Consult Fees vs Qwilr: Decide the Fee Before You Design the Proposal
Written by Charlotte Jones |
Qwilr makes proposals look sharp. It does not tell you what to charge, why that number is fair, or how to defend it when the client pushes back. That is a different problem, and it is the one most consultants are actually stuck on.
Consult Fees sits one step upstream. You describe the engagement in plain English, and you walk out with business objectives, monetized value, three pricing options, and three retainer packages. Then you drop those into your proposal, whether that is Qwilr, a Google Doc, or a PDF.
This page is an honest comparison. Where Qwilr is the right tool, we say so. Where the pricing-logic layer is missing, we show what changes when you add it.
Trusted by independent consultants, fractional leaders, and boutique firms who price around value, not hours.
The Honest One-Line Difference
Qwilr is proposal software. Consult Fees is pricing software.
Qwilr is built for sales teams who need an interactive, branded document with e-signature and payment collection. Consult Fees is built for consultants who need to decide the fee, justify it with cited sources, and present tiered options before any document gets designed.
Different jobs. Often used together.
When Qwilr Is the Right Tool
If your problem is the proposal itself (how it looks, how clients interact with it, how they sign and pay), Qwilr is a credible choice. It is well built and widely used.
Qwilr is a strong fit when:
- You already know what to charge and how to scope the work
- You need branded, interactive proposals with embedded video, ROI calculators, and pricing tables
- You want native e-signature and payment collection inside the document
- You run a sales team that benefits from buyer-engagement analytics and CRM sync
- You have the volume to absorb per-user pricing across 5+ seats
If that describes the room you are in, Qwilr does that job well.
When Consult Fees Is the Right Tool
Most consultants are not stuck on the proposal document. They are stuck on the moment before it: staring at a blank Qwilr template, a blank doc, or a spreadsheet, trying to decide what number to put in the box.
Consult Fees is the right tool when:
- You are not sure what to charge for a specific engagement
- You charge hourly and you know it is capping you, but value-based pricing feels abstract
- Clients keep pushing back on fees and you struggle to defend the number
- You want to present three pricing options instead of one take-it-or-leave-it quote
- You want to turn one-off projects into retainers without inventing the structure yourself
- You are a solo or a 2-3 person firm where per-seat proposal software is hard to justify
You describe the engagement. The product generates business objectives, monetized value statements, three pricing options, and three retainer packages. You bring the outputs into whichever proposal tool you already use.
Side-by-Side Comparison
| Capability | Qwilr | Consult Fees |
|---|---|---|
| Plain-English project intake | No | Yes |
| Generates business objectives | No | Yes, five per project |
| Monetized value statements per objective | No | Yes, with annual dollar impact |
| Cited industry sources behind value claims | No | Yes |
| Three tiered pricing options generated automatically | No | Yes |
| Three retainer packages generated from the project | No | Yes |
| Branded, interactive proposal document | Yes | No |
| E-signature inside the document | Yes | No |
| Payment collection (QwilrPay) | Yes | No |
| CRM integrations (Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive) | Yes | No |
| Buyer engagement analytics | Yes | No |
| Anonymous-first workflow, no signup to try | No | Yes |
| Per-seat pricing | Yes | No seats required to start |
| Built specifically for consulting engagements | No (sales teams) | Yes |
Where Qwilr wins, Qwilr wins. Where the pricing-logic layer is missing, that is where Consult Fees fits.
How the Two Work Together
A lot of consultants do not need to choose. The cleanest workflow looks like this:
- Decide the fee in Consult Fees. Describe the engagement. Get objectives, monetized value, three pricing options, and three retainer packages.
- Design the document in Qwilr. Drop the pricing options and scope language into your Qwilr template. Let Qwilr do what it is good at: visual presentation, e-sign, and payment.
- Send the proposal. Use Qwilr's engagement analytics to see how the client interacts with the tiers.
- Convert to retainer. When the project closes well, pull the pre-generated retainer packages back out of Consult Fees and into the next Qwilr document.
You are not replacing your proposal tool. You are giving it better inputs.
What Consult Fees Outputs
This is the part that does not exist in Qwilr or any other proposal builder.
Business Objectives Tied to Monetary Value
From one project description, the product generates five business objectives. Each one is expanded into four value statements. At least two of those value statements per objective are monetized: translated into an annual dollar figure the client's CFO can recognize.
