Proposa review – Build creative proposals

Creating interactive proposals is something that can make you really stand out from all the offers sent every day. This right here is Proposa a proposal platform where you can create beautiful proposals and track the activities. Let’s check it out.

Here we are inside Proposa, the platform and on the dashboard we have two different views. We have the activity view where we can see all of our proposals and the status here, and then we can see the activity, both the recipient activity and our team activity. Furthermore, then we also have the analytics over here and in the analytics we can see our pipeline size which is the amount of US dollars we have sent proposals out for scrolling down we can see some analytics about our win and loss and that’s because for each proposal you can say whether it was a win or a loss. And then down here we have some leaderboard data but let’s just jump right into proposals and what I would like to do is to set up a completely new proposal. So, to the left we will press create new and here you can either start from scratch or you can start with a template.

1. Features of Proposa
2. Proposa Pricing
3. Alternatives to Proposa
4. Future of Proposa
5. Pros & Cons using Proposa
6. Last thoughts about Proposa

Features of Proposa

In this case, I will start with a template, and you can see that they have some different ones you can choose from here. And overall, what I really like about these templates is how they look. It looks excellent. So let’s say that we want to create a web design offer here. Let’s call the title Web Agency just in this case.

Here you can choose a theme and this is where it should be a modern theme, minimal theme, the Valiant and so on. Let’s just keep it on the Valiant and the value for this one will be $25,000. So let’s continue and create this proposal. So now we are inside the proposal editor here.

When I Scroll down you can see the entire proposal and what I really like is that it’s interactive because this is not a PDF. You can download it as a PDF, but often it is best to just send it out like this, so they will have this interactive feeling with the proposal. But let’s go back up to the beginning here and then whenever it is you want to edit something you just click the pencil over here, and then you have some different options for the design, and you have the content itself. So, for the design here, can we choose how many columns there should be? What should the scheme be?

Should it be dark or light? I will keep it dark because we have a background. We can also include a table of content, and then you can see there’s already an image. We can also choose to go with a colour if we want to. I’ll keep it as an image because I feel that looks the best here you choose whether it should be filling the viewport or just a little top bar.

Again, I feel that filling the viewport looks best. And for the content, it’s very simple text where you can just change whatever it is you want to change here and then that’s it basically. Going down, you can see we have a lot of different ways of going around this specific proposal. So let’s go down to the bottom and then let’s add a completely new component. I’ll just save here.

So you can see that we can add a panel, a list, a slideshow, table, table of contents, and saved content. And saved content is for you to reuse your content, so you don’t have to all the time build the same proposal with the same types of content. So, if you have a way you like to showcase your pricing, you basically build a module, and then you just save it here as a saved content. So you can see that this is called conclusion. Let’s just save that.

And then down here we should now be able to choose the conclusion, and it’s over here. So, this way, you can easily reuse the different types of components. For now, let’s add a panel here. Over here I want two different columns and let’s call this panel here a test panel. I will not include a table of content and I will keep it white as the background.

So, right now the background is masked. I will keep it. I will fill the viewport as well. And then go to the content. So you can see up here we have two columns.

So when I started to write here, you can see that I started to fill it out for column one. And here it is for column two as well. And again, we can just add multiple columns if we want to. I will keep them as two. You can also increase the size for this specific column and that’s about it.

So, even though we could add a lot more customisation options, for instance, I would like to be able to drag and drop around like we have seen with Elementor from WordPress, if you know that. The ability to drag and drop around opens up an entire universe of new types of proposals that we can build. But of course, now, because it is so locked, it also makes it easier because you have fewer options, and it keeps it in the same design, and it looks pretty good, to be honest. So let’s keep this one as it is and save it. So now we have the status, which is a draft. I can then publish it.

And when I publish it, it is now ready to be shared. So before I share this proposal, I just want to show you these options here, because we can see some information overall where you can see that this one right now is on this URL you see here. I can enter my company’s URL and I can tell whether a signature is required or not. Let’s say the signature is required, then we can also rearrange all the different components here. If I want the price to be a bit further up, I can add that as well.

I can change the view to see how it looks on a mobile, tablet and desktop. I can schedule it so it will expire. So let’s say I sent this offer, but it’s only valid for a certain amount of time. And this is so important because if you don’t add an expiration date, in theory your client would be able to come back after two years and say that now they want the offer. But in two years a tonne of stuff is happening, and probably your prices will be a lot higher, hopefully.

So, always set an expiration date. You can also set a password protection, you can change the overall theme, and then you can download it as a PDF. But let’s share this proposal. We can add the recipient here. I will just add myself to this one, so I can show you what it looks like.

