ConEst IntelliBid Review 2026: Pricing, Pros, Cons, Alternatives
Third-party contract data puts real numbers on ConEst IntelliBid. The 8 gaps reviewers name, and 5 alternatives that publish a price upfront.
Page at a glance
ConEst IntelliBid is A 1989-vintage electrical estimating desk sold on a perpetual licence with a compulsory annual maintenance fee, where the whole cost lives in a quote you can't see until you talk to a sales rep. It publishes no price, so the only way to get a number is to ask a salesperson for one. Per-licence, and the licence is a perpetual right to run the software rather than a subscription. The EULA ties entitlement to the count you paid for: 'Such usage is limited to the number of licenses for which you paid the applicable license fee and is subject to the limitations set forth in the Documentation.' On top of that licence sits a separate, compulsory Annual Software Maintenance and Support Fee, and the Maintenance Agreement makes at least one year of it a condition of buying at all: the customer 'has also agreed to purchase at least one year of training, maintenance and support services from Licensor'. So a buyer pays twice, once for the seat and once every year for the right to keep getting support and upgrades on that seat. It fits Electrical, low-voltage and datacom contractors running a dedicated estimating desk of roughly 1 to 10 seats on hard-bid and negotiated commercial and industrial work, where somebody bids full-time off drawing sets and the assembly library is the reason for buying. It's the wrong buy for A residential service electrician or plumber running a truck-based dispatch business who wants one system for scheduling, invoicing and getting paid, because IntelliBid is a bid-desk product and nothing else. It produces estimates, proposals and bid analysis for drawing-set work. It doesn't schedule technicians, doesn't take a payment, has no customer-facing booking, and its accounting story is an export. So buying it for a service business means buying a second system anyway, and the second system will be the one that runs the day. Alternatives that publish their prices are TurboBid Electrical Estimating Software from $1,395, Contractor Foreman from $49, Bluebeam Revu from $260. Three priced tiers, eight evidenced gaps and five alternatives, three of which publish a figure.
Start here if ConEst IntelliBid is on your shortlist
ConEst IntelliBid earns its money with Electrical, low-voltage and datacom contractors running a dedicated estimating desk of roughly 1 to 10 seats on hard-bid and negotiated commercial and industrial work, where somebody bids full-time off drawing sets and the assembly library is the reason for buying. If that's you, it does the job. The sections below are the parts worth checking before you sign. But the fit is narrower than the marketing suggests, and the price isn't the whole cost.
The vendor publishes no price. But every number below was verified on 7 August 2026 and comes from a named third party that says which.
| Pricing model | Custom quote, no published price |
|---|---|
| Entry price | Quote only |
| Users | Per-licence, and the licence is a perpetual right to run the software rather than a subscr |
| Ownership | JDM Technology Group |
| Best fit | Electrical, low-voltage and datacom contractors running a dedicated estimating desk of roughly 1 to 10 seats on hard-bid and negotiated commercial and industrial work, where somebody bids full-time off drawing sets and the assembly library is the reason for buying. |
| Accounting sync | QuickBooks (one-way), Sage (one-way), Foundation Software (one-way), Computerease (one-way), Jonas (one-way), Jobpower (one-way) |
What works
- Takeoff is a second product you buy, and it's the part reviewers complain about
- The database holds the parts, a third-party subscription holds the prices
- Data leaves through Excel, and getting it out is the recurring complaint
- Two deployments, one of them requiring you to run a SQL server
- One major upgrade a year, and only while the Annual Fee is current
What does not
- Letting the Annual Fee lapse means buying back the years you didn't use
- No published price anywhere, and the aggregator that does quote one contradicts itself
- Windows on Intel or AMD only, with Apple Silicon and Snapdragon laptops ruled out in capitals
- The bundled database engine caps out at 10GB, and ten seats is the stated trigger for a conversation
- Support is weekday business hours only, which doesn't match how bids get finished
ConEst IntelliBid is A 1989-vintage electrical estimating desk sold on a perpetual licence with a compulsory annual maintenance fee, where the whole cost lives in a quote you can't see until you talk to a sales rep. It sells to Electrical and Plumbing contractors, and the shape of the product follows from that: IntelliBid is the estimating engine. The on-screen takeoff lives in SureCount, a separate purchase that the vendor describes as 'Count & measure from electronic drawing files; Direct takeoff to IntelliBid.' The handoff itself works, and the reviewers who like the combination like it a lot. But the reviewers who don't like it aim their complaint squarely at SureCount rather than at IntelliBid, including a President who wrote that he had 'struggled with its on line take off (surecount)' and a Vice President who called it inaccurate. And the Maintenance Agreement allocates SureCount exactly one online training hour per Initial Term.
Ownership matters here more than it usually does. ConEst IntelliBid is owned by JDM Technology Group, so weigh roadmap risk alongside the feature list. An independent product can be bought and folded into somebody else's plan two years after you sign.
ConEst IntelliBid fit, and where it stops
It fits Electrical, low-voltage and datacom contractors running a dedicated estimating desk of roughly 1 to 10 seats on hard-bid and negotiated commercial and industrial work, where somebody bids full-time off drawing sets and the assembly library is the reason for buying. That's the half most reviews print. Here's the other half, which is the one worth your time.
Don't buy it if you're A residential service electrician or plumber running a truck-based dispatch business who wants one system for scheduling, invoicing and getting paid. IntelliBid is a bid-desk product and nothing else. It produces estimates, proposals and bid analysis for drawing-set work. It doesn't schedule technicians, doesn't take a payment, has no customer-facing booking, and its accounting story is an export. So buying it for a service business means buying a second system anyway, and the second system will be the one that runs the day. Look at Contractor Foreman instead.
Don't buy it if you're Any shop whose estimators work on MacBooks or on ARM-based Windows laptops. The vendor rules this out in capital letters: 'ANY MAC or WINDOWS systems with ARM-Based chips (M1, M2, M3, M4 and SNAPDRAGON) ARE NOT SUPPORTED', and Mac support exists only through Parallels or VMware Fusion running Windows. So the real cost of IntelliBid for that shop includes replacing the laptops, and that number never shows up in the quote.
Don't buy it if you're A one-person or two-person outfit that bids in bursts and needs to be able to stop paying between busy stretches. The Maintenance Agreement makes at least one year compulsory, auto-renews in one-year blocks at a fee Conest re-states annually, terminates itself on a missed payment, and charges a Reinstatement Fee equal to every Annual Fee accrued since termination to get back in. So a lumpy bid pipeline collides directly with that structure. And a published, cancellable monthly product removes the whole problem. Look at TurboBid Electrical Estimating Software instead.
Don't buy it if you're A buyer who needs to compare three estimating platforms on price before booking any demos. There's no number to compare. Conest publishes none, Capterra shows 'Contact vendor' on all three editions, SourceForge lists none, and the single aggregator that names a figure contradicts itself twice on the same page. So any comparison you build will be built on a guess until a rep sends a quote.
What ConEst IntelliBid costs
There's no published price for ConEst IntelliBid. The pricing page asks you to get in touch, so every figure below comes from somewhere other than the vendor, and each one says where.
The vendor's own wording is this, and nothing more: "Conest publishes no price on any page of its own site. The URL https://conest.com/pricing/ does not resolve to a pricing page at all: it 301s to an unrelated tips article about pricing material inside an estimate. The contract documents put the number in a per-customer Quote and in an annual notice instead, and the maintenance fee is explicitly a moving target the vendor re-states to each customer once a year." So treat every third-party page printing tier names and figures for ConEst IntelliBid with careful suspicion. Those numbers are not on the vendor's site today, and a roundup that reprints them is telling you what ConEst IntelliBid used to charge somebody else.
