Solar gets engineered in one set of tools and sold in another — and for most installers, the selling layer decides survival. Proposal and sales software turns a roof and a tariff into a signed contract: interactive quotes, financing options, e-signatures, and the CRM glue between them. Our solar design guide deliberately excluded this layer; this one compares it head-on, with more real published pricing than almost any category we cover.
Residential volume sellers: Solargraf — project-tier pricing from $2,799/yr, Enphase-owned.
Financing-first selling: Enact — $279/mo entry with lender integrations built in.
Pay-per-deal flexibility: Pylon — $4–10 per project, no seats, door-to-door speed.
Field-sales closers: Solo — fast-turnaround proposals for high-velocity teams.
The design-suite route: Aurora & HelioScope — when engineering and selling should share one file.
Scope: proposal, quoting, and sales-workflow software for residential and light-commercial solar — the layer between lead and signed contract. Engineering-grade design and simulation live in our solar design comparison; this guide covers the tools whose output is a customer’s yes. Six entries, identical criteria; order follows commercial model, not rank.
Criteria: pricing model, design credibility behind the proposal, financing and e-signature workflow, CRM fit, segment focus, and the main tradeoff. Unusually, most vendors here publish figures — cited from vendor pages and a September 2026 third-party pricing survey, labeled accordingly (checked September 24, 2026).
At a Glance
| Platform | Pricing | Best For | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| OpenSolar | Free core platform | Installers wanting zero software cost | opensolar.com → |
| Solargraf | Published tiers — $2,799–12,999/yr by project volume | Residential volume installers | solargraf.com → |
| Enact | Published — from $279/mo (2 users, annual) | Financing-led residential sales | enact.solar → |
| Pylon | Published — $4/project Standard, $10 Pro | Door-to-door and low-volume teams | getpylon.com → |
| Solo | Quote-based | High-velocity field sales orgs | gosolo.io → |
| Aurora & HelioScope | See our design guide — from $135–259/user/mo | Design-and-sell in one suite | design guide → |
Pricing checked September 24, 2026. Most platforms in this category sell quote-based enterprise plans; where we cite figures they come from vendor pages or published third-party comparisons and are order-of-magnitude indications, not offers. Billing basis (per user, per MW, per site) varies by vendor — confirm current terms directly before budgeting.
The Platforms in Detail
OpenSolar
The free incumbent-breaker
Best for: installers of any size who refuse to pay per seat for the privilege of quoting their own customers.
| Pricing model | Core platform free — design, proposals, e-signature included; monetized via financing/hardware marketplace and paid API/integrations (rates not published). Checked September 24, 2026 |
| Design credibility | Serviceable 3D design and shading — sales-grade, not bankability-grade |
| Financing & closing | Integrated finance options and e-signature in the free tier |
| CRM fit | Built-in lightweight CRM; integrates outward |
| Segment focus | Residential and light C&I worldwide |
| Main tradeoff | Free means the roadmap serves the marketplace — and API pricing is opaque |
- Free-with-e-signature resets the economics of small installers: the software line item simply disappears from overhead.
- Global reach and multi-market tariff handling make it the default first platform far beyond the US.
- The honest caveat is the business model: you are the channel, and budget-critical extras (API, connectors) lack published rates — ask before you architect around them.
Solargraf
The volume seller’s tier ladder
Best for: residential installers pricing by pipeline, not by seat — with Enphase’s ecosystem behind the roadmap.
| Pricing model | Published project-volume tiers — from $2,799/yr (240 projects, 2 users) to $12,999/yr (1,500 projects); API access ~$4,000/yr extra. Checked September 24, 2026 |
| Design credibility | Clean residential design; deep engineering handled elsewhere |
| Financing & closing | Interactive web proposals; financing integrations |
| CRM fit | Sales-pipeline features aimed at door-to-door teams |
| Segment focus | US and Canada residential |
| Main tradeoff | Volume tiers punish bad forecasting — and reward honest pipeline math |
- Per-project tiering matches how installers actually think — cost per sold job stays visible and predictable.
