Proposify vs. XaitPorter

We use proposals for client contracts. They are several pages long with a lot of legalese. We also use them for NDA contracts with clients. Mainly we use Proposify for client project proposals. The proposals include description, main project points, price, timing, scope, process, cost, and everything the client can expect. I like that we were able to design a custom cover for our proposals. Proposify does one thing very well and that is proposals. I like that it doesn't try to be everything

Incentivized

XaitPorter is ideal when a large document, containing many (preferably independent) sections is being created by more than five writers across different office locations and is subject to review by multiple reviewers and requires formal approval. It is particularly suited for external documents which are to be delivered as a non-editable PDF file.

Incentivized

• So our favorite feature is the huge time savings. If anybody's ever done proposals on Word or Excel; it’s a head wreck. Proposify is great because there are beautiful templates there ready to go, it saves you a ton of time, and they are visually appealing. We get lots of feedback from our clients when we send them out proposals that our proposals look amazing.
• There are great, sneaky metrics that we absolutely love. You get notifications on your phone via the app when somebody opens the proposal and when they've signed off on it. But you can also go into the app and see how much time people are actually spending looking at your proposal.
• Because you send out the proposals and you can have automated reminder emails, there’s communication back and forth within the proposal that you can have-- the clients can actually write notes back and forth. It just makes the whole thing super smooth and it integrates with most of your CRMs out there.

• Enables several writers to write in the same document at the same time, which means that it is always possible to get the latest version printed and see the current state.
• Because we are limited in the template to a few styles we don't use a lot of time after completion checking up on which style the writers has been using. This saves us a lot of editing.
• Before we got XaitPorter the drawing team didn't get the figures to quality control until the final stages of the process, but now the figures are received as soon as the writer uploads them. This also saves a lot of overtime, because the drawing team is involved earlier on.

Incentivized

• The text editor is slow, buggy, and the Achilles heel of the Proposify platform. It got worse with the launch of their new UI.
• The new interface was launched way before it was ready for prime-time. As a result, there are still quite a few bugs Proposify has yet to fix. Once you upgrade to the new interface, you can't go back.
• It's not uncommon to have sections of a proposal disappear entirely from the PDF version.
• Depending on the browser, formatting can be far different that the creator intended.

Incentivized

• The dashboard is complex and not easily understood. Since we only worked on a few documents at a time, we went straight into the document and never spent time on the dashboard.
• Being cloud based, the time taken to move from one section of the document to another becomes painful.
• The word import function could be improved.
• There are some functionalities in Word that are not available in XaitPorter. For example you can insert pictures within a table in Word but you cant do that in XaitPorter.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

It's very basic. More features would be better.

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

We find it to be intuitive to use with a simple menu and right-click based functionality in place.

Incentivized

XaitPorter is always there even though we have issues with outages (suddenly the network does not work, but that is internal issue)

Incentivized

Our reports/Tenders complete in a reasonable time frame, actually faster than Word. We have not integrated with other systems or softwares.

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

They have a clear method for reporting any issues and work hard to get a resolution, keeping me informed of progress.

Incentivized

He was really good. He came from Xait and trained us for several days. He got all involved and answered the questions asked. He was a professional trainee

Incentivized

The online training was really good. They know the way of getting people involved and they answered all questions asked. They were there for us.

Incentivized

I was really satisfied with the implementation

Incentivized

We looked for a solution after we spent countless hours and years maintaining a MS Word Template system. Proposify takes many features and streamlines them, mak[ing] them interactive and clean. It's nice to digitally deliver a proposal that a customer can view online- it ads a "creative expectation" for a design agency to fulfill this approach facing a client. It's expected rather than a MS Word doc sent via email or printed and hand delivered. The export to PDF is a nice feature if you need to print.

Incentivized

We looked at every major product and some newer ones. We liked Xait's general robustness and handling of images (despite the issue about the internal library), as well as the output quality in PDF. Also, we're a Mac shop so we could not be chained to a Windows editor.

Incentivized

I just love the system

Incentivized

• The use of templates within Proposify has empowered our sales team to reduce the amount of time it took to send out a proposal by almost 50%!
• The ability to add user-selectable "add-ons" to a proposal saw a 10% increase in overall sale price.
• Developing the templates within the somewhat limited parameters that Proposify's design interface offers did require some significant time from our design team.

Incentivized

• We have seen reduced overtime costs for tender support staff who used to spend a lot of time managing and dealing with version control issues, formatting issues, layout issues and printing issues
• We have experienced that Porter has allowed us to handle more work without increasing our staffing.
• The quality of our submissions has improved both by the switch to Porter, and further by the increased proficiency of both our administrators and writers.

Incentivized