And we aren't going to print a per-month number we can't open a vendor page and read. What exists instead is third-party reporting, dated, from people who saw real contracts. Read it as a range rather than as a quote you can hold anyone to.
| Reported range | Reported on | Source |
|---|---|---|
| ITQlick's headline figure is 'starts at $150 per user/month'. Its own comparison table then uses a different range for the same product, '10 users x $115 - $170/month', producing a first-year total of '$15,800 - $30,400 + Hidden Fees' for ten seats. The same page adds implementation 'can range from $2,000 to $5,000' for an SMB and 'may exceed $10,000' for larger enterprises, plus customization 'starting at $500'. Every one of those strings was confirmed present in the raw HTML on 2026-08-07. ITQlick contradicts itself in a second way: the page's own JSON-LD Offer block carries priceCurrency USD and price '0' while the visible copy says $150. | 2026-02-01 | $150 per user per month |
| Capterra's vendor-maintained listing shows 'Starting price: Contact vendor' against all three IntelliBid editions rather than a figure. And this is the vendor declining to price on the largest directory in the category, which is itself the finding. | 2026-08-07 | Contact vendor |
| SourceForge's listing carries no starting price for IntelliBid, only 'Free Trial: Free Trial available'. But that directly contradicts ITQlick, which states 'No free trial is currently offered', and Capterra, whose comparison block reads 'Free trial not available'. So three directories, three different answers on whether you can try it. | 2026-08-07 | Not listed |
Per-licence, and the licence is a perpetual right to run the software rather than a subscription. The EULA ties entitlement to the count you paid for: 'Such usage is limited to the number of licenses for which you paid the applicable license fee and is subject to the limitations set forth in the Documentation.' On top of that licence sits a separate, compulsory Annual Software Maintenance and Support Fee, and the Maintenance Agreement makes at least one year of it a condition of buying at all: the customer 'has also agreed to purchase at least one year of training, maintenance and support services from Licensor'. So a buyer pays twice, once for the seat and once every year for the right to keep getting support and upgrades on that seat.
There is a discount for paying annually up front: There is no published annual-versus-monthly discount, because there is no published price to discount. Conest does run named promotions with real percentages against the invisible number. The live Summer Sizzler 2026 page offers existing customers '20% off when adding $1,000 or more in products to their account' with promo code SSP20, and new customers '25% off IntelliBid and SureCount when adding a minimum of 2 hours of training with the products' with promo code SSP25, with the promotion starting June 26, 2026. Both percentages and the $1,000 threshold were confirmed in the raw HTML on 2026-08-07. And an annual prepay discount tells you an annual commitment exists, which is worth knowing before anyone mentions a term length out loud.
What a ConEst IntelliBid quote leaves out
Payment processing. Conest is not a payments platform and takes no cut of a contractor's job revenue. It does collect its own invoices by card through a form on its site, which lists 'Supported Credit Cards: American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa' against a required 'Invoice Number' field. No convenience fee, card surcharge or processing fee appears anywhere on that page, and the page does not name the processor.
Implementation and onboarding. Ask the sales rep for the one-time implementation, data-conversion and database-setup figure in writing, separate from the licence and separate from the Annual Fee. ITQlick estimates '$2,000 to $5,000' for an SMB and 'may exceed $10,000' for larger deployments, but that's an aggregator's estimate rather than a Conest number. And ask what it costs to have Conest rebuild your assemblies, because a 2014 reviewer's complaint was that 'you have to completely rebuild every assembly in the software' to match what his crews buy.
Minimum term. One year, and it is compulsory rather than optional. The Maintenance Agreement's purpose clause states the buyer 'has also agreed to purchase at least one year of training, maintenance and support services from Licensor', and the term clause reads: 'The term of this Agreement shall commence on the date that the Software is installed and shall remain in force for one (1) year (the "Initial Term"), provided that Licensee has paid the Licensor's Annual Software Maintenance and Support Fee ("Annual Fee").'
Getting out. There is no early-termination penalty in the ordinary sense, because you cannot really leave and come back cheaply. Missing the Annual Fee terminates the agreement by itself, and getting back in means paying for the entire gap: 'In the event that Licensee fails to pay the Annual Fee on or before the Anniversary Date, this Agreement shall be deemed automatically terminated, provided however that at Licensor's option and subject to the payment by Licensee of the Reinstatement Fee, this Agreement may be reinstated after such termination. "Reinstatement Fee" shall mean the amount equivalent to the Annual Fees due from the date of such termination.' Reinstatement is also at Conest's option, not the customer's right. Two separate reviewers describe being billed exactly this way, eight years apart.
Auto-renewal. Yes, and it renews in one-year blocks at whatever the fee has become: 'Thereafter, this Agreement shall be automatically renewed for successive one-year terms (each such renewal term being a "Renewal Term") subject to Licensee's payment of the Annual Fee on or before the expiration of one year from the date of this Agreement or before the expiration of any subsequent Renewal Term, as the case may be ("Anniversary Date").' The only notice obligation runs the other way: Conest tells you its then-current Annual Fee at least ninety days before each Anniversary Date. The agreement sets no cap on how much that number can move year to year.
Modules sold separately. , , , , , . And this is where a ConEst IntelliBid quote drifts from the published tier. A module you need immediately is part of the price, not an extra.
Third-party services you will also pay for. , , . These are not on ConEst IntelliBid's invoice, and they are still part of what this decision costs you every month.
"Third-party reporting puts ConEst IntelliBid at ITQlick's headline figure is 'starts at $150 per user/month'. Its own comparison table then uses a different range for the same product, '10 users x $115 - $170/month', producing a first-year total of '$15,800 - $30,400 + Hidden Fees' for ten seats. The same page adds implementation 'can range from $2,000 to $5,000' for an SMB and 'may exceed $10,000' for larger enterprises, plus customization 'starting at $500'. Every one of those strings was confirmed present in the raw HTML on 2026-08-07. ITQlick contradicts itself in a second way: the page's own JSON-LD Offer block carries priceCurrency USD and price '0' while the visible copy says $150., reported 2026-02-01."
$150 per user per month (2-01)
And this is the kind of thing you only find by reading the complaints. Missing one Annual Fee ends the relationship rather than pausing it, and the price of coming back is every year you were gone. The Maintenance Agreement terminates automatically on non-payment and defines the way back as a Reinstatement Fee equal to 'the amount equivalent to the Annual Fees due from the date of such termination'. Reinstatement is also discretionary: the clause reads 'at Licensor's option'. And two reviewers eight years apart describe being billed exactly this way, which means the clause is enforced rather than decorative. A perpetual licence sounds like the safe choice for a contractor with lumpy cash flow, and here it's the opposite. So model the Annual Fee as non-optional for the entire life of the software, because skipping it is more expensive than paying it. And if you can't commit to that, buy a monthly product you can stop.
Everything that is not the ConEst IntelliBid subscription
The subscription is the part everyone quotes. These are the lines that land afterwards, and the ones we could not find are named as unpublished rather than left blank.
Sold separately. , , , , , . Price the configuration you'll really run, because an add-on you need on day one is part of the price.
Third-party services you'll also pay for. , , . None of these are on ConEst IntelliBid's invoice, and all of them are part of what this decision costs every month.
"ConEst IntelliBid answers the question of what it costs with this and nothing else: "Conest publishes no price on any page of its own site. The URL https://conest.com/pricing/ does not resolve to a pricing page at all: it 301s to an unrelated tips article about pricing material inside an estimate. The contract documents put the number in a per-customer Quote and in an annual notice instead, and the maintenance fee is explicitly a moving target the vendor re-states to each customer once a year.""
ConEst IntelliBid pricing page (2026)
"ConEst IntelliBid IntelliBid Standard is Not published, per licence (per seat), perpetual licence plus a separate Annual Fee."
