Why

You said it yourself: every proposal already CC's a company bid email. That's the single highest-leverage fact in your situation — it means an email-syncing CRM can auto-create deals and log activity with almost zero estimator data entry. With 6 verticals (multifamily, commercial, public, ISD, gas, electric) and 200–500 bids/mo, you don't need one pipeline — you need six, with a shared follow-up cadence on top. The bid coordinator becomes the system owner; estimators just send proposals like they already do.

What you actually need

1. Pipedrive Advanced (~$34/user/mo) — gives you multiple pipelines (one per vertical), email sync with the bid CC inbox auto-creating deals, and Workflow Automation for follow-ups. Salesflare is built for relationship-based B2B sales, not high-volume bid tracking with public/ISD procurement cycles — skip it.
2. Pipedrive Workflow Automation: "7-day post-bid follow-up" — when a deal moves to "Bid Submitted", auto-create an activity for the estimator 7 days out, then another at 14 and 30. This is the automation that pays for the seats.
3. A habit — Monday bid board — bid coordinator runs a 20-minute review every Monday of every deal in "Bid Submitted" >14 days with no client response. Decide: chase, mark lost, or escalate.

Do this today

Sign up for Pipedrive at pipedrive.com (14-day trial, no card), then go to Company Settings → Pipelines → "+" and create six pipelines named Multifamily, Commercial, Public, ISD, Gas, Electric — each with stages: Lead → Estimating → Bid Submitted → Awarded → Lost. Then Settings → Mailbox → connect the company bid CC email so every proposal you send auto-attaches to a deal. By tomorrow your bid coordinator opens one screen and sees every live bid by vertical.

What to ignore

Salesflare is a solid product but built for SaaS/agency relationship selling — it won't model bid-vs-award cycles or public procurement well. Skip Salesforce Sales Cloud (~$165/user/mo) and HubSpot Sales Hub Professional (~$100/user/mo) — both will quote you "enterprise construction" packages at 3-5x what Pipedrive Advanced costs for capability you won't use. Ignore anyone pitching ZoomInfo or Apollo; your leads aren't a prospecting problem, they're a follow-through problem.

What doing nothing costs you

A conservative 10% slippage on 200–500 bids/month = 20–50 bids/month where nobody followed up at day 7 or 14. In utility contracting where a single awarded bid can run six or seven figures, even one recovered award per month from disciplined follow-up pays for Pipedrive for a decade.

When to revisit this

When you need bid-specific features like takeoff integration or bonding tracking — then look at construction-specific tools like BuildingConnected or Followup CRM.