Design your quote templates

A quote template in HubSpot is more than a price list. It's a proposal document that carries your brand, your terms, and your positioning. The new Commerce Hub quote builder lets you design templates with drag-and-drop sections, personalisation tokens, embedded images, and pre-loaded terms.

The time you invest in a good template pays off on every deal. Your reps stop reinventing the format for each prospect, your legal team knows the terms are consistent, and your clients receive a document that looks like it came from a company that takes itself seriously.

Quote styling versus quote templates

HubSpot separates these into two layers:

1. Quote style (theme). Controls fonts, colours, backgrounds, and button styling across all your quotes. Set this once to match your brand guidelines. Think of it as the CSS for your quotes. Access it from Commerce > Quotes > Customise quote style.
2. Quote templates. Control the structure and content of specific quote types. You can have multiple templates: one for proposals, one for simple pricing quotes, one for renewals. Each template can show or hide sections, include default text, and have its own set of pre-loaded products.

Set the style first, then build your templates on top of it.

The template designer

Access it from Commerce > Quotes > Customise quote templates > Create quote template. The designer has a live preview in the centre, a section navigator on the left, and a property panel on the right.

Pre-built sections you can show, hide, or reorder:

• Header. Your logo (pulled from your brand kit), quote reference number, issue date, expiry date. You can toggle each field on or off.
• Cover letter. An introductory section for proposals. Optional for simple quotes.
• Executive summary / project overview. Rich text with full editing. Use personalisation tokens to auto-fill the company name, contact name, or deal properties.
• Seller and buyer details. Pulled from the deal's associated contacts and the rep's profile. Editable during quote creation.
• Line items. Your products and pricing. Columns only appear if the line items have values (no empty "Unit discount" column if nobody applied a discount).
• Terms and conditions. Rich text editor. Write your standard terms here; reps can customise per quote if needed.
• Payments and acceptance. Controlled by whether billing and e-signature are enabled on the quote.

Personalisation tokens

Inside any text section, you can insert tokens that pull data from the associated deal, company, or contact. Type to search for the token, set a fallback value for cases where the data is missing, and the quote fills itself in when a rep creates it from a specific deal.

This turns a template into a first draft. The rep reviews, adjusts the specifics, and sends. No copy-pasting company names or re-typing contact details.

Attachments

You can attach files to sections (case studies, spec sheets, compliance documents). If you enable the "show in signing" option, the attachment appears during the e-signature flow so the buyer sees it before they sign. Useful for terms of service or scope-of-work documents that need to be acknowledged.

Clone and customise for different service lines

Once you have a base template that works, don't start from scratch for each variation. Clone the template and adjust it for different use cases: one for consulting proposals with a detailed scope section, one for product-only quotes that's short and pricing-focused, one for renewals with simplified terms.

Cloning preserves your styling, section order, and default text. You only change what's different. This keeps your templates consistent while letting each deal type have the right level of detail.

Custom sections

Click the plus icon between existing sections to add a blank section. Name it whatever you need: "Project timeline", "Team", "Case studies". Inside, you can add:

• Rich text with formatting
• Images (resizable, alignable)
• Tables (for timelines, deliverables, pricing breakdowns)
• Embedded CTAs

These sections are fully editable when a rep creates a quote from the template, so the template sets the starting structure and the rep fills in the specifics.

Default products on templates

In the line items section, you can add products that appear on every quote created from this template. If every engagement includes a setup fee or a platform licence, add it as a default. Reps can still remove or modify it per quote.

This prevents the most common quoting mistake: forgetting to include a standard line item.

Mobile preview

Before publishing your template, switch to mobile view to check how it renders on smaller screens. Proposals that look great on desktop but break on mobile lose credibility with buyers who review on their phone.

The evolution path

Most teams follow the same progression:

1. Default template. Start with HubSpot's built-in template. Change the logo, update the terms, publish. This gets you quoting within an hour.
2. Customised templates. Clone the default and build purpose-specific versions: proposals, quick quotes, renewals. Add personalisation tokens, default products, and custom sections. This is where most teams should operate.
3. Custom-developed templates. If your proposals need hero banners, embedded video, testimonial blocks, or advanced layouts that go beyond the drag-and-drop editor, work with a developer or designer to build a custom quote theme. This is the premium tier: it looks exceptional but requires development resources to maintain.

Don't jump to step 3 before you've exhausted what step 2 can do. The built-in editor handles 90% of B2B quoting needs.

A well-designed quote template removes the repetitive formatting work from every deal and ensures your proposals look consistent. Build the structure once, let personalisation tokens do the data entry, and give your reps a professional starting point they can customise per prospect.