Better Proposals vs Bidsketch (2026): which to choose

Better Proposals and Bidsketch both help a small business send a client proposal, get it signed, and see when it was opened. That is where the overlap ends. Better Proposals is a per-user, web-first document builder with payments and a large template catalogue. Bidsketch is a flat-priced, section-based proposal tool from 2009 that bundles unlimited clients and proposals into plans capped by headcount.

If you are a freelancer or a team of up to eight, either can do the job. Which one costs less depends almost entirely on how many people send proposals and how many proposals they send each month, so most of this comparison is about that math, plus the watch-outs each vendor documents itself.

One thing to settle first: neither tool answers an incoming RFP, a due diligence questionnaire, or a security questionnaire. More on that near the end.

Key takeaways

• Pricing basis: Better Proposals charges per user, from $13 per user per month billed annually ($19 monthly). Bidsketch charges per plan, from $15 a month for a stripped-down Starter, then $23, $47 and $119 a month on yearly billing for 1, 3 and 8 users.
• Send caps: Better Proposals limits monthly sends to 10 on Starter and 50 on Premium, with no cap on Enterprise. Bidsketch’s Solo, Team and Business plans include unlimited proposals and clients.
• Signatures: Every Better Proposals plan includes legally binding e-signatures. Bidsketch’s $15 Starter plan does not, so most buyers will start on Solo.
• Payments: Better Proposals takes payments inside the proposal on every plan, with Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless in its integration list. Bidsketch leans on accounting tools such as FreshBooks and Harvest instead.
• Review controls: Better Proposals keeps manager approvals, content locking and simultaneous editing for its $42 Enterprise tier. Bidsketch offers user roles but no internal approval step before sending.
• Limitations: Better Proposals’ own help center warns that PDF copies can differ from the web version. Bidsketch’s help center confirms proposals cannot carry file attachments, and its Capterra reviews mostly date from 2017 to 2022.

Two small-business tools from different eras

Better Proposals is a bootstrapped company based in Brighton, England. It says more than 10,000 businesses and freelancers use it, and its site says it offers more than 260 document templates. The product treats a proposal as a responsive web page: the client opens a link, reads on any device, signs, and pays in the same place. Named customers include United Rentals, Aspen Dental and Sharp.

Bidsketch was founded in 2009 in Spokane, Washington, and is run by Earthlingsoft, LLC, according to its terms of service. It was bootstrapped by its founder. A Bidsketch proposal is assembled from reusable sections (an introduction, a fee table, closing terms) and delivered as a client landing page where the buyer can read, comment and sign. Customers it names include One Lily, Tekture and Daina Creative.

The age gap shows in the review record. As of July 2026, Better Proposals holds 4.8 out of 5 on Capterra across 166 reviews and 4.3 on G2 across 51. Bidsketch holds 4.3 on Capterra across 25 reviews. The Bidsketch reviews visible on Capterra in October 2026 run from 2016 to 2022, so treat its rating as a historical signal rather than a current one.

What the buyer actually sees

The format your client receives is the most visible difference, and it shapes everything else.

With Better Proposals, the proposal is a web document. Pricing tables are interactive on every plan, so a client can tick optional items and watch the total update. Payments sit inside the document. Notifications and analytics tell you when the link is opened. You can also import an existing Word document with its Doc Importer, which matters if your current proposal lives in a .docx someone has been copy-editing since 2019.

The catch is offline output. Better Proposals has a help article explaining that the PDF version of a proposal can differ from the online version, because web content has to be squeezed into fixed pages (read October 2026). If your buyers’ procurement teams insist on a PDF for their file, test a real proposal before you commit.

With Bidsketch, the proposal is a structured document with a cover page, content sections and a fee section. Design control is form-based: Bidsketch’s help center describes choosing a cover design, setting heading and body fonts and colors, and inserting page breaks so paragraphs do not split badly in the PDF. You can import an existing Word or PDF template. Optional line items let a client add extras, which is the upsell feature most small agencies care about.

