
- Price
- $36–$129/mo billed monthly ($29–$109 annually)
- The cap that bites
- 2.9% + 25¢ per card payment, and available only in the US, Canada, the UK and Australia
Prices checked July 2026
Moxie
an all-in-one workspace for solo freelancers
- Choose it if
- You're solo, budget is the deciding factor, and $12/month is the number that has to work.
- Price
- $12/mo Starter, $25 Pro, $40 Teams · $40/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- No tier holds more than five people — a sixth hire means changing platform
Prices checked July 2026
Plutio
all-in-one business management
- Choose it if
- You want to white-label the entire client experience under your own domain (Plutio sells this as an add-on).
- Price
- $19/mo Core, capped at 9 clients; $49 Pro; up to $199 Unlimited
- The cap that bites
- 9 clients on the entry plan; white-labelling is a $9/mo add-on
Prices checked July 2026
Proposal specialists
The document is the product. Better editors, better templates, deeper analytics on what the buyer read — and no opinion at all about what happens after the signature. You will need invoicing and a CRM elsewhere.
Nusii
focused proposal software for creative freelancers and agencies
- Choose it if
- You want proposals and nothing else, and a tool that adds CRM or invoicing feels like clutter.
- Price
- $49/mo Agency (3 users); $129/mo Business (5 users) · $87/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- Proposals only — no CRM, no invoicing
Prices checked July 2026
PandaDoc
document automation and e-signature
- Choose it if
- You run a sales team living in Salesforce or HubSpot and need deep CRM integrations.
- Price
- $19 per seat/mo billed annually (Starter) · $95/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- Approval workflows and integrations sit in higher tiers
Prices checked July 2026
Proposify
proposal design and tracking
- Choose it if
- You have a dedicated sales team that lives in proposal metrics — win rates by template, section-level analytics.
- Price
- $19 per user/mo annually (Basic, 10 sends); $41 per user/mo annually (Team, 30 sends) · $205/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- Send caps: 10/mo on Basic then $0.50 each, 30/mo on Team then $0.30 each
Prices checked July 2026
Prospero
a low-cost, proposal-only tool for freelancers
- Choose it if
- Proposals are genuinely the only thing you need software for, and you're one person willing to prepay a year at ~$12/month.
- Price
- $19 per user/mo, or ~$12 per user/mo prepaid annually · $95/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- Proposals only — no CRM, no invoicing
Prices checked July 2026
Qwilr
interactive web-page proposals for sales teams
- Choose it if
- The proposal itself is your pitch: embedded video, interactive quote builders, and ROI calculators are worth paying per seat for.
- Price
- $35 per user/mo billed annually (Business) · $175/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- Enterprise is $59 per user with a mandatory 10-seat minimum
Prices checked July 2026
Frequently shortlisted, but not proposal software
Genuinely good products that show up on proposal-software lists because they are popular, not because they send proposals. Worth knowing why they are here before you trial one.
ClickUp
a deep, highly configurable project management platform
- Choose it if
- You need real project management: dependencies, Gantt, workload views, sprints, portfolios.
- Price
- $12 per user/mo billed annually (Business) · $60/mo for five people
- The cap that bites
- No proposal builder, no e-signature, no invoicing at any tier
Prices checked August 2026
And the one we make.
Listed last rather than first, for the obvious reason.
ApeiroCraft
proposals, e-signature, invoicing and CRM on one flat workspace price
- Choose it if
- You bill by project rather than by the hour, you want the accepted proposal to become an invoice without retyping it, and you would rather not pay more every time you add a teammate.
- Price
- Free plan, then $19/mo Solo · $79/mo for a team of 5
- The cap that bites
- No time tracking at any tier, and plans hold a fixed number of seats rather than unlimited ones.
Where ApeiroCraft is the wrong answer.
Five situations where something else on this page is the better buy. If one of these is you, the link goes to the tool that beats us, not to our signup.
- You are one person and price is the deciding factor. Moxie starts at $12/mo and Prospero is about $12/mo prepaid annually — both under ApeiroCraft's $19 Solo plan.