ConEst IntelliBid pricing page (2026)
"ConEst IntelliBid IntelliBid PLUS is Not published, per licence (per seat), perpetual licence plus a separate Annual Fee."
ConEst IntelliBid pricing page (2026)
The five workflows you pay for
Feature totals are noise. So a shop in this category lives or dies on five things, and those are the five to grade, and each one below carries the evidence it's graded on.
Takeoff is a second product you buy, and it's the part reviewers complain about IntelliBid is the estimating engine. The on-screen takeoff lives in SureCount, a separate purchase that the vendor describes as 'Count & measure from electronic drawing files; Direct takeoff to IntelliBid.' The handoff itself works, and the reviewers who like the combination like it a lot. But the reviewers who don't like it aim their complaint squarely at SureCount rather than at IntelliBid, including a President who wrote that he had 'struggled with its on line take off (surecount)' and a Vice President who called it inaccurate. And the Maintenance Agreement allocates SureCount exactly one online training hour per Initial Term.
The database holds the parts, a third-party subscription holds the prices Conest claims 'the largest modern industry-smart database of any electrical estimating software, containing over 140,000 NEC-friendly electrical, low voltage, datacom, and solar material items and more than 500,000 pre-built assembly kits', with manufacturer-specific items from Caddy, Erico, Hoffman, Leviton, Lutron, Hubbell, Siemens, Schneider Electric, Systimax, SnakeTray, Panduit and Valcom. But what it doesn't include is the price of any of them. Live pricing comes through NetPricer, EPIC or TRA-SER, and the vendor flags in its own feature list that those services 'are paid separately'. IntelliBid can then run 'Automatic price comparison for up to 10 of your local suppliers'.
Data leaves through Excel, and getting it out is the recurring complaint The only documented export path in the feature list is a spreadsheet: 'Export selected takeoff or summary records to Excel' and 'Export Material Items Quickly and Easily to Major Programs : Accounting, Microsoft Office, and more.' And Conest sells a separate reporting add-on, Conest Connect, for anything more structured. Two reviewers name extraction as the weak spot from opposite ends of the tenure range, a 2025 estimator on reporting and a twenty-year customer on pulling documents off the cloud instance.
Two deployments, one of them requiring you to run a SQL server Conest offers 'both on-premises and cloud-based software solutions'. On-premises means a Windows server, Microsoft SQL Server 2016 to 2022, 16 GB of RAM and 50 GB of free space, with a dedicated database server recommended. The cloud option is CE Cloud, which delivers IntelliBid, SureCount and Conest Connect through a hosted desktop at conest.v2cloud.com, with V2 Cloud named as a technology partner. But neither deployment has a published price, and the requirements page warns that a VPN link to a remote database has 'low speed and high latency' that 'usually results in connection failures or timeout errors'.
One major upgrade a year, and only while the Annual Fee is current The Maintenance Agreement ties every release to the fee: 'During the Initial Term and any Renewal Term of this Agreement, provided that Licensee is current in its Annual Fee and is not otherwise in breach of this Agreement or of the EULA, Licensor shall provide Licensee with updates to the Software... Licensor typically provides one major upgrade to the Software per year, in addition to any required maintenance or security updates.' And the support page makes the same point in marketing language: 'Access to upgrades by download for products under contract.' So stop paying and the perpetual licence keeps running the version you already have, frozen.
Which trades get value from ConEst IntelliBid
Fit differs by trade rather than by company size alone, and a blended paragraph hides that. Here is the split for the trades this one sells to.
Electrical. The workflow that decides it is takeoff is a second product you buy, and it's the part reviewers complain about, and the shop profile that gets value is commercial or industrial electrical contractor with a full-time estimating desk of 2 to 10 seats doing commercial and residential work. Where it stops being a fit is A residential service electrician or plumber running a truck-based dispatch business who wants one system for scheduling, invoicing and getting paid.
Plumbing. The workflow that decides it is takeoff is a second product you buy, and it's the part reviewers complain about, and the shop profile that gets value is commercial or industrial electrical contractor with a full-time estimating desk of 2 to 10 seats doing commercial and residential work. Where it stops being a fit is A residential service electrician or plumber running a truck-based dispatch business who wants one system for scheduling, invoicing and getting paid.
The ConEst IntelliBid accounting link, and where it stops
QuickBooks connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, on every plan. Sage connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, on every plan. Foundation Software connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, on every plan. Computerease connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, on every plan. Jonas connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, on every plan. Jobpower connects one way only, so edits made in your books do not come back, on every plan. Your costs map through cost codes, so test yours against your own chart of accounts before you commit. A code your books don't recognise is how a labour charge quietly lands somewhere useless.
Past those, the road ends. Any named two-way accounting sync, Procore, Autodesk Construction Cloud, ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Public API or developer documentation, Self-serve data export or account-closure documentation do not connect. So if your books run on an ERP rather than the platforms named above, weigh that before anything else.
Beyond accounting it connects to V2 Cloud (Hosting provider behind CE Cloud. The seventh Technology Partner logo, and the CE Cloud login sits on conest.v2cloud.com, which corroborates the relationship.), NetPricer, EPIC and TRA-SER (Material pricing feeds. These are the only integrations Conest names inside the product itself rather than as a logo.), Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Office (The documented export target for takeoff and summary records.), SureCount, Conest Connect and Electrical Formulas (Conest's own products, each licensed separately, each integrating with IntelliBid.), JDM Technology Group (Parent group, listed on the same page with roughly 34 sibling-company logos including Computer Guidance, Explorer Software, Penta Technologies, Redsky, Levesys, Successware and Vision InfoSoft.). A public API exists: None published. There is no API page in the site's sitemap, no developer documentation anywhere on conest.com, and no third-party connector marketplace. The contract actively discourages the workaround: the Maintenance Agreement is 'deemed to be automatically terminated, without any requirement of notice' if the customer makes 'any unauthorized modifications, alterations, or integration of the Software into any other software application or program'. Writing your own bridge to your accounting system without written permission ends your support contract.
Getting help from ConEst IntelliBid, and getting it fast
Support is the line item nobody prices and everybody eventually needs. ConEst IntelliBid publishes no onboarding fee either way, so ask what is included at your tier and what is billed hourly after go-live.
On 2016-11-02, an accounting, electrical/electronic manufacturing, Less than 6 months on the platform, describes it: "This company is the poster child of the lackluster customer service that exists with many software companies that exploit a revenue with perpetuity business model. They want to sell you the software to install locally on your computer, then they want to sell you a subscription based "support and upgrades" package for each 12 month period following. If you let the subscription lapse and then intend to renew, they will not adjust the end date on the support... instead they expect you to pay full price for less than a year's worth of support. Nevermind the fact that you received absolutely no benefits during the lapsed period, they will constantly remind you that their software team didn't stop working during that lapse period, as well as how unfair any concessions might be to other customers that pay the same price with no lapsed periods. They are greedy, greedy people, whose only goal is to sell you on the software upfront. Once you are a customer, you can forget about ever being treated with value and respect again."
An owner, electrical/electronic manufacturing, 2+ years on the platform, describes it it plainly: "The amount of yearly fees are an issue. Trying to get Support on weekends is tough and we work a lot of weekends."
What happens when you want to leave ConEst IntelliBid
Nobody reads this section before they buy, and it's the one that costs money afterwards. Four terms decide what leaving looks like.
Minimum term. One year, and it is compulsory rather than optional. The Maintenance Agreement's purpose clause states the buyer 'has also agreed to purchase at least one year of training, maintenance and support services from Licensor', and the term clause reads: 'The term of this Agreement shall commence on the date that the Software is installed and shall remain in force for one (1) year (the "Initial Term"), provided that Licensee has paid the Licensor's Annual Software Maintenance and Support Fee ("Annual Fee").'
