Why

Six estimators sending 200–500 proposals/month via email, all CC'd to one bid address, is the textbook scenario Salesflare was built for: it ingests email automatically, builds contact records from signatures, and threads everything against a deal. Pipedrive will work but you'll spend more time on manual data entry — which is the exact thing you said you want to avoid. With 4–10 people and email as the sole channel, you don't need a complex multi-pipeline tool; you need one that watches the inbox for you.

What you actually need

1. Salesflare (~$35/user/mo) — auto-logs every email sent from estimators, auto-creates contacts/companies from signatures, and lets you attach each proposal to a deal without anyone typing. Best fit for your CC'd-bid-email workflow.
2. One shared pipeline with stages: Bid Requested → Estimating → Proposal Sent → Follow-up → Won/Lost — every estimator owns their deals, but the bid email address becomes the system of record.
3. A habit — Friday bid-board review — 30 minutes, all six estimators, walk every deal stuck in "Proposal Sent" for >14 days. Chase, re-quote, or kill.

Do this today

Sign up for the Salesflare trial at salesflare.com, connect the shared bid CC inbox plus one estimator's email under Settings → Email Integration, and let it backfill the last 90 days. Then create one pipeline with the five stages above. By tomorrow morning you'll see every active bid auto-populated as a deal with the right contact attached — zero data entry.

What to ignore

Skip Pipedrive for now — it's a fine tool but its email sync is shallower than Salesflare's and you'll end up paying for AI add-ons to get parity. Ignore anyone pitching HubSpot Sales Hub Professional (~$100/seat/mo) or Salesforce Sales Cloud at this stage — both are 3–5x the price for features a utility contractor with one channel (email) will never touch. No Apollo, no ZoomInfo — you have inbound bid requests, not an outbound prospecting problem.

What doing nothing costs you

A conservative 10% slippage on 350 proposals/month (midpoint of your 200–500 range) = ~35 forgotten follow-ups monthly. In utility contracting where bid values commonly run $20K–$100K+, even one recovered job per month pays for the entire tool stack for the year.

When to revisit this

When you start bidding across distinct service lines (gas vs. electric vs. water) and need separate pipelines per line, or when you hire a dedicated bid coordinator.