There are two documented limits worth knowing. Bidsketch proposals do not support file attachments; the help center suggests uploading the file to Google Drive and linking it. And text pasted from a PDF can lose its HTML tags and freeze sections until you repair the markup or paste as plain text (both read October 2026). Neither is a dealbreaker. Both are the sort of thing you would rather learn in a trial than at 6pm on proposal day.

The plan math: who pays less

Here is where the choice usually gets made. Bidsketch prices by plan with a user cap. Better Proposals prices by user with a send cap. All prices below are from each vendor’s pricing page as of October 2026, using annual billing.

Your situation	Better Proposals	Bidsketch
1 person, a few proposals a month, needs e-signatures	Starter, $13/mo (10 sends a month)	Solo, $23/mo (unlimited proposals)
1 person, 15 or more proposals a month	Premium, $21/mo (50 sends a month)	Solo, $23/mo
3 people	Premium, 3 x $21 = $63/mo	Team, $47/mo
8 people	Premium, 8 x $21 = $168/mo	Business, $119/mo
8 people who need manager approvals	Enterprise, 8 x $42 = $336/mo	Not available as a built-in step

A few things the table hides:

• Better Proposals’ Starter is a single seat. The pricing page lists a maximum of 1 user on Starter and unlimited users from Premium. Premium is also where CRM integrations, a custom domain, automatic expiry dates and API or Zapier access begin.
• The send cap wording is worth confirming. Better Proposals describes its monthly send limit as the total number of documents you send per month. Ask during the trial whether a team on Premium shares one pool of 50 or not, because that decides whether a busy team ends up on Enterprise.
• Bidsketch’s Starter is not the real entry point. At $15 a month it gives you 1 user, 25 clients, no e-signatures and no custom domain. Most buyers who want signatures will start on Solo at $29 monthly or $23 billed yearly.
• Bidsketch’s yearly discount is uneven. Team drops from $79 to $47 a month on yearly billing; Solo and Business drop by about a fifth.
• Trials differ. Better Proposals offers 14 days with no credit card. Bidsketch also offers 14 days but asks for a card up front and emails a reminder 3 days before billing starts.

Add-ons are mostly on the Better Proposals side: its Nudge follow-up feature is $10 per user per month, and custom template design starts at $1,495.

Short version: a solo seller sending a handful of proposals pays less on Better Proposals Starter. A team of three to eight pays less on Bidsketch, unless it needs approvals, in which case Bidsketch is not really in the running.

Getting signed, getting paid

Both tools close the loop with a signature. Better Proposals includes signatures on all three plans and says they comply with EU and US e-signature law. Bidsketch includes e-signatures on Solo and above. Once a Bidsketch proposal is signed it is locked for legal reasons; the help center’s fix for a premature signature is to copy the proposal and resend it.

Payments are where Better Proposals pulls ahead for service businesses that want a deposit on signature. Payment integrations are on every plan, and its integration list includes Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless. A client can sign and pay in one sitting.

Bidsketch takes a different route. Its integrations lean toward the back office: FreshBooks and Harvest for invoicing and time tracking, Basecamp for project kickoff, Salesforce and Highrise on the CRM side, plus Zapier and an API. If your agency already invoices from FreshBooks or Harvest, that may suit you better than collecting money inside the proposal.

Team controls and review

Neither product is built around multi-step review, but they handle teams differently.

Better Proposals saves its controls for Enterprise at $42 per user per month billed annually. That tier adds manager approvals, content locking, simultaneous editing, inline commenting and advanced user permissions. On Starter and Premium, anyone with a seat can send.

Bidsketch has three user types documented in its help center: a User sees only their own proposals and clients, a Power User can view and edit everyone’s, and an Admin also controls settings and billing. Team and Business plans list real-time collaboration and team management. What it lacks is an internal approval gate: there is no built-in “manager signs off before this goes out” step. If discount control matters, that gap is the deciding factor.

Integrations and stack fit

Better Proposals’ integration list is broader and more modern: HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho and Pipedrive for CRM; Asana, Trello, ClickUp, Wrike and Basecamp for project handoff; Stripe, PayPal and GoCardless for payments; plus Zapier. CRM integrations start on Premium.

