SmartBid Reviews

SmartBid has all the bells and whistles of the other bid systems but is much more user friendly for your average user. The ability to quickly organize your sub lit, add new trades and bidders, make notes and discretely track what scope a sub is submitting a proposal for is unparalleled. SmartBid also offers extremely easy and powerful templates that allow your team to ensure coverage and coordinate efforts. Another understated feature is the ability to track sub activity throughout your company, allowing you to see who is the most active sub contractor for a trade.

Few complaints - would love to see them develop a way to mass update MBE/WBE/DBE certifications. It would also be great to be able to interface with business emails as a plugin to batch release emails with scope sheets (outside of the standard templates)

For best use, set up SmartBid with one to two administrators who are in charge of making the necessary changes to your contact list. This will greatly increase accuracy as every company flows through the same set of standards.

Bid management, sub contractor engagement, proposal/budget tracking

Sending out multiple invitations to bid saves time. Filtering and selecting subcontractors and suppliers based on certifications, trades, and other details is quick and easy. Subs & suppliers are able to view the project and download pertinent files. Templates are available for email customization. SmartBid integrates with company websites to display your public plan room and to receive subcontractor registration.

Maintaining the database can be time consuming. Attachments send out via mass email is limited to 5 MB.

On many projects we are required to solicit Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) companies. SmartBid allows us to do this on a large scale, plus document our efforts with the GFE Report and record of dates and times emails were received and read. This keep us in compliance.

Web-based so no additional software installation is required and all updates happen in real-time so all users can be presented with the latest information. Subcontractor data is also easy to manage and keep track of. Formal distributions present projects with a professional appeal.

Auto-generated emails that are sent can appear to be spam or impersonal which can result in decreased engagement with target subcontractors.

Relatively intuitive product to use that is fairly straight forward once the basic setup on the website is understood. It is important that all subcontractors and projects are set up properly to ensure that consistency can be achieved and the product can be used at its highest potential.

Overall, the product is very well organized and helps to save time and money in the bidding process.

Estimating functions and management of large number of potential subcontractors is valuable in saving time during time-limited projects.

SmartBidNet is very user-friendly. I was able to learn how to use it on my own, with the help of the tools section. Customer service is wonderful, very helpful and timely with their responses. Each section/tab is very straight-forward, simple yet useful.

There isn't much about it that I dislike. There are always updates that adds new features, many of which I have still yet to learn but everything I've used so far with this product, I've really found useful.

It is an excellent tool for contractors to use as an essential part of their bidding process.

We are able to keep our subcontractor database up to date, as well as send out invitation to bids for projects are company is looking for assistance on. It's been a very helpful tool in our bidding process.

I like the all-encompassing organization of the program. In one spot I can organize my subcontractor contacts, project documents, and communications.

There is nothing I dislike - SBN has effectively organized everything into a convenient location

Using Smart Bid Net is definitely worth it. They take all the tools you need and put them into one user-friendly spot.

The biggest benefit I have found is organizing my Subcontractor contact - it keeps all the information in one place.

The ability to customize the software to suite our needs was extremely beneficial. It allowed us to learn the product faster and it lowered the bar as far as the learning curve is concerned.

Some of the features are a bit clunky. The pre-qual process can be a handful and it didn't seem to want to streamline a quick email. I felt there were to many steps that had to be taken to get from A to B.

SmartBid does appear to listen to its customers. I didn't get to see if my previous company stayed with them or not, but I do know everybody was extremely satisfied with what they had seen. Also, it's a great software if you have a substantial age range of employees that are going to be using this software. The ages ranged in our office from 22-83.

Overall, it did help in minimizing the time we spent organizing bid groups and documents and maximized the amount of time in a day to allow us to send out upwards of 5-10 additional bids a week.

uploading the plans and addendum's and being able to send out messages and updates to everyone at one time.

when entering contacts you must have a first and last name, sometimes we do not get last names of people so it is hard to enter a contact, we have to make up a last name just to save the contact.

Benefit would be easy to send mass communication announcements.

