Manufacturing quoting software for custom equipment

Manufacturing quoting software for equipment that has no catalogue price.

Most manufacturing quoting software is built for parts: a CAD file goes in and a cost comes out. Custom equipment arrives differently, as a customer's bid package with a specification, drawings, a bid form and addenda. Mavlon's AI Quoting Engine turns that package into a priced draft quote in your own pricing within minutes, so you answer first and bid on more of the work. Your estimator checks it and sets the final number.

Book a Demo How we test it →

Four public bid packages, four industries

p.9Switchgear: page 9 asks for a 135 kA momentary rating, and the breaker table on page 10 fits a 25 kA lineup.
p.157Pressure vessel: the data sheet says no heat treatment after welding, and the carbon steel standard on page 157 still asks for the heads to be stress relieved.
p.7Battery storage: the RFP asks for 4 kWh per kW and never says whether that is counted at the battery or at the meter.
p.102Docks: the specification names one product for the gangway deck, and drawing CM-5.01 on page 117 calls for grooved timber.

None of these has a catalogue price, and each one moves the total. In our sample quotes the switchgear question is worth $96,800 and the battery question $70,400. The draft prices both readings and writes the question for the customer.

Why speed decides who wins

Custom equipment is in demand, and buyers move with the supplier who prices first.

Demand for custom equipment is high. Reuters reported in July 2026 that lead times for generator step-up transformers passed 160 weeks. On July 30, 2026, Trane Technologies reported that bookings in its Americas commercial HVAC business were up 50 percent on a year earlier. When buyers already wait months or years for equipment, they do not wait long for a price, and the supplier that sends a complete, credible quote first is the one the buyer keeps talking to.

160+ wks

Lead time for generator step-up transformers, Q1 2026, per Reuters

+50%

Trane's Americas commercial HVAC bookings, Q2 2026, year on year

$152B

Value added by US machinery makers in 2023, in 2017 dollars (BEA, via NIST)

Minutes

From a custom equipment bid package to a priced draft quote

Custom equipment bid packages are long. The ones in our guides run from a 35-page switchgear section to a 291-page data center generator package, and the price depends on all of the pages read together, not on one drawing or one line of a schedule.

The AI Quoting Engine reads the whole package and prices it the way your company prices, with every line tied to its page. Your estimator spends the time on the few decisions that move the price, and your quote goes out before your competitor's.

Video: AI Quoting Tools for Custom Manufacturing: The Complete Guide (2026) (8:03)

Reuters on equipment lead times →Trane's second quarter 2026 results →

What goes in

The whole bid package, not one part file.

Custom equipment is quoted from someone else's documents, and the price depends on all of them read together. These examples come from six public packages in our guides.

Specification sections

Ratings, construction, tests, warranty and services.

A switchgear section asks for a 135 kA momentary rating on page 9, while its breaker table on page 10 fits a 25 kA lineup.

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 35 pages

Data sheets

Sizes, materials, design conditions and the options ticked for this job.

A refinery vessel data sheet gives heat treatment after welding as "NIL".

Refinery vessel package, page 230

Standards behind the job

Rules the data sheet does not repeat.

The carbon steel standard in the same package asks for cold-formed heads to be stress relieved anyway.

Refinery vessel package, page 157

Drawings and schedules

Lengths, counts and the number of units. Quantity is most of the price.

A gangway length of 46 feet sits on exactly one drawing sheet, in the corner of a side view.

Town of Cape Vincent, New York, 179 pages

Bid form and addenda

What is priced as one lump sum, what is priced on its own, and what changed.

One blank for the whole assembly on page 22, and a clause on page 42 that asks for two spare breakers priced separately.

Marblehead Municipal Light Department, 230 pages

RFP and commercial terms

Warranty, maintenance and how performance is measured.

A battery storage RFP asks for a 20-year warranty on page 10 and only 5 years of maintenance on page 7.

Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District, 154 pages

What you get back

A priced draft quote, in your own pricing.

The engine learns how your company prices from your own past bid packages, the quotes you sent and your costing spreadsheets. Every new package then comes back as a draft your estimator can check line by line. The examples below come from four different public packages.

