VETR for growing capture teams
What changes as a firm goes from one bid a quarter to several concurrent pursuits — and which plan is the honest fit at each stage.
A federal capture team's software needs change at two thresholds rather than continuously. The first is roughly one bid a month, where hand-maintained compliance tracking stops surviving amendments and the value shifts to an automated matrix and page budgets — VETR Startup at $199 per month. The second is concurrent pursuits with distinct owners, where colour-team review, the cost volume and teaming coordination have to be tracked together rather than in three places — VETR Professional at $399 per month. Enterprise is not a volume tier: it is the tier where SAML single sign-on, organisation-wide policy and a contractual SLA become requirements, which is usually driven by a customer's security review rather than by bid count.
What to look for in capture management software.
Written to be useful even if you end up buying something else.
Stage one — the first federal bids
One to two bids a quarter, one person doing capture and writing. The binding constraint is reading the solicitation properly, and the highest-value tooling is the compliance matrix and a bid/no-bid decision you can defend.
Stage two — roughly one bid a month
The point at which hand-maintained tracking breaks. Amendments arrive between bids, page limits are enforced across two or three writers, and coverage needs answering repeatedly rather than once.
Stage three — concurrent pursuits
Several live bids with distinct section owners. Colour-team review becomes a scheduled process rather than a favour, pricing needs to agree with the technical volume, and teaming partners have paperwork and workshare to track.
Stage four — the security review
A customer or prime asks how you handle CUI, whether you enforce SSO, and where your AI runs. This is what actually drives an Enterprise conversation, and it is usually triggered by a specific pursuit rather than by growth.
What does not change
The bid decision, the technical approach and review judgement stay with people at every stage. Software that claims to automate those is selling something it cannot deliver.
VETR against those criteria.
Every capability below is shipped and in use — not roadmap.
Startup — $199/month, $149 for founding members
The compliance layer: RFP parsing, the compliance matrix with section citations, page budgets, amendment diffing, SAM.gov opportunity matching and four-pillar bid/no-bid scoring. Suits up to roughly one bid a month.
Professional — $399/month, $299 for founding members
Adds what concurrent pursuits need: colour-team reviews scored on the Section M factors, the cost volume with the full rate build-up, price-to-win, teaming with workshare and the 13 CFR 125.6 check, and the past-performance library with relevance ranking.
Enterprise — custom
SAML single sign-on, organisation-wide security policy, higher AI budgets and a contractual SLA. Driven by a security review rather than by bid volume.
The trial is a real trial
Fourteen days, no card up front. Upload an actual solicitation rather than a sample — the parse on a real 200-page RFP is the only test that tells you anything.
Moving up is not a migration
Plans unlock capability on the same workspace; your matrices, past performance and pursuits carry across without an export.
The claims above are documented in more detail on the security and in-boundary AI page, with downloadable evidence in the trust center. The scoring methodology is published in full as the VETR Framework, and the capability list lives on the features page.
Alternatives worth considering.
Described from each vendor's own public positioning. No feature matrix — we do not have verified capability data for other vendors, and a table we cannot stand behind is worth less than an honest list.
Staying on spreadsheets
Free and sufficient below roughly one bid a quarter.
Best for: Firms bidding occasionally, where amendments have not yet caused a problem.
An enterprise GovCon suite
GovDash, Procurement Sciences and Deltek sell breadth and depth across the full lifecycle, generally sales-led.
Best for: Organisations with a dedicated capture department and a rollout budget.
VETR Proposal
This sitePublished pricing with two capability tiers and no per-proposal fees, built for firms below roughly $50M competing on set-asides.
Best for: Teams growing from occasional bids to a real pipeline without an enterprise procurement cycle.
Compiled from public vendor marketing, July 2026, and reviewed quarterly. Vendors change quickly — if something here is out of date or unfair to your product, tell us and we will correct it.
How to pick the plan that fits your stage
Answer these in order. The first "yes" is your tier.
Are you bidding less than once a quarter?
Then start with the free trial on a real solicitation and stay on spreadsheets if nothing breaks. Buying software you open twice a year is not a saving.
Has an amendment ever invalidated your compliance tracking?
If yes, that is the Startup case: automated matrix, section citations, amendment diffing and page budgets.
Do two or more people write on the same bid?
Page budgets and section ownership start paying for themselves here, still within Startup.
Do you run more than one live pursuit at a time?
That is Professional: colour-team reviews, the cost volume, price-to-win and teaming tracked alongside each other.
Are you teaming, as prime or sub?
Professional. Workshare and the 13 CFR 125.6 limitations need to constrain the plan before you agree it with a partner.
Has a customer asked how you enforce SSO or handle CUI?
That is the Enterprise conversation, and it is worth having early — a security review during a live pursuit is the worst time to discover a gap.
Questions buyers actually ask.
Which VETR plan should a small federal contractor start on?
Startup at $199 per month — $149 for founding members, locked for 24 months — covers the compliance layer that small teams actually need: RFP parsing, a compliance matrix with section citations, page budgets, amendment diffing and SAM.gov opportunity matching. It suits up to roughly one bid a month. There is a fourteen-day trial with no card up front, and the useful test is uploading a real solicitation rather than a sample.
When does it make sense to move from Startup to Professional?
When you have more than one live pursuit at a time, or when you start teaming. Professional at $399 per month adds colour-team reviews scored against the Section M evaluation factors, the cost volume with the full fringe-to-fee build-up, price-to-win, and teaming with workshare and the 13 CFR 125.6 limitations checked as you plan. Those are the capabilities concurrent pursuits and partnered bids need; below that threshold they sit unused.
What actually triggers an Enterprise conversation?
A security review, almost always — not bid volume. Enterprise is where SAML single sign-on, organisation-wide security policy, higher AI budgets and a contractual SLA live, and those become requirements when a customer or a prime asks how you enforce access control and handle CUI. It is worth having that conversation before a live pursuit rather than during one.
Do we lose anything moving between plans?
No. Plans unlock capability on the same workspace, so compliance matrices, past-performance citations and pursuits carry across without an export or a migration. Founding-member pricing is locked for 24 months at the tier you joined on.
Keep reading.
See it on your own solicitation.
Upload an RFP and watch VETR build the compliance matrix. Fourteen days, no card up front.