Easy to connect to from email from contractor

able to download plans and save to computer for review later

in order to review plans you have to down load to upload to an other program for take off in which you have to down load to up load to utilize the take off program. not user friendly

MAYBE NOT SURE

Being able to submit plans directly to the contractor through the program

SmartBid is very user-friendly. The customer service has been great each time it has been used. The ease of setup and continued use of the website is formatted nicely. Layout is formatted with ease of finding what you want.

can't keep a project open while also looking at company information. always have to go back to the dashboard to reopen the project. Can't reformat/filter a report to my specific needs.

SmartBid is utilized to send out a mass blast of projects bidding and also has been used as a tool during construction to send out large files of plans.

Smartbid provides flexibility for construction bidding by allowing ITB's to be targeted in multiple ways.ITB's can be sent via email and/or fax.

The user interface is not the most modern. there are some inconsistencies between what can be done in some tools vs other tools.

Replacing antiquated bidding processes using fax and spreadsheets

The ability to upload all file types and flexibility of the planroom is a huge upgrade from what we had before. We also enjoy the preqaulification module to ensure that we are aligning the right subs with the right work, while mitigating risk.

Some of the tools and attributes are not very intuitive. More on-demand training tutorials would be beneficial. We still struggle with getting subs to respond as to their intentions to submit.

Prequal has been a game changer with regard to database management and risk mitigation.

I like that you can run reports easily to see what has been received and who has seen what. It is also very easy to send emails to many bidders at once.

I don't like the way the planroom is set up. It is difficult to manage, and clunky to upload multiple times within different folders.

Set up on the plan room can be very difficult and time consuming.

There are many benefits to using smartbid when dealing with multiple bidders. It is a secure way to share information without them having access to other things. Also, there is a way to provide an NDA before they see the information which is helpful.

Organization of contacts and setup tab. Being able to send to contacts and actively track responses.

It will take several more uses before I can answer. I haven't found anything yet.

Contact management has been an issue in the past for receiving scopes and quotes for our bids. Being able to track and filter contacts and responses is a powerful tool as deadlines approach.

The setup and layout is very nice. The project information page is not over crowded with information, making it difficult to find what you need.

There are many times when a GC will take bids even after the due date. SmartBid does not allow for downloading of material after bid date.

IT serves it b[purpose in letting us keep project info in one place.

I enjoy the simplicity of utilizing the Smartbid tools and invitation process. Makes the whole ITB easy and efficient for subcontractors.

Not much to dislike because the process is so easy and efficient.

Great product and easy for subcontractors and staff to learn and adjust

It is easier to communicate with subcontractors and get information out quickly.

The ability to track who is reading e-mails, viewing & downloading project data.

The complexity of selecting sub-contractor for a project.

It makes life as a estimator easy, it tracks all the data for you.

Saving time when send out a project to bid and how easily it links to our web-page.

Central database. Sorting subs by trade affiliation, and company groups. Being able to pull the right subs in for each particular job. Prequalify subcontractors directly through the database.

I wish projects opened in tabs at the top like subcontractors do. Spell check doesn't always work well.

Clean up your bid list before uploading into SmartBid.

Better bid tracking equals better bid coverage. Smartbid has list of contractors you can pull from if needed. Easy to update subcontractor info.

It is a good place to go for a one and done invite site

When i receive an invite and it gives me an access code that makes accesing the job so simple and breezy

Receiving plans in an organized manner

When sending out a job it doesn't matter how big of a file it is, it will always send

Sometimes hard to make sure you send out jobs to all vendors

Not all emails are generated through SmartBid, but to fix that you edit the profile of that said vendor

SmartBid helps keeping you connected with general contractors using your services as well as hearing about current projects going on.

Not mobile friendly, no mobile app available

A good program, user friendly with little frills.

Connects us with local general contractors for projects like ours.

Having all jobs, subs and suppliers contact info at my fingertips.

Not able to copy selected subs from 1 job to the next.

No real problems, SmartBid just makes it easier to solicit projects.

The ease of utilization & various options

There is nothing that I can think of that I dislike

highly recommend

assisting with bid solicitations

Easy to use. Nice clean professional looking product

Some of the charts are a little cumbersome to manipulate

Creatng Org charts for projects