Priced lines with their pages

Every line carries a quantity, a price from your own rates and the page that asks for it.

p.28Complete spare vacuum breaker, identical to those supplied

Calls priced both ways

Where the documents disagree, the draft carries the likely reading and prices the other one beside it. Flip it and the total moves.

p.7Battery energy counted at the meter: 220 kWh more, $70,400 in our sample quote

TBD instead of a guess

A line the package does not settle says TBD, so nobody prices a guess into a firm number.

p.32Spare tube bundle, only "if required by the COMPANY"

Questions ready for the customer

Anything nobody can answer from the documents becomes a question, already written for your reply.

p.B3Is the fire alarm yours to install and test, or the buyer's?

Then the quote

Your estimator reviews the draft, changes what they know better, settles the calls and sends the quote, while a competitor is still reading the specification.

What it does not do

It does not design the equipment, decide compliance or set your margin, and it never sends anything to your customer. Your team decides every number that goes out.

Kinds of manufacturing quoting software

Most quoting software starts from a part, a catalogue or a product range. Custom equipment starts from the customer's documents.

If you are comparing manufacturing quoting software, the first question is what your requests look like. Each kind of tool below was built for a different kind of request, and each is good at its own job.

Kind of tool	What goes in	Where the price comes from	Fits best when
Catalogue and distributor quoting toolsUsed by distributors and resellers	Part numbers and product descriptions.	Catalogue list prices, discount tiers and supplier price files.	You resell standard parts, and the price is a list price less a discount.
Configure-price-quote toolsTacton, Salesforce Revenue Cloud, Epicor CPQ	A salesperson picks options from your product catalogue.	Pricing rules you set up for each option.	You sell standard models that a few choices describe.
Job-shop quoting softwarePaperless Parts, SecturaFAB, Costimator	Part files and part drawings.	The part's geometry, its operations and your shop rates.	You machine or fabricate single parts from customer drawings.
Quoting inside your ERPJobBOSS², MRPeasy	The materials and routing your estimator types in.	The rates and routings already stored in your ERP.	You run the shop in that ERP and quote work like jobs you have done before.
Drawing data toolsWerk24	Single engineering drawings.	No price. It turns drawings into data for your other systems.	You want drawing data inside your own ERP or quoting tool.
Manufacturing data searchCADDi	Your archive of drawings and manufacturing data.	The past jobs and costs it finds for you.	You quote repeat parts and want to find what you made before.
Should-cost simulationaPriori	3D CAD models.	A simulated cost of making the part.	You run cost engineering or check what suppliers charge.
Mavlon AI Quoting EngineFor custom equipment priced from the customer's documents, not a catalogue	The whole bid package: specification, drawings, data sheets, bid form, addenda and the covering email.	Your own rate book, costing spreadsheets and past quotes.	You build custom equipment to the customer's specification: switchgear, transformers, generator sets, vessels, exchangers, machines, HVAC units, docks or power systems.

We make Mavlon, so read this table with that in mind. Descriptions of other tools come from their own websites in October 2026, and corrections are welcome at atishay@mavlon.co. For a longer side-by-side of nine named tools, see our manufacturing quoting software comparison.

Where it fits

Built for the quotes that start with a stack of documents.

Custom work

Mavlon is the right tool when

The request arrives as a bid package: a specification, drawings, a bid form and addenda.
Each job is built to the customer's requirements, so there is no catalogue price to look up.
Your senior people spend hours reading before anyone can price.
You decline bids you would like to win, or answer them late.

Parts and catalogue work

A different kind of quoting software fits better when

You machine or fabricate single parts from 3D files. Part quoting software such as Paperless Parts is built for that.
You resell catalogue parts at a list price less a discount. A distributor quoting tool is faster.
You sell standard models that a few options describe. A configurator is built for that.

We make Mavlon. Corrections are welcome at atishay@mavlon.co.

Prove it on your own quotes

Test it blind on jobs you already priced.

Before you trust it with a live bid, we run it on past jobs your team has already quoted, with the pass mark agreed in writing first.

Pick one product family you quote often.
Set aside past jobs whose quotes the engine never sees.
The engine prices them from the raw documents.
Compare its totals with the prices your team actually sent.

A US manufacturer of engineered waterfront structures went live in production after a test like this, with drafts within about 2 to 3 percent of its own price on familiar product lines and about 10 to 15 percent on brand-new jobs with many add-ons.