- Enphase ownership anchors hardware-aware quoting and long-term platform stability in a category that consolidates yearly.
- The tier ladder doubles as a growth metric: outgrowing a tier is the healthiest software problem an installer can have.
Enact
The financing-first closer
Best for: US residential teams whose close rate lives and dies on the monthly-payment slide.
| Pricing model | Published — $279/mo (2 users, annual billing; $299 monthly); larger teams quoted. Checked September 24, 2026 |
| Design credibility | Sales-grade design; commercial capped (~10 commercial projects/mo) |
| Financing & closing | Strong lender integrations, e-signature included, customer education layer |
| CRM fit | Pipeline features plus integrations |
| Segment focus | US residential first |
| Main tradeoff | Engineering depth is deliberately light — pair with a design tool as you scale |
- Payment-first proposals mirror how homeowners actually decide — the kWh table convinces engineers, the monthly number closes kitchens.
- The customer-education layer works the follow-up window when the salesperson has left and doubt has arrived.
- Transparent entry pricing with annual/monthly options makes it an easy controlled trial against whatever you sell with today.
Pylon
The pay-per-deal option
Best for: door-to-door teams and part-time volumes where seat licenses are the wrong shape entirely.
| Pricing model | Published per-project — $4 Standard, $10 Pro, e-signature $0.80; no monthly minimum, no seats. Checked September 24, 2026 |
| Design credibility | Sales-calculator estimates — fast, not bankable |
| Financing & closing | Slick in-home interactive flow; e-signature per project |
| CRM fit | Lightweight; built for speed at the door |
| Segment focus | Door-to-door and emerging-market residential |
| Main tradeoff | Per-deal pricing inverts at volume — do the crossover math |
- Zero fixed cost aligns software spend perfectly with actual selling — the fairest structure in the guide for seasonal and part-time teams.
- In-home UX is the product: proposals built and signed in one sitting, before the competitor’s appointment tomorrow.
- The crossover calculation is trivial and worth doing quarterly: past a few hundred projects a year, tiered or free platforms win on cost.
Solo
The velocity specialist
Best for: sales organizations that outsource proposal production to keep reps selling, not designing.
| Pricing model | Quote-based; per-proposal service economics. Checked September 24, 2026 |
| Design credibility | Produced-for-you proposals with rapid turnaround |
| Financing & closing | Dynamic proposals tuned for field sales; financing options |
| CRM fit | Integrates into high-volume sales stacks |
| Segment focus | US residential sales orgs and dealers |
| Main tradeoff | Service dependency — your pipeline throughput rides their SLA |
- The outsourcing thesis: a rep’s hour at the door is worth more than the same hour in design software — Solo sells that arithmetic.
- Turnaround speed while the rep is still in the driveway is a genuinely different capability from DIY tools.
- Fits dealer and multi-brand models where proposal consistency across hundreds of reps matters more than per-proposal cost.
Aurora & HelioScope
The design-suite route
Best for: teams that want the proposal generated from the same file the engineer will build from.
| Pricing model | Published — Aurora from ~$135/user/mo (annual) and Premium ~$220; HelioScope $159–259/user/mo — full analysis in our design guide. Checked September 24, 2026 |
| Design credibility | The strongest in this guide — LIDAR shading, real simulation behind every number |
| Financing & closing | Mature proposal templates, lender network, e-signature |
| CRM fit | Deep integrations across the US residential stack |
| Segment focus | US residential and C&I |
| Main tradeoff | Per-seat cost buys engineering depth many pure sales teams never open |
- One-file truth from pitch to permit eliminates the classic resell — the design change that voids the signed proposal.
- Simulation-backed numbers survive the savvy customer and the competitor’s counter-proposal alike.
- Covered fully in our solar design comparison — start there if engineering and sales will share the toolchain.