Auto-renewal. Yes, and it renews in one-year blocks at whatever the fee has become: 'Thereafter, this Agreement shall be automatically renewed for successive one-year terms (each such renewal term being a "Renewal Term") subject to Licensee's payment of the Annual Fee on or before the expiration of one year from the date of this Agreement or before the expiration of any subsequent Renewal Term, as the case may be ("Anniversary Date").' The only notice obligation runs the other way: Conest tells you its then-current Annual Fee at least ninety days before each Anniversary Date. The agreement sets no cap on how much that number can move year to year.
Early termination. There is no early-termination penalty in the ordinary sense, because you cannot really leave and come back cheaply. Missing the Annual Fee terminates the agreement by itself, and getting back in means paying for the entire gap: 'In the event that Licensee fails to pay the Annual Fee on or before the Anniversary Date, this Agreement shall be deemed automatically terminated, provided however that at Licensor's option and subject to the payment by Licensee of the Reinstatement Fee, this Agreement may be reinstated after such termination. "Reinstatement Fee" shall mean the amount equivalent to the Annual Fees due from the date of such termination.' Reinstatement is also at Conest's option, not the customer's right. Two separate reviewers describe being billed exactly this way, eight years apart.
Payment processing. Conest is not a payments platform and takes no cut of a contractor's job revenue. It does collect its own invoices by card through a form on its site, which lists 'Supported Credit Cards: American Express, Discover, MasterCard, Visa' against a required 'Invoice Number' field. No convenience fee, card surcharge or processing fee appears anywhere on that page, and the page does not name the processor.
Side note, and it's a useful one: building your own bridge out of IntelliBid is a termination event. The Maintenance Agreement auto-terminates, 'without any requirement of notice', if the customer makes 'any unauthorized modifications, alterations, or integration of the Software into any other software application or program'. And there's no public API and no developer documentation to sanction the integration instead. So the contractor who hires a developer to push won estimates into their ERP risks their support contract, and losing the support contract then triggers the Reinstatement Fee clause to get it back. So if custom integration matters to you, get written permission before anyone writes a line of code, and get it named in the quote. The EULA already contemplates written exceptions: the exclusions clause allows work 'otherwise agreed to in a written agreement executed by Licensor and Licensee'.
"Per-licence, and the licence is a perpetual right to run the software rather than a subscription. The EULA ties entitlement to the count you paid for: 'Such usage is limited to the number of licenses for which you paid the applicable license fee and is subject to the limitations set forth in the Documentation.' On top of that licence sits a separate, compulsory Annual Software Maintenance and Support Fee, and the Maintenance Agreement makes at least one year of it a condition of buying at all: the customer 'has also agreed to purchase at least one year of training, maintenance and support services from Licensor'. So a buyer pays twice, once for the seat and once every year for the right to keep getting support and upgrades on that seat."
ConEst IntelliBid pricing page (2026)
"ConEst IntelliBid is reported at ITQlick's headline figure is 'starts at $150 per user/month'. Its own comparison table then uses a different range for the same product, '10 users x $115 - $170/month', producing a first-year total of '$15,800 - $30,400 + Hidden Fees' for ten seats. The same page adds implementation 'can range from $2,000 to $5,000' for an SMB and 'may exceed $10,000' for larger enterprises, plus customization 'starting at $500'. Every one of those strings was confirmed present in the raw HTML on 2026-08-07. ITQlick contradicts itself in a second way: the page's own JSON-LD Offer block carries priceCurrency USD and price '0' while the visible copy says $150. as of 2026-02-01."
$150 per user per month (2-01)
"ConEst IntelliBid is reported at Capterra's vendor-maintained listing shows 'Starting price: Contact vendor' against all three IntelliBid editions rather than a figure. And this is the vendor declining to price on the largest directory in the category, which is itself the finding. as of 2026-08-07."
Contact vendor (8-07)
What ConEst IntelliBid does badly
So here's what breaks, sourced to the person who hit it.
Letting the Annual Fee lapse means buying back the years you didn't use The Maintenance Agreement terminates itself the moment an Annual Fee is missed, and the only route back is a Reinstatement Fee defined as 'the amount equivalent to the Annual Fees due from the date of such termination'. Reinstatement is discretionary on Conest's side too, phrased as 'at Licensor's option'. And this isn't a theoretical clause. A 2014 reviewer described it plainly, and a 2016 one-star reviewer described being billed the same way two years later. So a contractor who parks the software for two lean years and then wants the current release owes both missing years before the upgrade is released. An electrical/electronic manufacturing, writing on 2014-12-22, reports it: "You must keep an annual contract or they will not support your software. If you cancel and do not take support and want to join and upgrade the software, they make you buy every year you did not pay for the support. I did not understand this at all when I purchased the software. For the costs for three licenses, it's just not worth the price. You also do not get very accurate pricing. Some items are extremely high and others low. If you want this software assemblies to be material that most contractors use, you have to completely rebuild every assembly in the software. I have not found one single assembly that you can purchase the material straight from the list of parts it puts in for estimating." Before signing, get the rep to put the reinstatement rule and the current Annual Fee in writing, and ask specifically what happens if you skip a single year. Then decide whether the perpetual licence is really perpetual for you, or whether a straightforward monthly subscription you can stop and restart fits a lumpy bid pipeline better.
No published price anywhere, and the aggregator that does quote one contradicts itself Conest publishes no figure on its own site, and conest.com/pricing/ isn't even a pricing page: it redirects to a tips article about pricing material inside an estimate. Capterra's vendor-maintained listing shows 'Contact vendor' against all three editions. SourceForge lists no starting price. And the one directory that names a number, ITQlick, gives '$150 per user/month' in its headline while its own comparison table prices the same product at '$115 - $170/month' per user, with its own JSON-LD Offer block on that same page declaring price '0'. So there's no reliable public anchor for what this software costs. So ask for a written quote broken into four numbers before any demo goes further: perpetual licence per seat, first-year Annual Fee per seat, one-time implementation and data conversion, and the annual cost of the material pricing service. Then ask what the Annual Fee was three years ago for the same seat count, because the contract lets it move every year with ninety days' notice and no cap.
Windows on Intel or AMD only, with Apple Silicon and Snapdragon laptops ruled out in capitals The system requirements page states 'ANY MAC or WINDOWS systems with ARM-Based chips (M1, M2, M3, M4 and SNAPDRAGON) ARE NOT SUPPORTED' and adds that 'Mac OS is not supported with Conest software products unless supported Windows operating systems are installed on the Mac using virtual software such as VMware Fusion, Parallels, etc.' So that rules out most of the laptops sold since 2020, including every Apple laptop and the Windows-on-ARM machines that now dominate the thin-and-light shelf. And the page asks for 16 GB of RAM and 50 GB of free disk on both server and workstation. Inventory the actual machines your estimators use before you sign. So if any of them are on a MacBook or an ARM Windows laptop, budget for replacement hardware or for CE Cloud hosting, and get the CE Cloud price in the same quote.
The bundled database engine caps out at 10GB, and ten seats is the stated trigger for a conversation Conest ships Microsoft SQL 2016 Express with the installer, and the requirements page warns that 'SQL Express has a database size limit of 10GB or less. If you are a customer with 10 IntelliBid licenses or more, please reach out to support to discuss options.' So growing past that means a licensed SQL Server Standard or Enterprise edition bought from Microsoft, plus a dedicated database server, which the page separately recommends. And none of that appears in the software quote. One reviewer's stated dislike of the product was simply 'Working with SQL database.' So if you expect to pass ten seats or several years of estimate history, price a full SQL Server licence and a dedicated database server into the first-year budget, or move the decision to CE Cloud and make Conest quote the hosting.