The pilot protocol →The waterfront structures case study →

What we have published so far

A live customer: a US manufacturer of engineered waterfront structures, name withheld at its request.
The Cape Vincent demo: a public 179-page bid package turned into a priced draft quote.
Guides on public packages for switchgear, generators, e-houses, battery storage, pressure vessels and heat exchangers, each priced line by line with sample prices.

The pass bar: seven of ten totals within 15 percent, agreed in writing first.

Read before you book

Industries and guides for custom equipment quotes.

Product pageElectrical equipmentSwitchgear, transformers, generator sets, UPS systems, battery storage and e-houses.Product pageIndustrial machineryCustom machines, production lines, cranes and material handling.Product pageProcess equipmentPressure vessels, heat exchangers, tanks, skids and water treatment equipment.Product pageHVAC equipmentAir handling units, packaged units, chillers and cooling.GuideManufacturing quoting software: 9 tools comparedMavlon, aPriori, Costimator, Paperless Parts and five more, and which kind of request each one fits.GuideAI quoting software for manufacturingA buyer guide: what AI quoting does, where it stops, and what to test before you buy.

What is manufacturing quoting software?

It is software that helps a manufacturer turn a customer's request into a priced quote. There are several kinds, and they start from different inputs. Part quoting software prices machined or fabricated parts from CAD files. Catalogue and distributor tools price parts by part number and list price. Configurators price options picked from a product range. Quoting inside an ERP prices from the routings already stored there. Mavlon's AI Quoting Engine is the kind built for custom equipment: it turns the customer's bid package into a priced draft quote in your own pricing.

Is quotation software for manufacturing the same thing?

Yes. Quotation software, quoting software and estimating software are names for the same tools. The quotation is the document you send, and the software prepares the numbers behind it. What matters more than the name is what the software starts from: a part file, a catalogue, a product configuration, or the customer's bid package.

Which manufacturing quoting software fits custom equipment?

Software that starts from the customer's documents rather than from a catalogue or a part file. Custom equipment, sometimes called engineer-to-order, is designed to one customer's specification, so there is no catalogue price to look up and no single part file to price. Mavlon's AI Quoting Engine reads the whole bid package and prices it in your own pricing, with every line tied to its page.

Does Mavlon match part numbers to a catalogue?

No. Catalogue and distributor quoting tools do that: they take part numbers or product descriptions, look them up in a catalogue and apply list prices and discount tiers. Mavlon prices custom equipment that has no catalogue price, from the customer's bid package, in your own pricing.

How is Mavlon different from Paperless Parts?

Paperless Parts is built for machine shops and job shops that quote parts from CAD files, using the part's geometry and the shop's rates, and it is strong at that job. Mavlon is built for manufacturers of custom equipment whose requests arrive as bid packages: a specification, drawings, a bid form and addenda. A shop quoting single parts is better served by Paperless Parts, and a manufacturer answering bid packages for switchgear, vessels or machines is better served by Mavlon.

How is it different from a configurator or CPQ tool?

A configurator prices standard options that a salesperson picks from your catalogue. Mavlon starts one step earlier, from the customer's documents, and works out what is being asked for before anything can be priced. Many teams use both: a configurator for standard models and Mavlon for jobs that arrive as a bid package.

How does it learn our pricing?

From your own records: past bid packages paired with the quotes you sent, your costing spreadsheets and your rate book. Where a rule is not written down anywhere, it becomes a question for your estimator rather than a guess.

How fast is the draft?

A priced draft comes back within minutes of the upload. The time your estimator then spends depends on how many decisions the package leaves open, and each one arrives already priced both ways.

Who is behind Mavlon?

Mavlon, Inc. is a US company founded in 2024 by Atishay Jain, an AI engineer. It builds the AI Quoting Engine for custom manufacturers, and it is live in production with a US manufacturer of engineered waterfront structures. Read that case study.

Questions buyers ask

What manufacturers ask before they choose quoting software.

See your next bid package come back as a priced draft quote.

Book a demo and watch the AI Quoting Engine turn a bid package from your industry into a priced draft quote, with every line tied to its page, every open call priced both ways and the questions ready to send.

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