Why This Category Publishes Prices
Proposal software sells to thousands of small firms that buy like consumers — compare, click, cancel — so opacity dies fast: free platforms, per-project menus, and published tiers are the equilibrium. The September 2026 pricing survey we cite puts a five-person team’s annual all-in anywhere from $0 (OpenSolar) through ~$6,500–11,000 for seat- and tier-based stacks — a spread wide enough that pricing model, not feature lists, should drive the shortlist.
The structural story is consolidation from both ends: hardware makers (Enphase’s Solargraf) and design suites (Aurora’s empire) are absorbing the sales layer, while free platforms monetize the transaction instead of the software. For installers the implication is sober: every platform is someone’s channel strategy — pick the one whose incentives point at your margin, and keep your customer data exportable.
Matching the Pricing Model to Your Pipeline
The arithmetic is unforgiving and liberating: per-project pricing wins below a few hundred jobs a year, volume tiers win in the middle when forecasts are honest, seats win when utilization per user is high, and free wins everywhere the marketplace trade-offs are acceptable. An hour with last year’s actual project count settles most vendor debates before a demo is booked.
The second-order question is workflow gravity: door-to-door velocity favors in-home closers (Pylon, Solo), financing-led selling favors lender-integrated flows (Enact), and any team whose designs must survive engineering review belongs on the design-suite route. Sequencing matters less than exit discipline — whichever you pick, quarterly re-run of the crossover math is the habit that keeps software cost tracking the business you actually have.
Kurums Match: Which One Fits You?
Pick the statement that sounds most like your situation.
We’re a small installer watching every dollar of overhead.
Start on OpenSolar — free with e-signature is unbeatable at your scale — and note which limits you actually hit. If per-deal costs suit you better than marketplace dynamics, Pylon’s $4–10 menu is the cleanest alternative.
We run door-to-door teams and close in the home.
Pylon for pay-per-deal flexibility or Solo for produced-proposal velocity; test both against one metric — signed contracts per rep-week. Financing-heavy markets tilt the answer toward Enact’s lender flow.
Financing options are how we win deals.
Enact’s $279/mo entry with lender integrations is built for exactly this; benchmark it against Aurora’s network if you may grow into the design suite anyway.
Our proposals keep dying in engineering review.
That is the one-file problem — move to the design-suite route (Aurora/HelioScope) so sales and engineering share truth. Our solar design comparison is the decision framework.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is this different from your solar design software guide?
That guide covers engineering — simulation, terrain, bankable yield. This one covers selling — proposals, financing, signatures. Aurora and HelioScope straddle both, which is why they appear in each with different questions asked of them.
Is free OpenSolar really free?
The core platform genuinely is — design, proposals, e-signature. The company monetizes the surrounding transaction (financing, hardware, integrations), and API/connector pricing is not published. Free to sell with, yes; free to build a custom stack on, verify first.
Do proposal-tool estimates hold up against engineering design?
Within sales tolerance, usually; within engineering tolerance, no. Expect deltas when a bankable tool re-simulates the roof — the operational fix is a re-check step before contract-final pricing, or the design-suite route where one model serves both.
Which pricing model is objectively cheapest?
None — each wins a volume band. Per-project wins low volumes, tiers win predictable mid volumes, seats win high utilization, free wins when marketplace trade-offs fit. Run last year’s project count through each model; the spreadsheet answers in minutes.
Related Comparisons & Guides
- Best solar design software compared
- Microgrid design software compared
- Renewable site selection & land software compared
- US clean energy tax credits & incentives
- Australia’s renewable incentives explained
Last updated: September 24, 2026 · Reviewed by the Kurums Startup editorial team.
Disclosure: Kurums currently has no affiliate, sponsorship, or partnership relationship with any product compared on this page. If that changes, this page will say so here and affected links will carry sponsored attributes.
Part of the Kurums Renewable Energy hub — country strategies, permitting, incentives, financing, and tools across nine markets.
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