Tendly's Tender-as-a-Service has two parts. A subscription of €199 per month covers our specialists preparing every bid you put into the pipeline — there is no per-bid charge, however many you run. On top of that, a success fee applies only to the tenders you actually win: a percentage of the contract value, agreed with you in writing before any work starts. If you do not win, there is no success fee. You can cancel the subscription at any time.
That structure is deliberate, and the reason is about incentives rather than price.
Why bid support is usually priced badly
The two common models both distort behaviour.
Day rates and per-bid fees pay the provider for activity. Every additional bid is additional revenue for them and additional cost for you, whether or not it was a sensible bid. It also makes your cost unpredictable: a busy quarter with nine opportunities costs you three times a quiet one, exactly when your cash is already committed to delivery.
Pure contingency — no fee at all until you win — sounds ideal and usually is not. Someone carrying all the risk has to be selective about which clients and which tenders they take, so they concentrate on large, high-probability contracts and quietly decline the rest. That is a rational response to the incentive, and it is the opposite of what an SME building a pipeline needs.
How the two parts work together
The subscription: €199 per month
This covers the work on every bid — reading the documents, drafting the technical proposal, financial offer, CVs and methodology, completing the portal forms, running the compliance checks, and monitoring the tender for amendments after submission. Whether you run one tender that month or six, the subscription does not change. Your budgeting question becomes "is €199 a month worth it", not "can we afford to bid for this one".
Because it is flat, it removes the argument that stops most SMEs bidding: the marginal cost of one more submission. If a tender is worth pursuing, the only real question left is whether you want the contract.
The success fee: only on wins
The second part is a percentage of the contract value, charged only on tenders you win. We do not publish a single number because it is set per client and per situation — contract size, sector, and the scope of what we take on all affect it — and it is agreed with you in writing before we start work. No win, no success fee, and no hidden costs or per-bid charges anywhere in the model.
"Agreed in writing before we start" is the part worth insisting on with any provider, not just this one. You should know the exact figure, what it is calculated on, and when it becomes payable before a single document is drafted.
What the structure changes
- Our upside is your win, not your bid count. The bulk of the value arrives only when you are awarded a contract, so there is no reason to encourage bids that will not win.
- Your fixed cost stays small. The predictable part is a monthly subscription; the large part arrives only alongside revenue you have actually won.
- The advice can be honest. A provider paid per bid has an awkward moment when the right advice is "do not bid for this". Under this structure that conversation costs nothing.
- You keep the decisions. Which tenders to pursue, what to price, and whether to submit remain yours — the commercial model does not change who is in control. What is included and what stays yours sets out the boundary in detail.
How to budget for it
Work it out per contract rather than per month. Before you agree the success fee, take a realistic target contract and calculate the fee against its value, then check that the margin still works at the price you would need to bid to win. If it does, the model is sound for your business. If it does not, the issue is either the contract size or your margin, and that is worth knowing before you start rather than after.
The comparison that matters is not against zero. It is against the loaded cost of your own people writing the bid — usually two to five days of senior time per submission — plus the opportunity cost of the tenders you currently skip because nobody has those days available.
Questions to ask any success-fee provider
- What exactly is the fee a percentage of — total contract value, first-year value, or the value actually drawn down under a framework?
- When does it become payable: at award, at contract signature, or as revenue is invoiced?
- What happens if you are awarded a framework place but never receive a call-off?
- What happens if the contract is cancelled, reduced, or the award is challenged?
- Is anything charged per bid, and is there any minimum commitment?
- Can you cancel, and what happens to bids already in progress?
Get the answers in writing. A provider confident in their model will not hesitate, and the ones who do hesitate have told you something useful.
Where to start
If bidding is currently limited by capacity rather than by opportunities, this model is designed for exactly that situation. The Tender-as-a-Service page walks through the five steps from adding a tender to your pipeline through to the success fee, and browsing live tenders is the quickest way to judge whether there is enough in your categories to make it worthwhile.