Proposal and Contract Total Cost of Ownership

Have you considered the total costs involved in setting up a proposal and contract management system?

Using Proposal Kit or any of our related products, you can get started without having to purchase ANY other software. With most other proposal and contract products on the market you are forced to use Microsoft Word, which means you have to buy additional software to support the entire business process of creating and delivering your proposals and contracts which can easily add $1000 to your setup costs. There are many combinations of 3rd party software to choose from, ranging from free to expensive, which our Proposal and Contract products will work with.

The following are examples of possible combinations of 3rd party software which can be used with our products and are not recommendations. It is your responsibility to determine the suitability of any particular platform based on your experience, needs and budget.

Examples are listed in order of the most commonly used combinations we see our Proposal Kit, Proposal Pack and Contract Pack customers using.

Example 1 (Typical Business Software):

Operating System: Microsoft Windows

Office Suite: Microsoft Office

PDF Export: Adobe Acrobat

Graphics Software: Any Adobe, Macromedia or Corel software.

This is the option you will most likely have to choose if you use any other company's proposal and contract tools which are built on Microsoft Word and can add another $1000 to your total cost on top of what the proposal and contract products cost.

While this is also the most common platform for our customers, it is only one possible combination of 3rd party software you can use with our Proposal Kit and related products.

Example 2 (Small Business on a Budget Software):

Operating System: Microsoft Windows

Office Suite: OpenOffice.org (free)

PDF Export: (built into OpenOffice.org) (free)

Graphics Software: None or GIMP (free)

If you use any of our Proposal Pack specialty styles and use the stock designs, you do not even need a graphics program to put a high quality professional finish on your proposal documents. The free OpenOffice.org office suite will save you hundreds of dollars over retail versions of Microsoft Office and will probably meet most, if not all, of your initial needs. Most people will already be using Microsoft Windows operating system. If you do not have an office suite consider using OpenOffice.org which will save you hundreds of dollars not having to buy both an office suite and Adobe Acrobat PDF software.

Example 3 (Mac Software):

Operating System: Mac OS X

Office Suite: Microsoft Office X

PDF Export: Adobe Acrobat

Graphics Software: Macromedia, Corel, etc.

If you are a Mac user there are many options available for graphics software but very little for business development. Appleworks is a low-cost office suite solution however you will get better results using Microsoft Office X for the Mac. If you are fairly computer savvy with your Mac, the OpenOffice.org office suite is now supported on Mac OS X. Click here for the free OpenOffice.org for Mac OS X.

Example 4 (Free Open Source Linux Software):

Operating System: Linux (free)

Office Suite: OpenOffice.org (free)

PDF Export: (built into OpenOffice.org) (free)

Graphics Software: GIMP (free)

If you are computer savvy, a Linux and OpenOffice.org system is a very low cost solution to getting your business started. Note that this is still not a mainstream solution yet and there is not a lot of support easily available if you have problems setting up the software.