The problem
Photographer friends kept paying $40–50/month for HoneyBook and Dubsado. When I asked what they actually used, the answer was almost always the same: proposals. Maybe contracts.
The CRM, booking pages, and workflow automations? Untouched.
That felt like a real inefficiency. Not everyone needs a full business platform. Some people just need to send a professional proposal and get paid.
What I built
A completely self-contained HTML file. One file. You open it in any browser, fill in your details, click "export," and get a 3-page PDF proposal—cover page, packages & pricing, and terms with a signature field.
No server. No account. No data sent anywhere. Everything stays on your machine via localStorage.
Features that ended up mattering more than I expected:
- Logo upload — photographers care a lot about branding
- Drawn or typed signature—surprisingly, the canvas-drawn sig felt more "real" to users
- 7 currencies — because not every photographer is billing in USD
- Email template generator—the proposal itself is step 1; following up is step 2
- Greek version — I'm based in Greece, so I built a localized version with an embedded Greek font (FreeSans) for correct PDF rendering. Turns out very few tools bother with proper Greek typesetting.
The architecture decision I'm glad I made early
The biggest risk with canvas-based image handling is resolution loss. If you resize an image on the canvas and then export from that canvas, you lose quality. I side-stepped this by keeping resize as preview-only—all crop coordinates map back mathematically to the original pixel dimensions at export, always drawing from the original data URL. 300 DPI output stays
300 DPI.
What I haven't solved yet: distribution
The tool is live on Gumroad ($29 one-time). The code is done. The thing I'm genuinely uncertain about is whether freelancers will find it, trust it, and pay for it—when a "free Google Docs template" is always one search away.
If you're a freelancer who sends proposals, I'd love to give you a free copy in exchange for 20 minutes of honest feedback. Not a review, not a testimonial — just "this confused me" or "this is missing."
Drop a comment or reach out directly.
Live listing: athingeo.gumroad.com/l/proposal-builder
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