Formlio: the modern way to create and share proposals

A Formlio proposal is a responsive web page built from blocks. Each block is a pre-designed section: a hero, a text section, a gallery, a portfolio, a timeline, a pricing table, an agreement. You fill them in, reorder them and share the result as a link. The client opens it on a laptop or a phone and it reads well on both.

That matters because a proposal costs real hours before anyone says yes. Pitching is expensive work, and agencies know the number.

Time spent on a proposal is only worth it if the proposal does its job after it leaves your outbox. A static file can't. It looks the same on a phone as on your studio monitor, so the client pinches and zooms through your best images. Any change in scope means a new export, a new attachment and a client who now has two versions in their inbox. And once it's sent, you're guessing: did they open it, did it reach the person who signs, did they stop at the price?

There is a second cost in the creative industry. Clients hire you for taste. A brand lead comparing studios reads each proposal as a preview of how that studio works: the type, the spacing, the way the images sit, whether the pricing makes sense on first read. A cramped file argues against you before anyone reaches the budget.

Block-based proposals also differ from design-tool templates. A design tool gives you a canvas and a download button. You get layout freedom, then a flat file. A block-based proposal keeps the structure live: pricing that recalculates, a signature step on the page and tracking after you hit send. It fits agencies, design studios and freelancers who sell project work and want the proposal to look like their portfolio, not like an invoice.

Start from a template, not a blank page. A template gives you the block order; your saved blocks give you your house style. Once your studio has a case study block that reads well, with the right image ratio and a tight result line, save it to the library. Do the same with the team section, the process timeline and your terms. After a handful of proposals, building a new proposal means choosing and adapting rather than designing.

Work on it together. A branding proposal usually needs a strategist for the approach, a designer for the visuals and a founder for the price. In Formlio everyone edits the same document at the same time, with live cursors, so drafts stop bouncing between inboxes. Version history lets you compare and restore an earlier draft if a late pricing change goes wrong. Brand colours and fonts are set once for the workspace, so every proposal your team sends looks like it came from the same studio.

Follow the client through it. For example, the roaster's founder opens the link on a phone between meetings, reads the intro and spends a while on the case studies. Later, on a laptop, she opens the pricing block, picks Signature at $9,800 and switches on a photography art direction day at $1,200. The total moves to $11,000 while she watches. No call, no revised file. The signature block sits right below the total, so she can agree while the number is in front of her.

The order did the work. Proof came before price, so the budget read as the cost of a result she had already seen. The middle package was marked as recommended, so she compared scope rather than judging a single figure. The add-on was her choice, so it never felt like an upsell.

Pick the link type first. A private link is for named people: each recipient verifies their email with a passcode before the document opens, and you see exactly who viewed what. A public link opens for anyone who has it, with anonymous tracking, which suits a proposal the client will pass around their team; anyone who signs or approves still has to verify their email at that point. Then add the agreement step: a slide-to-approve button for a light yes, or an e-signature (typed, drawn or uploaded) when the client needs a formal signature, with several signers if the deal needs them.

A PDF goes into a black box. A Formlio document reports back: who opened it, what they read, when they signed. You get a notification when the proposal is viewed or approved. Section-level analytics show the time spent on each block. Heatmaps show where the cursor rested, and session replay lets you watch the scroll.

Sales teams miss the window often, and a studio without tracking has even less to go on. A proposal the client asked for deserves a prompt follow-up, and the tracking data tells you what to say in it.

Use a simple rule. Follow up within a day of the first open, and make the message about the section they spent the most time on. If there is no open after a couple of working days, resend with a new subject line that names their project. Never send a bare check-in: every follow-up should add something, such as a relevant case study, an answer to a question the pricing raises, or a time for a short call.

Start with the proposal you reuse the most, not the most ambitious. Rebuild it section by section: the intro and approach become text blocks, case studies become portfolio blocks, your schedule becomes a timeline, and the price becomes an interactive pricing block with packages and optional add-ons. Set your brand colours and fonts, including any custom font you upload, so every block picks them up.

Then save the pieces you'll reuse as blocks in your library, and save the whole proposal as a template. The next proposal starts from that template, duplicated and adapted for the new client in a fraction of the time.

Over your first handful of proposals, watch a few things: how soon each is opened, which sections hold attention, whether pricing gets revisited, which add-ons clients switch on, and how long it takes from sending to a signature. Patterns show up quickly, and they tell you which block to rewrite next.