Insights
Insights for shops that price their own work.
Opinion and analysis on pricing, quoting and running a manufacturing business, written by the people building the engine. For evergreen how-to guides, see the knowledge base.
The state of instant quoting in 2026: the tiers, the prices, what changed
Who sells instant quoting to shops in 2026, what it costs, and the four shifts of the year: real slicers, payment in the widget, AI intake, marketplaces in CAD.
TechnologyAI in manufacturing quoting: what is real and what is not
AI that reads RFQ e-mails and drawings is real and useful. AI that invents a price without your costs is not. Where the line sits, with the products that cross it.
SalesMarketplaces or your own website: where a shop's quotes should happen
Xometry, Protolabs Network and Craftcloud bring buyers, set the price and keep the customer. When a marketplace is worth it, and why your own quote should come first.
SalesThe cost of a slow quote: response time, buyer behaviour and lost orders
A quote that arrives after the buyer has decided is never compared. How to put a number on slow quoting with your own data, and what to change first.
PricingWhat your machine hour rate should include
Most shops set a machine rate by feel and are surprised by the answer when they compute one. Here is the calculation.
PricingResin printing is a labour business
The machine time is cheap and predictable. The washing, curing and de-supporting is neither - and that is where resin quotes go wrong.
PricingCalibrating a pricing model against your own machines
Nobody knows your printer's travel behaviour - including us. So do not hard-code it: fit it, from jobs you have already run.
FilesSTL has no units, and it will cost you money
A part that arrives 25.4 times too small quotes at roughly 1/16000th of the material. Here is how to stop that reaching a customer.
OperationsThe hidden cost of quoting by e-mail
The quotes you do not win leave no trace, which is why the cost of manual quoting is invisible until you measure it.
PricingMinimum order values are arithmetic, not greed
The eleven-minute print that loses you money, and the three different floors that stop it.
QuotingWhat an instant quote should include
A number is not a quote. Here is what a buyer needs to see before they can say yes, and what they must never see.
PricingSLS build-share pricing, explained
A powder part does not cost what it weighs. It costs a share of a build - and getting that share right is the single biggest lever in powder quoting.
PricingHow to price FDM prints
Machine time and filament sound simple until you try to compute them. Here is what actually drives an FDM price, in the order it matters.
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