ProQuote
From job site to invoice, in minutes.
I've always been frustrated by how contractors handle their paperwork.
Not as a software person looking for a market — as someone who watched the tradespeople in my life struggle with clunky tools. My best friend's father runs a small contracting business. Every job started the same way: scribbling estimates on paper, taking photos of handwritten invoices, chasing down signatures, and waiting weeks to get paid.
The existing software options were either:
- Too expensive — $50-100/month for tools built for enterprise construction firms
- Too complicated — designed for project managers, not the guy on the roof
- Too fragile — crashing on mobile, losing data, requiring a desktop to do anything useful
Contractors don't sit at desks. They're on ladders, in crawl spaces, at kitchen tables doing quotes after their kids go to bed. The tool had to work on a phone. It had to be fast. And it had to be simple enough that you don't need a tutorial to send your first estimate.
So I built ProQuote.
### What I Set Out to Build
Three things, and nothing more:
1. Create a professional estimate on a phone in under 2 minutes
2. Get it signed electronically by the customer on the spot
3. Convert it to an invoice and collect payment without re-entering anything
No bloat. No 47-step onboarding. No "enterprise" features that 99% of contractors will never use. Just the core workflow that turns a job site conversation into a paid invoice.
### What I Learned Building It
The hardest part wasn't the technology. It was the edge cases. Contractors work in weird ways:
- "Can I split this estimate across two phases?"
- "What if the customer wants to remove line item 3 after I already sent it?"
- "I need to add a 10% discount but only on materials, not labor."
- "Can my customer pay a deposit now and the rest on completion?"
Every one of these came from a real conversation with a real contractor. Each one shaped a feature. That's the benefit of building something you understand from the inside.
### Where It's At Now
ProQuote is live, free to use, and the Pro plan is just $29/month. There's a free forever plan because I believe the estimating and invoicing workflow should be accessible to every contractor — not just the ones who can afford expensive software.
The goal isn't to build the biggest construction software company. It's to be the tool that independent contractors actually want to use.
### What's Next
- More integrations (QuickBooks, Google Calendar)
- More trade-specific features based on user feedback
- Building a community of contractors who help shape the product
If you're a contractor or you know one, I'm always open to feedback and to hear what would make ProQuote better. Every feature request goes straight into the roadmap.
---
Building in public. One estimate at a time.
3 Comments
One thing that stood out to me is how often products built around simplicity end up getting pulled in the opposite direction by real customer requests.
Every feature request can make sense individually.
The difficult part is deciding which ones deserve to change the definition of the product and which ones don't.
It did start out as a tool for a very targeted audience, but just kept going.
I will say, some of the features that have been added were things I never thought of or would have been useful.
Discounts and split payments for sure. E-Sign is important, but never crossed my mind.
For the time being, I'm just trying to develop a user base and requesting feedback.
That's exactly where I'd be careful.
The challenge isn't whether the requests are reasonable.
It's that some requests quietly change what the product is becoming, while others don't.
Those can look very similar while the feedback is coming in.
I wouldn't try to unpack that properly in a thread.
If you're curious, drop your email and I'll put together the tighter version.