Cone vs Effie

Cone combines proposals, billing, payments, and practice management in one platform for professional service businesses. Users can create branded web proposals with customizable sections, engagement tracking, electronic signatures, and multiple pricing packages. Proposals can generate invoices, while recurring billing and payment collection can be automated. Practice-management tools cover projects, tasks, templates, client requests, time tracking, and document management. A client portal supports chat, file uploads, forms, and document signing. Listed integrations include QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zoho Books, Stripe, and GoCardless; Growth also lists Zapier and email among advanced integrations. Cone provides analytics, reporting, custom branding, and client activity tracking. It is available on web, Android, and iOS, with white-labelled mobile apps for client portals. Cone states SOC 2 Type 1 and GDPR compliance and advertises free migration support. There is a 14-day trial but no free plan.

Effie is a web platform for service businesses that combines client work, projects, billing, and team delivery. Users can import clients, capture leads with forms, and track prospects through a pipeline. Projects can be divided into tasks, assigned, and monitored, while time tracking includes timers, manual entries, approval workflows, cost reporting, and approved time prepared for invoices. Its proposal tool supports branded editing, AI drafting, fixed or percentage deals, online acceptance, reusable content, and pipeline analytics. AI proposal drafting uses up to 4,000 characters of client website context. Clients can accept and sign proposals through a public link without downloading a PDF. Ask Effie AI answers questions about workspace data, suggests task rescheduling, and drafts proposals, contracts, and email sections; its answers respect row-level security. Effie can invoice clients and accept card payments through Stripe. Connected Gmail accounts can send workflow emails with replies returning to the user's inbox. Workflows combine triggers, conditions, and actions, with scheduled or manual starts and run history. The Free plan costs nothing, with no credit card required.