So now I have shared it with myself. You can see there’s a little extra circle up here, and then I will receive an email just in a moment. So here we now are on the proposal and I clicked on the link that I received in the email, and you can see here it is basically just a website as a proposal. Scrolling down, I can see all the different modules that we added, and it’s basically from the template and then when we come all the way down to the bottom here, you can see that I can accept it. This is because I set myself as the signature.

So here you can see that it’s just written my name out as a signature. I can then add my company name and I can add a title here. Now I can then accept and sign this proposal. What happened in the meantime is that I also received a notification that I am looking at this specific proposal and that is what the entire Behavioural analysis is about. So let’s try and go to digest here for this specific proposal we have built.

So you can see here that there is a notification that I have opened the proposal today, and then you can see down here what has happened. That notification has been sent. I have been added as a recipient, something has been edited. We can see some information over here. We can also add our own team which is going to be part of this project.

Up here we can see who has opened it, who has been editing the changes and the issues there have been. So when I click details here, you can see that this is just an example and I have to upgrade to business. I think this is an issue right now because I do have access to the Behavioural analysis, but here you can see the heatmap. What are they clicking on?

What are they reading? How long time they spend on reading the different sections and so on. This you can use to be better at your proposals. You know that when they’re not looking at specific sections, then it’s irrelevant to add in the next proposal. So the Behavioural analysis is really for you to improve your way of building proposals and always send out the most relevant content to your potential clients.

So let’s go back here because the last thing I want to show you is settings. In the settings we have account settings, company profile and so on. But what is interesting is the API settings. So even though they don’t have an integration to Zapier or other types of third party programmes right now, they do have an API. With this API you can hook up with Zapier or whatever third party programme you want to use.

And they do also have web hooks. So this means that every time a proposal is opened, they can shoot a request to a specific URL you are setting. And then you can connect with Zapier. So you can basically set up an entire automation flow based on what is happening. So let’s say that someone is opening the proposal, then you can have an email marketing flow in a different type of programme and then Zapier is basically the middleman.

So the email marketing flow starts whenever Zapier tells it to start. And then this email flow is basically following up on the client saying, I can see you took a look at it yesterday. What do you think? Is there anything we need to change? Of course, only if we haven’t received any response at all.

So, all of those interesting, intriguing things you can tweak, I would definitely recommend you do that.

Proposa Pricing

Now let’s take a look at the pricing. On all the plans, you can get a 14-day trial, there’s no free plan. And then, when you want to upgrade after the trial, then you have to take a look at the number of published proposals. Because you can have as many draft proposals as you want. It is only the amount of published proposal that really counts.

And this pricing, compared to the alternatives, is actually a bit more expensive unless you have a tonne of users, because here it is a fixed amount, and then you can add the users that it says.

Alternatives to Proposa

But on the alternative, which is Betterproposals, you pay per user. And with Betterproposals, you also get integrations, and you get multiple languages and, just overall, some more features. So maybe they should adjust the pricing a bit. Otherwise, it is just where it should be.

If you have a lot of users, you want to onboard the platform. So whether you want to go for the number of users or their features, then you have to choose whether you want Betterproposals or Proposa. It’s really up to you.

Future of Proposa

Now the future of Proposa is quite interesting. They’re working on three things that I want to highlight. First off they’re working on a custom email module and this is for all the different types of emails sent out so that means that when you share the proposal with your client, your potential client, the teammates and your own colleagues as well. Furthermore, it’s also the notification templates so every time someone visits this specific proposal you get an email where it says that someone is looking at this specific proposal whoever it is. This template will also be improved, maybe with more information or just the overall design of it, and maybe you will have more control over it.

Last but not least, they are adding more templates and these are prebuilt templates for us to make offers and these templates really make it easy to quickly make an offer that looks good and where we remember all the different details you need to remember in a proposal when it is that you send it out to your potential client.

Pros & Cons using Proposa

Now, using Proposa I really like those many beautiful templates that make it easy to quickly make a proposal and then their behavioural analysis really makes it easy to see what is important for the client. Though I really hope that they will add some comment features, make it easier to integrate with external systems and then restructure the pricing plan.

Last thoughts about Proposa

If you’re working in sales or run your own agency then Proposa is a perfect fit for you by time you will be able to send out proposals in no time. I want to give Proposa three and a half stars. They have a modern design and a lot of easy templates to use, but I’m really missing some features to fully benefit from Proposa. That’s my review.