The Bonsai Alternative
Bonsai gives you a template and a blank page. waxTable writes and designs the finished proposal for this client, on your brand, in about five minutes.
Bonsai is an all-in-one client, project and billing platform for freelancers and agencies, and a good one. waxTable is a different tool for the same job: instead of giving you a template to fill in, it writes and designs the finished document for each client — from a brief, or from the client's own email — and prices per document rather than per seat.
Switch to waxTable if
- Writing the proposal is the bottleneck, not sending or signing it.
- You want documents that look like your studio, not like a template library.
- Your team is small enough that per-seat pricing is money spent on read-only access.
Stay on Bonsai if
- You want time tracking, tasks and invoicing in the same tool as the proposal.
- A built-in CRM matters more than how the document reads.
- You already run your accounting through it via QuickBooks or Xero.
Bonsai vs waxTable, feature by feature
| Feature | Bonsai | waxTable |
|---|---|---|
| Writes the document for you | No — proposals are built from templates | Yes — describe the job and Waxe writes, prices and designs the whole thing in about five minutes |
| What you start from | A template you fill in | A finished draft, written and priced for this client |
| How it looks | White-labelling on Premium and above, configured by hand | Designed around your brand — colours, fonts, logo and tone, learned from your website at signup |
| Start a document on WhatsApp | No | Yes, on Pro and above ($15 / month billed annually) |
| Forward a client's email | No | Yes — forward it to your workspace address and the drafted document comes back |
| Slack and Microsoft Teams | Slack only | Both, on Business |
| Pricing model | Per user, per month | Per credit, never per seat |
| Entry price | $19 / user / month for the first tier that includes proposals | $5 / month billed annually ($8 monthly) |
| Free tier | No | 40 permanent signup bonus credits + 60 monthly credits that expire at reset. Branded PDF export; Word and PowerPoint on paid plans |
| Colleagues who only read or approve | Charged a full seat | Not charged — seats are not the unit |
| Languages | Not published | English, Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese (BR) |
Scroll the table sideways to compare.
Bonsai plans
Per user, per month. 7-day free trial with full access. No free plan. Proposals and invoicing are not on the Basic tier at all. Elite has a 3-seat minimum, and online payments carry separate Stripe processing fees.
waxTable
Current plans and prices are on the pricing page — plans are managed live, so that page is always the authority, not this table.
Bonsai plan names and prices were read from their own pricing page on 9 August 2026 and are shown as published on that date — check before relying on them. Bonsai publishes its own pricing here. Both billing terms are shown because every vendor on this list defaults its pricing page to the cheaper annual figure.
What a five-person team pays
Five people, of whom two actually write proposals and three need to read, comment or approve them. Bonsai is shown at its cheapest published rate for a team that size — a comparison that quotes someone's most expensive plan is not worth reading.
Bonsai
waxTable — Pro
waxTable Pro is quoted, not Basic: Basic is a single seat, and setting its $5 / month against five of theirs would be the rigged comparison this page exists to avoid. Pro covers 5 team members, 20 projects and 2,400 credits a month — roughly 25–40 documents. Figures are the published rates on 9 August 2026; both sides have extras this ignores. The shape of it is that per-seat pricing charges you for people who only read the document, and per-credit pricing charges you for documents.
Why teams move off Bonsai
You still write it
No AI drafting — proposals are built from templates you maintain.
It looks like the tool
Proposals and invoicing are locked out of the cheapest tier; you need Essentials at $19/user/month or above.
What it costs you
Elite requires a minimum of 3 paid seats, and Stripe processing fees apply on payments.
Where Bonsai is still the better choice
the chain from accepted proposal to money. Acceptance flows into a contract, invoice and time/expense tracking in the same subscription, with a built-in CRM on every tier. If you want one system to run the business rather than the best document, that is a genuine advantage.
Moving from Bonsai
Keep sending from Bonsai
Nothing has to be migrated on day one. Run the next proposal through both and compare the output — that is the only test that settles it.
Point us at your website
waxTable reads your site at signup for colours, fonts, logo and tone, so the first document already looks like you. There is no template to rebuild.
Send one real brief
Describe a live job, or forward the client's email. You get a written, priced, designed document back in about five minutes for a few cents.
Move when it wins, not before
Your Bonsai content is not stranded — export what you want to keep and paste it in. Most people find they do not, because the point is not to reuse the old text.
Questions, answered
Is waxTable a good Bonsai alternative?
If the slow part of your week is writing the proposal, yes. Bonsai is an all-in-one client, project and billing platform for freelancers and agencies, and it gives you a template to fill in. waxTable writes and designs the finished document for each client — from a short brief, or from the client's own email — in about five minutes. If instead your bottleneck is signature routing or CRM sync, Bonsai is the better tool and this page says so plainly.
How is waxTable different from Bonsai?
Three structural differences, none of which are features you could add later. You start from a finished draft rather than a blank template. The document is designed around your own brand, learned from your website, rather than poured into a template layout. And it is priced per document rather than per seat, so colleagues who only read or approve cost nothing.
Is waxTable cheaper than Bonsai?
For a small team, usually — and the reason is the pricing model, not a discount. per user, per month charges for everyone with access; waxTable charges for documents. Paid plans start at USD 5 per month billed annually. The worked example on this page does the arithmetic for a five-person team.
Can I move my Bonsai content across?
You can paste anything you want to keep, but most people find they do not need to. The point is not to reuse the old text — waxTable writes each document for the specific client and job, so a library of saved paragraphs is the thing it replaces rather than the thing it imports.
What does Bonsai do better than waxTable?
the chain from accepted proposal to money. Acceptance flows into a contract, invoice and time/expense tracking in the same subscription, with a built-in CRM on every tier. If you want one system to run the business rather than the best document, that is a genuine advantage.
Your next proposal, in five minutes
Tell Waxe about the client and get a complete, on-brand proposal to review — the work of two days for a few cents. There is no blank page to start from and nothing to format by hand; you answer a short brief, Waxe does the drafting, and you keep full control of the final document in the editor.