Will it quote the right prices?

Drafts pull prices from the documents you connect and a person approves every reply before it sends, so a wrong number gets caught at review rather than in front of the buyer. If a request does not match anything in your catalog, the draft asks clarifying questions instead of guessing.

What happens with complex or custom RFQs?

They get triaged, labeled, and routed to the right person with a summary, and the draft acknowledges receipt and asks for whatever detail is missing. Automating the acknowledgment alone often halves the response time buyers experience.

Does this replace our quoting or RFQ portal software?

No. Portal tools manage the quote artifact; InboxPilot automates the email conversation, which is where most SMB quote requests actually arrive. Many teams run both.

Is our pricing data secure?

InboxPilot is SOC 2 Type II certified, encrypts data in transit and at rest, and never uses your documents or email to train shared models.

RFQ Email Automation for Gmail & Outlook

Why RFQ & quote requests emails deserve automation

Requests for quotes are the highest-value email your inbox receives and the most punishing to answer slowly: buyers send the same RFQ to several suppliers and the first credible response frames the deal. Yet answering one properly means digging through price lists, checking specs, and writing a careful reply, which is why RFQs queue behind everything else. InboxPilot automates the drafting: it recognizes an incoming RFQ, pulls the relevant products, prices, and lead times from your own documents, and prepares the reply so the person who knows the margin only has to review and send.

What makes this workflow painful

Speed decides who wins

Buyers shortlist whoever responds first with something substantive. An RFQ that sits until tomorrow is often already lost.

Answers live in documents

Quoting correctly means knowing the current price and the real lead time. Both sit in files, not in whoever opens the email.

RFQs drown in the shared inbox

Quote requests arrive between order confirmations, supplier emails, and spam. Nothing marks them as the revenue they are.

How teams handle it today

None of these are wrong. They just spend skilled people on assembly work, and they all get slower exactly when volume spikes.

Forward it to the one person who can quote

The inbox owner spots an RFQ and forwards it to an estimator or the owner, who answers when they surface from other work.

Response time is hostage to one person's calendar.

Copy-paste from a template

A saved reply gets pasted in and edited by hand, with prices looked up in a spreadsheet or ERP each time.

Every manual lookup is a chance to quote a stale price.

Log it in a CRM or RFQ portal

Some teams re-key each emailed RFQ into a quoting tool, then write the email reply separately once the quote is built.

Double data entry, and the buyer still waits hours or days.

How InboxPilot automates it

Step 1

Connect the inbox that receives RFQs

Gmail or Outlook, personal or shared. Scoped OAuth, no migration, nothing changes for the rest of the team.

Step 2

Point it at your catalog and price lists

Upload price sheets, spec PDFs, and policies, or connect your website. Drafts quote from these, not from a generic model.

Step 3

RFQs get triaged and drafted on arrival

Incoming quote requests are labeled and answered with a draft that includes products, prices, lead times, and any clarifying questions.

Step 4

You review, adjust margin, and send

Every draft waits for approval by default. The judgment call stays with you; the assembly work is already done.

A real example, before and after

The incoming email on the left, the InboxPilot draft waiting for approval on the right.

Purchasing manager at a mid-size contractorIncoming email

RFQ: 40 units, delivery to Dallas by Sept 15

Hi, we're pricing a job and need a quote on 40 units of your PX-200 series, delivered to Dallas by September 15.

Please include unit pricing, freight, and your current lead time. Quotes are due to our client Friday.

AI draft by InboxPilotWaiting for your approval

Hi, thanks for the RFQ. For 40 units of the PX-200: unit price is $118 at that quantity per our current price list, and standard lead time is 3 weeks from PO, which meets your September 15 date if ordered by August 22.

Freight to Dallas runs as a separate line; if you can share the delivery zip I'll confirm the exact amount today. One question: do you need the standard finish or the coated variant? Pricing differs slightly between the two.

Happy to hold this pricing through Friday so it can go into your client bid.

Prices, lead times, and the variant question all come from the catalog and price list you connected, not from the model's imagination.

Turn a sentence into automated actions

Describe what should happen in plain English and InboxPilot builds the workflow: a trigger, an AI decision, and the actions that run on their own.

Describe your workflowPlain English

“When a quote request comes in, pull matching products and prices from our catalog, draft the quote reply, and label it RFQ.”

Build workflow

InboxPilot builds

TriggerIncoming email recognized as a quote request

AI DecisionAI matches the requested items against your catalog and price list

Actions

Draft a reply with pricing, lead time, and clarifying questions
Apply the RFQ label so nothing gets buried
Route to the estimator when the request needs custom engineering

Related guides and pages

Best RFQ software for suppliers

Build an email workflow in plain English

What an AI email agent does

RFQ & quote requests: frequently asked questions

InboxPilot works from documents rather than system integrations, which is what makes RFQ automation practical for teams that do not have an ERP or do not want to wire one up. You upload the files your estimators already quote from: price lists, product catalogs, spec sheets, rate cards, even PDFs of standard terms. When a quote request arrives in Gmail or Outlook, InboxPilot reads it, pulls the matching items and prices from those documents, and produces a draft reply that cites your real numbers. If prices change, you update the document once and every future draft follows it, with no rules to rebuild. Teams that do run an ERP keep using it for the order itself and inventory; InboxPilot automates the email conversation around it, which is where the response-time race with your competitors is actually won or lost.

Answer every RFQ before your competitor opens theirs