For design studio founders
Proposals are
the most expensive work
you never bill for.
Every proposal costs a studio founder 4 to 8 hours of unbilled time. AirQuotes cuts that to under 20 minutes. Paste your brief, select your discipline, and get a structured proposal with phases, fees, and terms already written.
Join beta waitlistProduct
AirQuotes
Built for
7 disciplines · 1–15 people
Start
Free — no card
01 — Insight
The numbers behind every
proposal you send.
Right now, a proposal takes 4 to 8 hours because you write every section yourself. AirQuotes reads your brief and generates the phases, deliverables, and fee structure for you. The same work takes under 20 minutes.
Unbilled cost per proposal
$900
Gone before the project starts
A founder billing $150/hr spends six hours writing one proposal. That $900 disappears before a single billable hour is recorded.
Hours per proposal
4–8
None of it on a timesheet
Scoping, writing, formatting, chasing approval. Most of it happens on evenings or weekends, after the billable work is done.
Proposals sent per month
3–6
15–25% of a working month
At this volume a studio loses 12 to 36 hours per month to work that never appears on an invoice and never gets faster no matter how many times you do it.
02 — Alternatives
Every existing tool asks you to
supply the knowledge yourself.
Approach A
Word · Notion · Google Docs
What works
Fully flexible. You control every word and every section.
No subscription. Tools you already have open.
What doesn’t
Gives you a blank page. You need to already know the phases, deliverables, scope language, and fee structure before you type anything.
Formatting is entirely manual. Output quality depends on how much time you have that day.
A junior filling it out produces a different result every time because the structure lives in your head, not the tool.
No shareable link, no e-signature, no view tracking.
Approach B
Bonsai · HoneyBook · Studio Designer
What works
Proposals sit inside a broader business management workflow.
Invoicing and contracts often bundled in the same tool.
What doesn’t
Proposals are an incidental feature. The templates carry no knowledge of how design projects are structured. You fill in the content yourself, same as a blank doc.
Output rarely meets the aesthetic standard of a senior design audience.
You’re paying for CRM, invoicing, and scheduling features whether you use them or not.
Approach C
Proposify · Better Proposals · Qwilr
What works
Purpose-built for proposals with shareable links and e-signature.
Covers the delivery side well: send, sign, track.
What doesn’t
Built for sales teams selling software subscriptions. The templates reflect that context, not design project phases or discipline-specific scope.
Still requires you to write the scope, phases, and deliverables from scratch. The tool handles delivery but contributes nothing to content.
Output doesn’t match the visual standard of the studios it’s being asked to serve.
Approach D
ChatGPT · Claude · AI writing tools
What works
Generates proposal text quickly from a short description.
Can produce a first draft of scope language if you give it enough context.
What doesn’t
Requires you to supply the context yourself. You have to tell it what phases to include, how your discipline works, and what a typical fee structure looks like.
Has no built-in knowledge of Schematic Design, Brand Discovery, Concept Development, or any other discipline-specific phase structure.
Output is unformatted text. No shareable link, no e-signature, no document ready to send.
Four categories of tools, one common gap: none of them know what a Schematic Design phase contains, how a brand strategy engagement gets scoped, or what deliverables belong in a landscape proposal. That knowledge has to come from you every time.
03 — What would the ideal solution look like?
A tool that brings the context.
You bring the brief.
01
The discipline knowledge is already in the tool before you open it
Architecture projects run in phases. Brand strategy has a discovery stage. Interior design separates concept from documentation. A proposal tool should already know this. You select your discipline and the structure is there.
02
Paste your brief. The tool handles the rest.
Drop in your call notes, client brief, or rough scope. AirQuotes applies its knowledge of your discipline and returns a complete proposal with phases, deliverables, fee schedule, and terms. You review and adjust.
03
Share a link. Get it signed. Track when they open it.
The client gets a branded link. They sign inside the proposal. You see when they open it and how long they spend on each section. No PDF, no DocuSign, no follow-up tool.
04 — Introducing AirQuotes
A professional proposal
in under 20 minutes.
From client call to send.
Paste your brief, call notes, or client email. Select your discipline. AirQuotes returns a complete proposal with phases, deliverables, fee milestones, terms, and exclusions already written. You review, adjust where needed, and send a link.
Built for 7 disciplines
Architecture
Interior Design
Landscape Design
Brand Strategy
Brand Identity
Visual Design
Web Design
Studio size
1–15 people
Time to proposal
Under 20 min
Starting price
Free
Setup required
None
What you get from every proposal
Shareable link. Branded. No client login required.
E-signature built in. No separate tool needed.
View tracking. See when the client opens it and how long they spend on it.
PDF export available for clients who want a document on file.
05 — Differentiated Value
What AirQuotes does that nothing else does.
Primary
The discipline context is already in the tool
Other tools require you to supply the phases, deliverables, scope language, and fee structure before they generate anything useful. AirQuotes carries that knowledge for each of its seven disciplines. You paste your brief. It provides the rest.
Secondary
Consistent output regardless of who generates it
A junior on a deadline produces the same structured output as the founder on a clear afternoon. Quality stops depending on who had time that week.
Secondary
Proposals that reflect seniority before the first meeting
Clients judge a studio before they meet anyone from it. The proposal is often the first piece of work they see. AirQuotes makes that first document match the quality of everything that follows.
Last mile
Shareable link, e-signature, and view tracking in one workflow
Generation is half the job. AirQuotes also handles the send: a branded link, in-document e-signature, and real-time view tracking so you know when the client opens it.
Tertiary
Time recovery with a specific number attached
Six hours recovered per proposal, three proposals per month, at $150/hr. That is $2,700 returned to billable work each month. The Studio plan is $29.
Tertiary
Built for seven named disciplines
Architecture, Interior Design, Landscape Design, Brand Strategy, Brand Identity, Visual Design, and Web Design. Each with its own phase structure, deliverables, and scope language. A tool built for everyone knows nothing about any of them.
06 — Common questions
What studios ask
before they decide.
“We already use Word / Google Docs.”
That’s exactly who this is built for. The question is how long each proposal takes and whether that time shows up on the books. If it’s more than two hours, the math is straightforward.
“Can’t ChatGPT do this?”
ChatGPT can write proposal text. It does not know what a Schematic Design phase contains, what a five-phase brand strategy engagement looks like, or how to scope a landscape project by milestone. AirQuotes does.
“We don’t send that many proposals.”
Three proposals a month at four hours each is twelve hours of unbilled work. At $150/hr that is $1,800/month in unrecovered time. The Studio plan is $29.
“We have a template we use.”
How long does it take to fill out properly? And what happens when a junior fills it out on a Friday afternoon instead of you? AirQuotes produces the same structured output regardless of who runs it or how much time they have.
07 — The ask
Try it on your next proposal.
Keep the result either way.
What you get in the beta
All 7 disciplines, scoped and ready to run
Unlimited proposals while the beta is open
Shareable link and e-signature on every proposal
View tracking so you know when a client opens it
PDF export for clients who want a file
A direct line to us when something breaks
What we ask in return
Apply and tell us your studio type and size
Use it on a real proposal, not a throwaway test
Send us two minutes of feedback after you send it
Flag anything that reads wrong for your discipline
Keep the output either way, paid plan or not
Join beta waitlist
Free for early studios · airquotes.app