You pick a proposal tool, count your team, multiply by the per-user price, and assume that is the bill. Then a busy fortnight arrives, you send documents to a batch of prospects, and the tool tells you that you have run out of something you were not tracking. Seats were never the constraint.
Prices here were fetched from each vendor’s own pricing page on 6 September 2026. These figures are not Watchdog data and are not on the re-verification schedule, so check the live page before subscribing.
The second meter agencies don’t budget for
Proposify and Better Proposals both sell seats. Both also cap a monthly volume of outgoing documents on top of those seats, and the two meters are counted separately.
Proposify puts this under a heading reading “Only pay for what you send,” with columns labelled “Included Sends/Month” and “Overage Rate.” Drafting, editing and collaborating are unlimited; a send counts only when you share a document with a client. Better Proposals uses two named rows in its comparison table, “Maximum user seats” and “Monthly Send Limit,” the second defined in its tooltip as the documents you send per month.
That gap bites the smallest buyer hardest. A solo operator or two-person shop is nowhere near any seat ceiling, but pitch six prospects in a week, follow up with four more, and the entry tier allotment is gone on either vendor.
What Proposify actually meters
Proposify publishes two self-serve tiers and one quote-only tier. Watch the billing frequency in the non-annual column: Basic is billed monthly, but Team’s $49 figure carries the string “billed quarterly” in both the plan card and the comparison block.
| Plan | Per user, non-annual | Per user, annual | Included sends/month | Overage rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic | $29/user/mo, billed monthly | $19/user/mo | 10 | $0.50 per send |
| Team | $49/user/mo, billed quarterly | $41/user/mo | 30 | $0.30 per send |
| Business | Quote only. Compare block states it starts at $3,900/year. | 75 | $0.75 per send | |
| Enterprise | No plan card on the page | Custom | Custom | |
One line there is easy to read past: the overage rate does not fall as the tier rises. Team charges $0.30 per extra send and Business $0.75, so the cheapest marginal send sits in the middle tier.
The top tier is not priced per seat at all. The Business card reads “Let’s talk” with custom pricing available, and its feature list runs “Approval workflows,” “SSO (Okta, Azure, Salesforce),” “API access” and “Multiple workspaces.” If you need any of those, that is a sales conversation, not a checkout.
What Better Proposals actually meters
Better Proposals puts the two meters in adjacent rows of one table.
| Plan | Per user, monthly | Per user, annual | Maximum user seats | Monthly Send Limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $19/user/mo | $13/user/mo | 1 | 10 |
| Premium | $29/user/mo | $21/user/mo | Unlimited | 50 |
| Enterprise | $49/user/mo | $42/user/mo | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Starter is the one tier where the seat meter bites first, and it bites hard: the maximum is 1 seat, so a two-person shop cannot buy it at any volume. Above that line both Premium and Enterprise list unlimited seats, and the send limit is the only volume meter left.
An invoice-billed Elite tier with a 10 user minimum has been listed here in the past. As fetched on 6 September 2026 that card sits in the page source wrapped in an HTML comment, so it never renders, and its price is a placeholder. It is not a published tier today. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: whether Better Proposals still offers an invoice-billed tier with a 10 user minimum, on a page that displays it.]
A pitch season blows the send meter, not the seat meter
Picture a two-person consultancy chasing one vertical for a quarter. In the first month they send 26 proposals: a batch of 18, then 8 more as referrals come back. Nobody joins the team.
On Proposify Basic, billed annually, the seat side is 2 users at $19, so $38 for the month. The send side is 10 included and 16 over at $0.50 per send, so $8.00 in overage. Proposify’s FAQ frames that as a charge rather than a block, saying that once you are at your send limit you can send an additional document for a low one-time fee per send. It recurs every month like this one, and the same 26 sends on Team would sit inside the 30 included, free.
On Better Proposals the same 26 sends break differently. Starter is unavailable to a two-person team on the seat rule alone, so the entry point is Premium at $21 per user annually, $42 for two seats, with a 50 document Monthly Send Limit that 26 sends do not threaten. No overage rate is published at all. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: whether exceeding the Better Proposals Monthly Send Limit charges an overage, blocks further sends, or prompts a plan upgrade, stated on a vendor page.]