Support is weekday business hours only, which doesn't match how bids get finished The support page lists the North American group as 'Weekdays 7:30 am - 6:00 pm Eastern time' with a separate Australian group on 'Weekdays 8:00 am to 5:00 pm WST'. The Maintenance Agreement says the same thing and reserves the right to change it. And an owner reviewing the product put the mismatch bluntly, because bid deadlines land on Mondays and the work happens on the weekend before. But an owner, electrical/electronic manufacturing, 2+ years on the platform, writes it differently: "The amount of yearly fees are an issue. Trying to get Support on weekends is tough and we work a lot of weekends." So if your estimators habitually close bids on Saturdays, ask what after-hours escalation exists and whether it costs extra. And the contract already says work Conest considers outside the Annual Fee 'will be billed to Licensee at Licensor's then-current rates'.
Live material pricing is a separate subscription bought from a third party The IntelliBid feature list carries its own parenthetical warning: 'Material pricing services integration with NetPricer, EPIC, and TRA-SER (NOTE: pricing services are paid separately).' The 140,000-item database is a catalogue of items and assemblies, not a live price feed. And reviewers report friction at exactly that seam, both on the feed itself and on the accuracy of what comes back. Get the annual cost of NetPricer, EPIC or TRA-SER from that vendor directly and add it to the IntelliBid quote before comparing against anything else. Because a comparison that leaves the price feed out isn't a comparison.
Accounting is an export, not a sync, and the partner page is a logo wall The strongest accounting claim Conest makes anywhere is a single feature-comparison row: 'Export Material Items Quickly and Easily to Major Programs : Accounting, Microsoft Office, and more.' The Partners and Associations page shows QuickBooks, Sage, Foundation Software, Computerease, Jobpower and Jonas as logos with no describing sentence, no direction of data flow, no setup article and no named connector. And there's no API documentation and no /api/ page in the site's sitemap. So reviewers describe getting data out as the weak point, not the strong one. So ask the rep to demo the exact path from a won IntelliBid estimate into your specific accounting package, live, on your ledger, before signing. If the answer is a CSV or an Excel file that somebody re-keys, price the labour of that re-keying into the annual cost.
Included training is measured in single-digit hours and doesn't carry over The Maintenance Agreement allocates training by edition: 'IntelliBid: Two (2) online training hours. IntelliBid Plus: Three (3) online training hours. IntelliBid Pro & DB: Four (4) online training hours. JobTrac: Two (2) online training hours. SureCount: One (1) online training hours.' It then adds that 'Unused online training hours may not be carried over into subsequent Renewal Terms.' Note that the same clause caps the total at 'a maximum of ten (8) online training hours per Initial Term', writing the number two different ways in one sentence, so the actual ceiling is ambiguous on the face of the contract. And a reviewer paying for the product called the allocation out directly. But a project manager, electrical/electronic manufacturing, Less than 6 months on the platform, describes it it differently: "Expensive. Could include more than just a few hours of training when paying this much for software. Only 4 hours of training included with the main software program." Buy the training block up front and schedule it inside the Initial Term, because unused hours expire at the Anniversary Date. And ask which number in that clause governs, ten or eight, then get the answer written into the quote.
One more thing worth knowing. Conest runs percentage-off promotions against a price nobody outside the company can see. The live Summer Sizzler 2026 page offers existing customers '20% off when adding $1,000 or more in products to their account' and new customers '25% off IntelliBid and SureCount when adding a minimum of 2 hours of training with the products', complete with promo codes SSP20 and SSP25 and a start date of June 26, 2026. And twenty-five percent off an unpublished number isn't a discount a buyer can evaluate. Ask for the pre-discount quote in writing before the promo code is applied, and ask what the same configuration was quoted at in the previous quarter. Because a percentage off an invisible list price is a negotiating position, not a saving.
One more thing worth knowing. The contract puts every scrap of data-protection duty on the customer and disclaims recovery outright. The Maintenance Agreement requires that 'Licensee shall maintain a current backup copy of all of its content and data' and adds 'In no event shall Licensor be responsible for any loss of Licensee's content or data, even if a Software problem or error causes the loss of the same.' It then goes further: Conest 'has not warranted that will be possible to recover any data or other content that Licensee inputs or generates during the use of the Software' if it's lost or corrupted. And the public knowledge base that might explain how to take a backup returns HTTP 403 to unauthenticated fetch. Own the SQL backup yourself from day one and test a restore before the estimate history matters. On CE Cloud, get in writing who takes the backup, how often, how long it's retained, and how you extract the database if you leave. And a twenty-year customer already reports that the cloud instance is 'hard to get documents out to main computer'.
One more thing worth knowing. The three directories that carry this product can't agree on whether you can try it. SourceForge's listing says 'Free Trial: Free Trial available'. ITQlick's pricing page says 'No free trial is currently offered'. Capterra's comparison block says 'Free trial not available'. The EULA does contemplate an evaluation licence, but the clause has an unfilled blank where the duration should be: 'Evaluation Software contains a license key that disables the Software after __ days'. And a later sentence in the same section sets thirty days, so the executed template contradicts itself. So ask for the evaluation in writing with a stated number of days, because the boilerplate you'd otherwise be relying on has a blank in it. And treat directory metadata on this product as unreliable generally, since three directories disagree on a binary fact.
A tangent, but stay with it. The negative reviews are almost never about the estimating. Across Capterra, GetApp and SourceForge, the one-star and cost-related complaints cluster on the commercial relationship rather than the software: yearly fees, reinstatement after a lapse, the cost of adding a licence, thin included training, no weekend support, and customer service. Meanwhile the same platforms carry ten-year and twenty-year users calling the engine accurate and hard to give up. A 2024 Vice President captured both halves in one line. Don't evaluate this on the software demo alone, because the demo is the part people like. So spend the diligence on the commercial terms: the Annual Fee history, the per-seat cost of adding an estimator, the training block, and the reinstatement rule. And that's where every unhappy customer ended up.
What ConEst IntelliBid users report
Every quote below is transcribed from a published review, named to the platform that carries it and to the reviewer as that platform displays them. We read the corpus by complaint type rather than by star rating, which is how the disqualifying detail buried inside a five-star review gets found.
"This company is the poster child of the lackluster customer service that exists with many software companies that exploit a revenue with perpetuity business model. They want to sell you the software to install locally on your computer, then they want to sell you a subscription based "support and upgrades" package for each 12 month period following. If you let the subscription lapse and then intend to renew, they will not adjust the end date on the support... instead they expect you to pay full price for less than a year's worth of support. Nevermind the fact that you received absolutely no benefits during the lapsed period, they will constantly remind you that their software team didn't stop working during that lapse period, as well as how unfair any concessions might be to other customers that pay the same price with no lapsed periods. They are greedy, greedy people, whose only goal is to sell you on the software upfront. Once you are a customer, you can forget about ever being treated with value and respect again."
An accounting, electrical/electronic manufacturing, Less than 6 months on the platform, says it plainly on GetApp UK
"You must keep an annual contract or they will not support your software. If you cancel and do not take support and want to join and upgrade the software, they make you buy every year you did not pay for the support. I did not understand this at all when I purchased the software. For the costs for three licenses, it's just not worth the price. You also do not get very accurate pricing. Some items are extremely high and others low. If you want this software assemblies to be material that most contractors use, you have to completely rebuild every assembly in the software. I have not found one single assembly that you can purchase the material straight from the list of parts it puts in for estimating."
An electrical/electronic manufacturing, writing on 2014-12-22, writes on Capterra
"The amount of yearly fees are an issue. Trying to get Support on weekends is tough and we work a lot of weekends."