That means you walk into the conversation with a number for what the work is worth, not just a number for what it costs.
Industry-Source-Backed Evidence
Each value statement is paired with cited sources. When a client asks "where does that number come from?", you point at research, not at intuition. This is the single biggest shift in pricing conversations: fees stop feeling like opinion and start feeling like math.
Three Pricing Options With Increasing Value
Instead of a single quote, the product generates three pricing options. Each tier has its own scope list, value list, and fee level. The options are designed to increase logically, so clients self-select rather than negotiate against you.
A take-it-or-leave-it price creates friction. A choice between tiers creates a decision.
Three Retainer Packages
Once the project is priced, the product generates three monthly retainer packages: scope, value framing, and recommended fee. This is what turns a one-off engagement into recurring revenue without you having to invent retainer structure from a blank page.
Pricing and Seats
Qwilr's published pricing starts around $35 per user per month on the Business plan (billed annually) and climbs to $59 per user per month at the Enterprise tier, with a ten-user minimum and Salesforce gated behind that plan. Reported contracts average several thousand dollars a year. For a sales organization, the math works. For a solo consultant or a three-person firm, the per-seat model gets expensive fast.
Consult Fees starts anonymously. You can describe a project and see the outputs before you create an account. Save a project by email when you want to come back to it. No seat math, no demo gate.
This is deliberate. Most consultants want to test the workflow on a real engagement before they commit to anything.
What Consultants Say About the Pricing-Logic Problem
"I had Qwilr. The proposals looked great. But I was still guessing what number to put in them, and that was the actual problem.", Independent management consultant, three years solo
"Once I had monetized objectives in front of me, the fee conversation changed. I stopped defending the price and started talking about the outcome.", Fractional COO, boutique advisory firm
These are the pattern conversations we hear. Document tools polish the surface. The pricing decision is upstream.
No signup. No credit card. Save by email when you are ready.
How It Works
- Describe your project in plain English. No setup form, no spreadsheet, no scoping template. Write it like you would brief a peer.
- Get business objectives and monetized value. Five objectives, each expanded into four value statements, at least two monetized per objective, all source-backed.
- Get three pricing options and three retainer packages. Each option includes scope and value language. Each retainer includes monthly fee and continuity framing.
That is the whole workflow. It is built for the moment before the proposal, not the proposal itself.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Consult Fees a Qwilr alternative or a complement?
Most consultants use both. Consult Fees decides the fee and structures the options. Qwilr presents the proposal and handles e-sign and payment. If you only want one tool and your bottleneck is the pricing decision, Consult Fees on its own gets you to a number you can defend. If your bottleneck is the document, Qwilr does that job well.
Can I export pricing options from Consult Fees into Qwilr?
Yes. The pricing options, scope lists, value language, and retainer packages are generated as structured text you can paste directly into any proposal tool, Qwilr, PandaDoc, Proposify, Google Docs, or a PDF. There is no proprietary lock-in on the outputs.
Does Consult Fees handle e-signatures or payments?
No. That is intentional. Document signing and payment collection are well solved by Qwilr and others. We focus on the pricing-logic layer that those tools do not cover.
How does pricing compare for solo consultants?
Qwilr is built for teams and priced per user. For a solo consultant or a two-person firm, that cost adds up before you have written a single proposal. Consult Fees starts anonymously, you can run a real project through the workflow before creating an account, and there are no per-seat fees to start.
Do I need to create an account to try it?
No. You can describe a project, see the objectives, monetized value, pricing options, and retainer packages, and decide afterwards. If you want to save the project, you provide an email and receive a secure link to return later.
Is this built for agencies or for consultants?
Consultants. The vocabulary, the outputs, and the workflow are built around engagements, objectives, and retainers, not campaigns, deliverables, and SOWs. If you run a creative or marketing agency, Qwilr or a proposal builder will usually fit your workflow better than this will.
How are the monetized value statements generated?
Each project description is translated into business objectives. The product expands each objective with value statements and attaches a conservative annual monetary figure, anchored to a 20:1 ROI floor to keep claims defensible. Cited sources are attached where relevant data exists.
Ready to Decide the Fee Before the Proposal?
Qwilr will design the document. Consult Fees decides what should be in it.
If the pricing decision is the part that slows you down, run one real engagement through the workflow and see what comes out the other side.
Describe your project in plain English. No signup. No credit card. Save by email when you want to return.