Bidsketch’s list is shorter: Salesforce, Highrise, FreshBooks, Harvest, Basecamp, Zapier and a handful of others, plus a documented API. HubSpot and Pipedrive users would be going through Zapier. Two Capterra reviewers, in July 2018 and September 2019, asked for more native integrations.

Known issues and watch-outs

These come from each vendor’s own documentation or from themes repeated across dated reviews. Read them as things to test in a trial.

Better Proposals

• PDF output can drift from the web version. Better Proposals’ help center says the PDF can differ from the online proposal because of the paged format (help center, read October 2026).
• Starter is narrow. One user and 10 sends a month; CRM integrations and a custom domain need Premium (pricing page, October 2026).
• Approvals cost the top tier. Manager approvals, content locking and simultaneous editing are Enterprise-only (pricing page, October 2026).
• The editor gets called clunky. Capterra reviews dated December 2023, September 2024, January 2025 and April 2026 describe the editor as clunky or limited for layout and formatting (Capterra reviews, read October 2026).

Bidsketch

• The $15 plan omits signatures. Starter has no e-signatures or custom domain and caps clients at 25; Team and Business cap users at 3 and 8 (pricing page, October 2026).
• No attachments. Files have to be linked from somewhere else (help center, read October 2026).
• Pasting from a PDF can freeze sections. The documented fix is editing HTML tags or pasting as plain text (help center, read October 2026).
• Interface and integration requests recur in reviews. Capterra reviewers from 2017 to 2022 asked for a more modern UI, more layout control and more native integrations (Capterra reviews, read October 2026).

Credit where it is due: Better Proposals’ support claim is unusually specific (its pricing page promises a human reply within two minutes, 24 hours a day), and Bidsketch’s unlimited-clients plans are still one of the cheapest ways to give a small team signed proposals.

If what landed in your inbox is an RFP

Both tools are outbound proposal builders. You write the document, you choose its structure, and the client signs it. That is the right category for a design agency quoting a website or a consultant scoping a retainer.

It is the wrong category for answering someone else’s questions. When a buyer sends a 120-row security questionnaire in Excel, a DDQ, or an RFP with a mandated response format, the job is to read their file, find approved answers, route gaps to the right expert, and return their file filled in. Neither Better Proposals nor Bidsketch imports a questionnaire, and neither keeps a question-and-answer library with sources or review dates. Their content libraries hold reusable sections for your own documents.

If that work is a regular part of your week, look at response platforms such as Loopio, Responsive or AutoRFP.ai for the questionnaires, and keep a proposal builder for the outbound pitches. Plenty of small firms run one of each.

Who should pick Better Proposals

Pick Better Proposals if:

• You want clients to sign and pay a deposit in the same document, through Stripe, PayPal or GoCardless.
• Your proposals look better as a web page than as a PDF, and your clients read them on phones.
• You send fewer than 10 proposals a month on your own, which makes Starter the cheapest option here.
• You use HubSpot, Pipedrive or a project tool such as Asana or ClickUp and want the handoff wired up (Premium and above).
• You need manager approvals and content locking and are willing to pay Enterprise rates for them.

Who should pick Bidsketch

Pick Bidsketch if:

• You have 3 to 8 people sending proposals and want one flat bill rather than a per-seat bill.
• You send a lot of proposals and do not want to think about a monthly send limit.
• Your billing runs through FreshBooks or Harvest and you would rather invoice there than collect money inside the proposal.
• Your proposals follow a stable structure (intro, fees, terms) and you do not need design freedom.
• You can live with an older interface, no attachments, and no approval step.

Verdict

For a solo operator or a small studio that wants polished, payable proposals, Better Proposals is the stronger product: signatures on every plan, payments in the document, a much bigger integration list, and a review base that is still active. Watch the 10-send Starter cap and test your PDF output.

For a team of three to eight that sends volume and cares more about cost than craft, Bidsketch’s flat Team and Business plans still win the arithmetic. Go in knowing the documented gaps, and treat its 2017 to 2022 reviews as a prompt to run a proper trial before you commit.

And if the documents you dread are questionnaires rather than proposals, neither of these is the tool you are shopping for.

Read the full Better Proposals review or Bidsketch review, or browse all RFP & DDQ software.