Updated on 21 September 2026 by the Proposal Expert editorial team
Pitch custom software projects with technical clarity
Template for software development agencies. Technical approach, architecture decisions, sprint planning, risk analysis and the choice between fixed price and time and materials.
A software development proposal template is a proposal document that a software agency or development team uses to pitch an application, platform or integration to a client. You use it when a CTO, product owner or managing director needs a specific system and wants to see how you will build it and at what price. This template covers the business drivers, functional and non-functional requirements, an architecture outline, a sprint plan, a risk analysis and the choice between fixed price, time and materials or a hybrid model.
The template opens with the project context and business drivers, then the functional and non-functional requirements such as performance, security and scalability. The weight sits in the technical architecture and the sprint plan, because that is where a technical reader checks whether your approach is realistic. The risk analysis with mitigation, the pricing model with fixed price, T&M or hybrid and the SLA with support arrangements complete the proposal.
This template is built for software agencies, dev shops and freelance developers quoting B2B platforms, SaaS MVPs, integrations or replatforming projects. The reader is usually a CTO, product owner or IT manager who wants to understand the technical choices, alongside a managing director or CFO who looks at the total price and the risk. Internal IT departments also use it for budget requests to management.
Start with the requirements and sort them into must-have and nice-to-have, since that defines the scope of the first release. Then choose the pricing model: fixed price for a clearly bounded MVP, time and materials for uncertain scope or a hybrid with a fixed discovery phase. Fill the sprint plan with real sprint dates, name the three biggest risks from discovery and describe the SLA with response time, uptime and the hourly rate for out-of-scope work.
This software development proposal example shows how a development studio proposes a customer portal to a wholesaler, with a fixed price for the build and a monthly fee for hosting and support listed apart. The scope is written as what the user can do after each sprint, not as a feature list, so acceptance is something both sides can check. It states how change requests are handled and who owns the code. The support fee never joins the one-off total, which is the mistake that makes software proposals hard to compare.
This proposal can be downloaded as a Word document (.docx) on this page.
From: Kettle Software, Rotterdam
To: Van Dam Packaging Wholesale, Dordrecht
Date: 17 September 2026
Reference: PRO-2026-064
Valid until: 17 October 2026
Van Dam supplies packaging to 600 business customers who order by email, phone and a PDF price list. In our sessions on 3 and 10 September you showed that order entry takes two employees a full day each and that price errors lead to about 30 credit notes a month. You want customers to order themselves against their own price agreements, connected to your Exact Online administration.
A web portal where a customer logs in, sees their own prices and order history, places an order and receives a confirmation, with the order landing in Exact Online without retyping. The target is that 60 percent of order lines come through the portal within four months of launch and that price-related credit notes drop below five a month.
We build the portal in three sprints of three weeks, each ending in a demo and a written acceptance. Sprint 1: login with your customer numbers, product catalogue with customer-specific prices from Exact Online, search and filters. Sprint 2: shopping basket, order placement, order confirmation by email and the order written to Exact Online. Sprint 3: order history with re-order, delivery status from your warehouse export and an admin screen for your sales team. Acceptance criteria per sprint are attached as appendix A. A mobile app, integration with your carrier and a customer-facing invoice overview are outside this proposal and can be quoted separately.
Sprint 1 starts on 5 October, sprint 3 ends with the final demo on 4 December. Acceptance testing by your team runs until 11 December, launch to a pilot group of 50 customers on 14 December and to all customers on 11 January 2027. Hosting and support start on the day of the pilot.
The build is a fixed price per sprint, listed in the first table and excluding 21 percent VAT, invoiced at the start of each sprint with 30-day terms. Hosting, monitoring, security updates and eight support hours a month are a monthly fee, listed in the second table, and are never added to the build total. Change requests are estimated in advance and charged at 110 euro per hour only after your written approval.
This proposal is valid until 17 October 2026. Acceptance per sprint follows appendix A; defects reported within 30 days after launch are fixed without charge. After full payment the source code is yours; we keep the right to reuse generic components. The support agreement has an initial term of twelve months and is then cancellable with three months notice. Our general terms and a data processing agreement apply.
Sign at the bottom of this document to confirm the three sprints. We will then request API access to your Exact Online administration, agree the pilot customer group with your sales team and schedule the sprint 1 kick-off for 5 October.
| One-off costs | Amount |
|---|---|
| Sprint 1: login, catalogue and customer-specific prices | €16,500.00 |
| Sprint 2: basket, ordering and Exact Online connection | €19,500.00 |
| Sprint 3: order history, delivery status and admin screen | €14,000.00 |
| Pilot support and launch, two weeks | €3,500.00 |
| Subtotal excl. VAT | €53,500.00 |
| VAT 21% | €11,235.00 |
| One-off total incl. VAT | €64,735.00 |
| Recurring costs | Amount excl. VAT |
|---|---|
| Hosting, monitoring and security updates, per month | €450.00 |
| Support, eight hours per month | €720.00 |
Agreed on behalf of Van Dam Packaging Wholesale
Fixed price per sprint when the scope is defined well enough to write acceptance criteria, as in the example. It gives the client a number they can approve and forces you to write down what is in and out. Time and materials fits exploratory work or an ongoing team. If you work that way, give a monthly cap and a burn-down report, and say in the proposal how the client can stop. Mixed forms are common: fixed sprints for the known scope, hourly for change requests.
Per sprint, as a short list of things a named user can do, attached as an appendix and referenced in the approach and the terms. "A customer with number 1042 logs in and sees the prices from their Exact Online price agreement" is a criterion; "implement pricing module" is not. Write them with the client during the discovery sessions, so acceptance is a check against a list you both agreed rather than a discussion after the demo.
Write it down, because without a clause the default answer differs by country and usually favours the developer. The example transfers the code to the client after full payment and keeps the right to reuse generic components, which is fair to both sides. Say also where the code lives, who has access to the repository and what happens to the hosting if the client leaves. A client who knows they can walk away with the code signs faster.