On 2017-07-10, an owner, electrical/electronic manufacturing, 2+ years on the platform, reports it on Capterra
"Adding additional licences is expensive , would like to have the ability to have the database shared remotely"
On 2017-08-08, an operations, electrical/electronic manufacturing, 2+ years on the platform, says on Capterra
"Expensive. Could include more than just a few hours of training when paying this much for software. Only 4 hours of training included with the main software program."
A project manager, electrical/electronic manufacturing, Less than 6 months on the platform, writes it plainly on Capterra
"What I like least about IntelliBid is that the reporting process can sometimes be cumbersome, especially when trying to extract certain data out of ConEst. It would be helpful if the report generation and export features were more streamlined and user-friendly."
On 2025-06-12, an electrical estimator, construction, 2+ years on the platform, writes on GetApp UK
"I don't like that Sure Count doesn't seem to be accurate or complete. They have advanced features that they have taken away."
But a vice president, writes it differently on SourceForge
"We use them because they used to be the best and we are used to them now. Their customer service has us wanting to look elsewhere."
On 2024-08-28, a vice president writes on SourceForge
"Cloud base is hard to get documents out to main computer. Hasn't changed in 20 years."
On 2024-08-27, a president, over 20 years on the platform, writes on SourceForge
"If you want to go deep, the complexity of the software can be daunting and hard to wrap your head around."
A president, reports it it plainly on SourceForge
"Some of the assemblies are outdated and the material database could use some updating for more modern parts."
On 2024-08-28, an estimator/project manger writes on SourceForge
"Sometimes there are issues with the database and getting prices from NetPricer. However, customer service is always helpful."
An owner, electrical/electronic manufacturing, about 6 years on the platform, writing on 2025-06-12, describes it on GetApp UK
"I've been working with intellibid for 20+ years and never had a major problem with it. If there is a problem customer service can get you straightened out."
An estimator, electrical/electronic manufacturing who reviewed it on 2025-06-21 puts it on GetApp UK
"Program is easy to use and has options to dial in your bids. This program has helped our commercial side grow 100%."
And an estimator, writing on 2024-08-28, says the same thing on SourceForge
The realistic shortlist against ConEst IntelliBid
Here's the shortlist ConEst IntelliBid competes against in real deals. Some of these will tell you the price tonight. That difference tells you how the sales conversation is going to go.
| Tool | Entry price | Billing unit | Users included | Published? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ConEst IntelliBid | Quote only | Custom quote | Per-licence, and the licence is a perpetual right to run the | No |
| TurboBid Electrical Estimating Software | $1,395 | one-time purchase per licence, or $135 per month as a subscription, with Software Upgrade & Support at $350 per year and a $350 one-time setup fee | 1 | Yes |
| PataBid Quantify | Quote only | yearly licence fee, with unlimited users per licence | No | |
| Contractor Foreman | $49 | per month per account, billed $588 annually, 1 user on Basic | 1 | Yes |
| Bluebeam Revu | $260 | per user, billed annually (Basics tier; Complete, which unlocks Quantity Link into Excel, is $440) | 1 | Yes |
| McCormick Systems | Quote only | not disclosed | No |
TurboBid Electrical Estimating Software. Publishing the number. Every price sits on TurboBid's own storefront where anyone can read it without talking to a rep, including the upgrade-and-support renewal and the setup fee. And it covers both electrical and plumbing estimating from the same product line, which matters for a mechanical shop that bids both. But A far smaller assembly and item library than IntelliBid's claimed 140,000 items and 500,000 assemblies, no equivalent to Bid Analysis or the NEC-aware Smart Substitution in IntelliBid PRO, and the electrical database itself is a separate $1,395 line item.
PataBid Quantify. Shared licensing removes the per-seat maths entirely: 'Create an unlimited number of users with a single license purchase.' And it offers a real self-serve trial, 'Access PataBid's full MEP estimating software platform at no cost for 14 days', where IntelliBid's trial status is reported three different ways across three directories. But It also declines to publish a price, telling buyers 'Please book a demo to access our competitive pricing.' And it's a much younger product with a far shorter track record than a 1989-vintage estimating desk, plus a smaller North American electrical install base.
Contractor Foreman. It prices per company rather than per seat, publishes every tier outright, and covers scheduling, time tracking, invoicing and job costing that IntelliBid doesn't touch. And for a residential electrical or plumbing shop that needs one system to run the business, this replaces more of the stack. But Its estimating is generic construction estimating with no NEC-aware electrical assembly library, no Smart Substitution, no labour-difficulty levels and nothing resembling a 140,000-item electrical catalogue. So a commercial hard-bid electrical desk would be giving up the entire reason IntelliBid exists.
Bluebeam Revu. A published, per-seat, cancellable annual price with four visible tiers, plus best-in-class PDF markup and drawing collaboration. Nothing about the cost requires a sales conversation. But Bluebeam measures, it doesn't price. There's no electrical item database, no assemblies, no labour units and no bid analysis. Quantities land in a spreadsheet and somebody still has to build the estimate. So it's a complement to an estimating engine, not a replacement for one.
McCormick Systems. The closest like-for-like competitor to IntelliBid in commercial electrical estimating, with a comparable assembly-driven database and a comparable install base, so it's the natural second quote to force a real negotiation. But It publishes no machine-readable price either. And its own /pricing/ URL redirects to a PNG image rather than a pricing page, so a buyer comparing the two is comparing two quotes and no list prices.
"This company is the poster child of the lackluster customer service that exists with many software companies that exploit a revenue with perpetuity business model. They want to sell you the software to install locally on your computer, then they want to sell you a subscription based "support and upgrades" package for each 12 month period following. If you let the subscription lapse and then intend to renew, they will not adjust the end date on the support... instead they expect you to pay full price for less than a year's worth of support. Nevermind the fact that you received absolutely no benefits during the lapsed period, they will constantly remind you that their software team didn't stop working during that lapse period, as well as how unfair any concessions might be to other customers that pay the same price with no lapsed periods. They are greedy, greedy people, whose only goal is to sell you on the software upfront. Once you are a customer, you can forget about ever being treated with value and respect again."
GetApp UK, Matt (1-02)
"You must keep an annual contract or they will not support your software. If you cancel and do not take support and want to join and upgrade the software, they make you buy every year you did not pay for the support. I did not understand this at all when I purchased the software. For the costs for three licenses, it's just not worth the price. You also do not get very accurate pricing. Some items are extremely high and others low. If you want this software assemblies to be material that most contractors use, you have to completely rebuild every assembly in the software. I have not found one single assembly that you can purchase the material straight from the list of parts it puts in for estimating."
Capterra, Daniel C. (2-22)
Who should not buy ConEst IntelliBid
Don't buy ConEst IntelliBid if you're A residential service electrician or plumber running a truck-based dispatch business who wants one system for scheduling, invoicing and getting paid. IntelliBid is a bid-desk product and nothing else. It produces estimates, proposals and bid analysis for drawing-set work. It doesn't schedule technicians, doesn't take a payment, has no customer-facing booking, and its accounting story is an export. So buying it for a service business means buying a second system anyway, and the second system will be the one that runs the day. Look at Contractor Foreman instead.
Don't buy ConEst IntelliBid if you're Any shop whose estimators work on MacBooks or on ARM-based Windows laptops. The vendor rules this out in capital letters: 'ANY MAC or WINDOWS systems with ARM-Based chips (M1, M2, M3, M4 and SNAPDRAGON) ARE NOT SUPPORTED', and Mac support exists only through Parallels or VMware Fusion running Windows. So the real cost of IntelliBid for that shop includes replacing the laptops, and that number never shows up in the quote.