On whether a revised or resent document is charged twice, the vendors are not equally clear. Better Proposals answers plainly in its help centre: the allowance is deducted only the first time a document is sent, and a re-send to the same person, a different person or yourself does not count. Proposify counts a send when you share a document with a client but says nothing about a second send of the same one, and its knowledge base returned HTTP 403 to every request in this session. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: whether Proposify counts a resent document as a second send, on a readable Proposify page.]
The annual discount changes which meter matters more
Both vendors discount seats for annual commitment, and neither discount touches the send meter. Proposify Basic falls from $29 to $19 per user, 34.48 percent. Team falls from $49 billed quarterly to $41 billed annually, 16.33 percent. Better Proposals Starter falls from $19 to $13, or 31.58 percent; Premium from $29 to $21, or 27.59 percent; Enterprise from $49 to $42, or 14.29 percent. Its page advertises “Save up to 35%,” above the largest reduction calculable from its published prices.
Every one of those percentages applies to one axis. A Proposify Basic seat bought annually is 34.48 percent cheaper and still carries exactly 10 included sends. A year’s commitment buys a cheaper wall, not a further one, so decide billing term and volume tier separately.
What to check before signing up
- Whether unused sends roll over. Proposify’s pricing FAQ says sends roll over and accumulate if you don’t use them, and names no ceiling, so ask whether one exists. Better Proposals goes the other way, resetting allowances on the 1st.
- What the overage costs, and whether a resend triggers it. Proposify publishes a rate per tier but no resend rule; Better Proposals publishes a free resend rule but no rate. Get the missing half in writing.
- Whether seats can be added mid cycle at the listed rate. Neither page states proration for a seat added mid-period. Better Proposals documents upgrading through Settings, but downgrading only by contacting support.
- Whether the top tier is self-serve. Proposify’s Business tier is quote only, a demo booking rather than a checkout. All three rendered Better Proposals cards carry a “Try it Free” button.
Where this sits in the pitch-to-signature sequence
Proposal software is sales workflow tooling. It sits adjacent to the social media management tools market this site covers, and outside it, which is why it lives on the blog rather than in the market coverage. Nothing above is a ranking; the two vendors meter different things and the answer depends on your send volume.
Before a proposal goes out is capture, where the same volume-meter problem shows up in lead-capture form tooling. After acceptance is signature, covered in e-signature tools for creator agreements. Once the work is won, the same per-seat questions recur in invoicing tools for social media freelancers.
Disclosure: followedapp is published by the team behind RecurPost, and RecurPost is a covered vendor here under the same rules as every other vendor.
FAQ
Is Proposify priced per proposal or per seat?
Both, on two meters counted separately. You pay a per-seat price, and each tier separately includes a fixed number of monthly sends with a per-send charge beyond it. Per-tier figures are in the table above, fetched 6 September 2026.
Does Better Proposals cap the number of proposals I can send?
Yes, through a “Monthly Send Limit” separate from its “Maximum user seats” cap. As fetched on 6 September 2026, Starter allows 1 seat and 10 sends a month, Premium unlimited seats and 50 sends, Enterprise unlimited seats and unlimited sends. A Starter account hits the send wall long before any seat wall.
What happens when an agency exceeds its included proposal sends?
On Proposify you are charged per extra send at your tier’s rate: $0.50 on Basic, $0.30 on Team, $0.75 on Business, described in its FAQ as a one-time fee per send rather than a stop. On Better Proposals the answer is not published on the pricing page. [EVIDENCE NEEDED: whether exceeding the Better Proposals Monthly Send Limit charges an overage, blocks further sends, or forces an upgrade.]
Do unused proposal sends carry over to the next month?
It depends on the vendor. Proposify’s pricing FAQ states the amount of sends will roll over each month so they will accumulate if you don’t use them, with no stated cap. Better Proposals states the opposite: allowances reset on the 1st of each month and are not pro-rated.
Sources
All fetched 6 September 2026, HTTP 200.