- You bill hourly. There is no time tracking here at any price, and a proposal tool is a poor substitute for one. Bonsai, Moxie, Plutio and 17hats all have it.
- You need appointment scheduling or client intake forms in the same product. Dubsado and HoneyBook are built around exactly that.
- Your proposals live or die on interactive media and per-section analytics for a sales team. Qwilr and Proposify are the stronger documents, and paying per seat for them can be the right call.
- You need the tool to write back to Salesforce or HubSpot. PandaDoc and Qwilr integrate; ApeiroCraft does not.
How this list was put together.
The thirteen tools are the twelve ApeiroCraft has written a full head-to-head comparison against, plus ApeiroCraft. There is no editorial cut: if a comparison exists, the tool is here, including the ones that beat us on price.
Every competitor description on this page — what the tool is, and the reason to choose it over us — is quoted word for word from that tool’s comparison page. A build check fails the deploy if a single one of those strings drifts, so this page can never say something milder about a rival than the comparison it links to.
Prices are list prices in USD excluding tax, read off each vendor’s own pricing page by hand, with the month shown on each card. Where a vendor does not publish enough to work out what five people pay, no figure is shown rather than an estimate.
There are no star ratings, scores or review counts on this page. We have not run a survey that would justify one, and a vendor scoring its own competitors is not evidence.
Common questions.
What is the best proposal software for freelancers?
It depends on whether you bill hourly. If you do, a suite with built-in time tracking — Bonsai, Moxie, Plutio or 17hats — will serve you better than any proposal specialist, because the timer and the invoice need to be in the same product. If you bill by project, a flat-priced tool that turns an accepted proposal into an invoice is cheaper and simpler; ApeiroCraft is $19/month for one person with a free plan that sends 3 proposals a month, and Prospero and Moxie are cheaper still if you only ever need the document.
Proposal software for freelancers →What is the best proposal software for agencies and small teams?
The billing axis decides this one, not the feature list. Per-seat tools multiply: Proposify is $205/month for five people, Qwilr $175, Bonsai $195. Flat-per-account tools do not: ApeiroCraft's Team plan is $79/month for 5 people, Moxie is $40 but stops at five users at every tier. Work out what you will pay at the headcount you expect in a year, not the one you have today.
All thirteen prices, side by side →Is this list ranked?
No, deliberately. ApeiroCraft publishes this page and makes one of the tools on it, so any ranking we produced would be our own preference presented as a finding. Tools are grouped by what they are and listed alphabetically inside each group, and the structured data marks the list unordered so software reads it the same way. Where a competitor is the better choice, the page says which competitor and why.
The twelve head-to-head comparisons →Why is ClickUp on a proposal software list?
Because people shortlist it, and it is worth knowing before you trial it: ClickUp has no proposal builder, no e-signature and no invoicing at any tier, verified July 2026. It is an excellent project management platform and a poor proposal tool. If you need dependencies, Gantt charts and sprints it is the right product — just not for the proposal itself.
ApeiroCraft vs ClickUp →Which proposal tools have a genuinely free plan?
Three of the thirteen. ApeiroCraft's free plan sends 3 proposals a month with e-signature and read receipts, no card and no expiry. 17hats runs a free CRM tier with four invoices a quarter. ClickUp is free for unlimited members but cannot send a proposal. Everything else in this list is trial-only, and several of the trials require a card.
What the free plan includes →If the flat-price one is the fit, it is free to try.
No card, no trial clock. Send 3 proposals a month on the free plan and see whether the read receipts change how you follow up.
Go deeper on any of this
Pricing
What proposal software actually costs
Twelve tools, five pricing factors, list prices checked by hand — including the ones cheaper than us.
Comparisons
How ApeiroCraft compares
Twelve honest side-by-side comparisons, grouped by the reason people actually switch.
Free tool
What does your stack cost?
Add up your CRM, proposal, e-signature, and invoicing subscriptions. Thirty seconds, mildly upsetting.