Don't buy ConEst IntelliBid if you're A one-person or two-person outfit that bids in bursts and needs to be able to stop paying between busy stretches. The Maintenance Agreement makes at least one year compulsory, auto-renews in one-year blocks at a fee Conest re-states annually, terminates itself on a missed payment, and charges a Reinstatement Fee equal to every Annual Fee accrued since termination to get back in. So a lumpy bid pipeline collides directly with that structure. And a published, cancellable monthly product removes the whole problem. Look at TurboBid Electrical Estimating Software instead.
Don't buy ConEst IntelliBid if you're A buyer who needs to compare three estimating platforms on price before booking any demos. There's no number to compare. Conest publishes none, Capterra shows 'Contact vendor' on all three editions, SourceForge lists none, and the single aggregator that names a figure contradicts itself twice on the same page. So any comparison you build will be built on a guess until a rep sends a quote.
The verdict, by shop size
Commercial or industrial electrical contractor with a full-time estimating desk of 2 to 10 seats
Yes, and this is the shape the product is built for. This is the band the product was built for and the band where the long-tenure reviews come from. Estimators with ten and twenty years on the software describe it as accurate and hard to give up, and the assembly library plus NEC-aware substitution plus bid analysis in PRO is real work that a spreadsheet doesn't do. At this size the Annual Fee spreads across enough bid volume to be defensible. So go in with the four-number quote in writing, budget the material pricing feed separately, and put a calendar reminder on the Anniversary Date so the fee never lapses. This band runs 15 or more on the crew, doing commercial work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Low-voltage, datacom or solar contractor bidding structured-cabling and system work off drawing sets
Only under conditions, and they are worth being honest about. The database genuinely covers this work, with Systimax, Panduit, SnakeTray and Valcom named among the manufacturer-specific items and the vendor marketing directly at low voltage and datacom. But the condition is hardware and price feed. Confirm every estimator is on Intel or AMD Windows, confirm which pricing service covers your actual supplier list, and get the CE Cloud number if any of your team is on a Mac. And if the price feed doesn't cover your suppliers, the 140,000-item catalogue is a parts list without prices. This band runs 8 or more on the crew, doing commercial work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Solo or two-person electrical contractor doing residential service and small commercial
No. The cost structure is wrong at this size and the contract makes it worse. You commit to a perpetual licence plus a compulsory Annual Fee that auto-renews at a number Conest resets each year, and if a slow winter makes you skip a payment the way back in costs every year you missed. A reviewer with three licences said it plainly: 'For the costs for three licenses, it's just not worth the price.' On top of that, a solo shop bidding change-of-service and panel upgrades doesn't need Bid Analysis, NEC Smart Substitution or a 500,000-assembly library. So buy something with a published monthly price you can stop. This band runs 1 to 3 on the crew, doing residential and service work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Plumbing or mechanical contractor evaluating this because the dossier lists it under plumbing
No. IntelliBid is electrical software. Every vendor sentence, every database claim and every assembly is aimed at 'electrical, low voltage, datacom, and solar contractors', and the EULA's product list names only electrical products. So a plumbing or mechanical shop would be buying a 140,000-item electrical catalogue it can't use. And TurboBid sells a purpose-built plumbing estimating product at a published $1,395, while PataBid Quantify covers MEP across trades. This band runs 1 or more on the crew, doing commercial and residential work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Shop whose estimators are on MacBooks or ARM Windows laptops
No. The vendor's own requirements page rules the hardware out in capital letters, and the Mac workaround is a Windows virtual machine. So the true cost of IntelliBid for this shop is the software plus new laptops, or the software plus an unpriced CE Cloud subscription. And neither number appears in the quote, while neither is something you want to discover after signing a one-year minimum term. This band runs 1 or more on the crew, doing commercial and residential work, and that's the profile the recommendation is written for.
Where we come into the ConEst IntelliBid question
We should say what our stake is here, which is none. Fervor is a web design and conversion studio for contractors. No vendor on this page pays us. But we measured something adjacent that changes what this purchase is worth.
ConEst IntelliBid is the rare tool where nobody outside the sales call knows what it costs: the vendor publishes nothing, its own /pricing/ URL redirects to an article about pricing copper, and Capterra shows 'Contact vendor' against all three editions. And an electrical contractor who accepts that opacity from a software vendor, then hands the same opacity to a general contractor asking for a bid, is copying the wrong habit. Fervor inspected the contractor sites in its index and found 95.8% carrying a serious WCAG violation and 61.3% a critical one, most of them sitting in exactly the quote and contact forms a GC uses to send over the drawing set that IntelliBid is waiting to price.
We ran 380 contractor websites through the Contractor CRO Index. 82.8% of them loaded slowly enough that a quote form went unseen. And the method is public, because a number you cannot audit is not evidence. All of it is documented in the Contractor CRO Index.
"82.8% of the 380 contractor websites inspected loaded slowly enough that a quote form went unseen."
Fervor Studio Contractor CRO Index (2026)
And none of that argues against the purchase. It argues for checking the cheaper problem first. The numbers are all public.
See where your site is losing the jobs ConEst IntelliBid would have managed
Fervor inspects your site the way a homeowner uses it, then shows you where calls leak out. About three days.
Get a Site InspectionHow this ConEst IntelliBid page was researched
We didn't run ConEst IntelliBid on a live job, and we won't imply otherwise. So here's the basis. We read 19 vendor pages for ConEst IntelliBid on 7 August 2026, and we went through the reviews looking for complaints rather than for averages. And every figure above traces to a page we opened on that date, pricing included.
So: 14 quotes on this page, six from SourceForge, four from GetApp UK and four from Capterra.
And https://conest.zendesk.com/hc/en-us (HTTP 403 to unauthenticated fetch, so no help-centre article on data export, database backup or account closure could be read), https://www.capterra.com/p/87139/IntelliBid/ (HTTP 403 to curl, readable only through WebFetch, so no figure on it could be re-verified against raw HTML), https://www.getapp.co.uk/software/2057717/intellibid (HTTP 403 to curl, same limitation), https://www.softwareadvice.com/construction/conest-intellibid-profile/ (HTTP 403 to curl; the two plausible profile slugs both return 404 through WebFetch, so no Software Advice profile was located), https://sourceforge.net/software/product/IntelliBid/ (HTTP 403 to curl, readable only through WebFetch) and G2, TrustRadius, Trustpilot and Reddit weren't reachable for this product and carry no located IntelliBid listing refused automated retrieval for ConEst IntelliBid. Forum and social threads are the ones people most want quoted, and they are exactly the ones we cannot verify, so none of them are here.
What that leaves untested: the CE Cloud application itself at https://conest.v2cloud.com/login/ (login-gated). And everything above is 19 vendor pages and a review corpus, which is documentary rather than hands-on.
What ConEst IntelliBid users say
This company is the poster child of the lackluster customer service that exists with many software companies that exploit a revenue with perpetuity business model. They want to sell you the software to install locally on your computer, then they want to sell you a subscription based "support and upgrades" package for each 12 month period following. If you let the subscription lapse and then intend to renew, they will not adjust the end date on the support... instead they expect you to pay full price for less than a year's worth of support. Nevermind the fact that you received absolutely no benefits during the lapsed period, they will constantly remind you that their software team didn't stop working during that lapse period, as well as how unfair any concessions might be to other customers that pay the same price with no lapsed periods. They are greedy, greedy people, whose only goal is to sell you on the software upfront. Once you are a customer, you can forget about ever being treated with value and respect again.
You must keep an annual contract or they will not support your software. If you cancel and do not take support and want to join and upgrade the software, they make you buy every year you did not pay for the support. I did not understand this at all when I purchased the software. For the costs for three licenses, it's just not worth the price. You also do not get very accurate pricing. Some items are extremely high and others low. If you want this software assemblies to be material that most contractors use, you have to completely rebuild every assembly in the software. I have not found one single assembly that you can purchase the material straight from the list of parts it puts in for estimating.
The amount of yearly fees are an issue. Trying to get Support on weekends is tough and we work a lot of weekends.
Adding additional licences is expensive , would like to have the ability to have the database shared remotely
Expensive. Could include more than just a few hours of training when paying this much for software. Only 4 hours of training included with the main software program.
What I like least about IntelliBid is that the reporting process can sometimes be cumbersome, especially when trying to extract certain data out of ConEst. It would be helpful if the report generation and export features were more streamlined and user-friendly.
I don't like that Sure Count doesn't seem to be accurate or complete. They have advanced features that they have taken away.
We use them because they used to be the best and we are used to them now. Their customer service has us wanting to look elsewhere.
Cloud base is hard to get documents out to main computer. Hasn't changed in 20 years.
If you want to go deep, the complexity of the software can be daunting and hard to wrap your head around.
Some of the assemblies are outdated and the material database could use some updating for more modern parts.
Sometimes there are issues with the database and getting prices from NetPricer. However, customer service is always helpful.
I've been working with intellibid for 20+ years and never had a major problem with it. If there is a problem customer service can get you straightened out.
Program is easy to use and has options to dial in your bids. This program has helped our commercial side grow 100%.
Frequently asked questions
How much does ConEst IntelliBid cost?
Conest doesn't publish a price anywhere. Its own conest.com/pricing/ URL doesn't even lead to a pricing page, it redirects to a tips article about pricing material inside an estimate. Capterra's listing shows 'Contact vendor' against all three editions, and SourceForge lists no starting price. The one aggregator that names a figure, ITQlick, says 'starts at $150 per user/month' in its headline while its own comparison table on the same page prices the product at '$115 - $170/month' per user and its structured data declares the price as zero. So treat all of those as estimates. And the only real number is the quote a rep sends you.
Is IntelliBid a subscription or a one-time purchase?
Both, in a way that catches people out. The licence itself is perpetual: the EULA says 'The license is effective until terminated' and ties your entitlement to 'the number of licenses for which you paid the applicable license fee'. But the Maintenance Agreement requires you to buy 'at least one year of training, maintenance and support services' on top, and that Annual Fee auto-renews in one-year blocks. So stop paying the Annual Fee and you keep running the version you have, frozen, with no upgrades and no support.
What happens if I let my ConEst support contract lapse?
The Maintenance Agreement terminates itself automatically, and getting back in costs you the whole gap. The contract defines the Reinstatement Fee as 'the amount equivalent to the Annual Fees due from the date of such termination', and reinstatement is 'at Licensor's option' rather than your right. And two reviewers describe living through exactly that, one in 2014 and one in 2016. The 2014 reviewer wrote: 'If you cancel and do not take support and want to join and upgrade the software, they make you buy every year you did not pay for the support.'
Does IntelliBid run on a Mac?
No, not natively, and not on Apple Silicon at all. The system requirements page states 'Mac OS is not supported with Conest software products unless supported Windows operating systems are installed on the Mac using virtual software such as VMware Fusion, Parallels, etc.' and then rules out the chips themselves: 'ANY MAC or WINDOWS systems with ARM-Based chips (M1, M2, M3, M4 and SNAPDRAGON) ARE NOT SUPPORTED'. So that excludes every Apple laptop sold since 2020 and the ARM-based Windows laptops alongside them.
Does IntelliBid integrate with QuickBooks?
QuickBooks appears as a logo on Conest's Partners and Associations page, and that's the extent of what's documented. No connector is named, no direction of data flow is stated, and no setup article exists. The strongest capability Conest claims in its feature comparison is a one-way export: 'Export Material Items Quickly and Easily to Major Programs : Accounting, Microsoft Office, and more.' So ask for a live demo against your own ledger before you assume anything syncs.
How much training comes with IntelliBid?
Very little, and it expires. The Maintenance Agreement allocates two online training hours for IntelliBid Standard, three for PLUS, four for PRO and DB, and one for SureCount, per Initial Term, and states that 'Unused online training hours may not be carried over into subsequent Renewal Terms.' And the same clause caps the total at 'a maximum of ten (8) online training hours', writing the number two conflicting ways in one sentence, so get the actual ceiling written into your quote.
Do I need to buy anything else to make IntelliBid useful?
Usually yes, three things. On-screen takeoff is a separate product called SureCount. Live material pricing comes from NetPricer, EPIC or TRA-SER, and the feature list flags that 'pricing services are paid separately'. And past ten licences the bundled SQL Express database engine hits its stated 10GB ceiling, which means a licensed Microsoft SQL Server and a dedicated database server. So reporting beyond the built-in output is a fourth purchase called Conest Connect.
Who owns ConEst?
Conest Corporation, doing business as ConEst Software Systems, is based in Londonderry, New Hampshire and its site footer reads 'Conest Corporation, Part of the JDM Technology Group'. JDM is a construction-software holding group, and Conest's own partner page carries roughly 34 JDM sibling-company logos including Computer Guidance, Explorer Software, Penta Technologies, Redsky and Vision InfoSoft. And those are corporate siblings rather than integrations, which is worth remembering if a rep cites a large partner count.
When is ConEst support available?
Weekdays only. The support page lists the North American group as 'Weekdays 7:30 am - 6:00 pm Eastern time' and a separate Australian group as 'Weekdays 8:00 am to 5:00 pm WST'. The Maintenance Agreement says the same and reserves the right to change it. And an owner reviewing the product on Capterra flagged the mismatch directly: 'Trying to get Support on weekends is tough and we work a lot of weekends.'
Freshness
How we keep this page current
Three dates govern this review, and they carry different meanings. The initial source sweep is dated August 7, 2026; when only part of the evidence set is recaptured later, that later date is stated beside the refreshed claim. We last revised the page on August 7, 2026. And the user reviews we quote were posted over roughly the last 24 months, so their individual dates remain part of the evidence instead of being overwritten by a later pricing update.
We revise the page when ConEst IntelliBid changes a published price or a contract term, when a rating we cite moves by more than a few tenths, or when the vendor ships something big enough to change the verdict. We never bump the date just to look fresh, because Google treats that as manipulation and so do we. If a figure here reads as stale by the time you land on it, treat it as a floor and check the vendor's own page. We linked it at every number for exactly that reason.
Sourcing
How this review was researched
Every figure on this page traces to a captured source linked inline where it appears. The initial sweep is dated August 7, 2026; any later, partial recapture is dated at the claim rather than relabelling the whole evidence set. Ratings come from Capterra, GetApp, Software Advice and the Apple App Store. Note that Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice share one Gartner Digital Markets review pool, so an identical score across all three is a single sample rather than three corroborating ones, and this page treats it that way. G2, TrustRadius and Trustpilot block automated access, so where their numbers appear they are labelled as reported rather than verified. No claim here is sourced from Reddit or from a contractor Facebook group, because neither could be retrieved and quoting them would mean inventing attribution. Pricing marked as reported comes from third-party roundups, never from Fervor. Fervor's own findings come from the Contractor CRO Index 2026.
About
About Fervor Studio
Fervor Studio is a conversion rate optimization (CRO) and web design studio for home services contractors across North America, based in Cochrane, Alberta. Fervor does not sell field service management software and is not an alternative to ConEst IntelliBid. It publishes the Contractor CRO Index, a public benchmark measuring contractor website conversion potential using reproducible, open-source methods such as axe-core and Google Lighthouse. Fervor Studio is operated by Fervor Group Inc.
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