Fencing

Fence estimating software that starts with your customer's design

Your customer draws the fence line, picks the material, and sees the price. You get the takeoff, the material list, and a quote ready to send before the other fencing company has returned the call.

Fence estimating software pricing a 6 ft board-on-board cedar privacy fence, with the run length, gate, and total on a card.
The platform

Your buyer starts it. Your team closes it.

Six modules pass one project down the line, from the first click on your site to a build your shop can make.

  1. 3D configurator

    The buyer builds the product and sees it in 3D.

  2. Live pricing

    The total updates with each option.

  3. Branded quote

    A PDF with renderings and a QR code that opens the 3D model.

  4. Dealer portal

    Dealers quote with your catalog, your rules, their prices.

  5. All deals in one place

    Every quote, order, and activity in one live feed.

  6. Approve and send to production

    One click sends the confirmed order with the full spec.

Where it runs

It fits the way you already sell

No new storefront and nothing to install. The same configurator drops into the places your buyers already are.

Embedded on your own website

It runs on your site and on your partners' sites from one catalog. Nothing installs, and nobody maintains a second copy.

Sold where the buyer stands

It opens in a browser: a showroom laptop, a phone in the yard, or the screen at your counter.

  • Website
  • Showroom
  • Home visit
  • Job site

Checked in AR, at real size

The buyer lays the fence line across the yard and checks every gate at real size before anyone signs.

Sent under their branding

Every PDF goes out in the seller's own name, with their logo on it, never ours.

Connected to your tools

Approved orders can land in your ERP and the lead behind them in your CRM. Nothing is exported or re-keyed.

In plain words

What is fence estimating software?

What fence estimating software holds: the material families, rules, and price list behind one vinyl privacy fence quote.

Fence estimating software turns a measured fence line into a takeoff, a material list, and a priced quote in one pass. An estimator or a customer draws the run, sets the material, the height, and the gates, and the software counts the posts, panels, rails, and hardware and prices the job off its linear footage. It replaces the two tools most fencing companies still quote with: the paper takeoff sheet and the stale price spreadsheet. Some vendors call the category a fence estimate tool. The test is the same under any name: the count comes from the drawn line, the prices come from one list, and the estimate, the material list, and the quote all describe the same fence. The estimating runs wherever the fence is being sold: at the desk, on a phone at the site walk, or on the fencing company's own website. A customer's drawn run comes back as a measured, priced lead.

What it holds

Your price book, plus the rules that never fit on it

Every material family you sell, with its heights, styles, post spacing, gate widths, and a price on all of it. Plus what a sheet cannot hold: which gate needs a double frame, what a slope allows, which combinations you will not build.

Who runs it

The estimator, the crew, or the customer

Whoever is selling: the estimator, the crew lead, or the customer on your own website. It is not a CRM. It is the estimating half of a fencing business, and a won job carries into whatever CRM you already run.

The wider category is the product configurator. If that is the open question, what a product configurator is starts from the beginning.

Written by Teodoro Pickett and kept current by the team that builds Dealect, in Mississauga, Canada. Who builds Dealect.

The problem

A fence quote is two jobs, and the second one starts after dinner.

The site walk takes an hour. The estimating takes the evening: the counting, the price lookups, the proposal. And the job often goes to whoever put a number in front of the customer first.

The evening quote path: a chain link fence measured on site, counted by hand, priced off a stale sheet, quoted days later.
  • The takeoff is hand arithmetic, done tired

    Measure the run, subtract the gates, turn spacing into spans and spans into posts, panels, and concrete. Each step is a place a tired estimator slips, and the wrong count is not caught on the quote. It is caught at the job, one panel short.

  • The price sheet is already old

    Cedar, vinyl, and steel move all season, and the spreadsheet in the truck does not move with them. The gap between the sheet and this week's supplier invoice comes out of the margin, after the fence is built.

  • Every estimate costs a site visit

    A fencing lead is a phone call with no budget attached. You drive out, measure, count, and quote, and then learn the number was never close. The estimate is free to the customer. It has never been free to you.

The other half

Put the fence configurator in your customer's hands.

Estimating tools stop at your desk. Website fence calculators stop at a lead form. This is the two halves connected.

A customer's 3D configurator for a black ornamental aluminum fence, beside the pre-qualified lead it produces.

On a fencing company's website it reads as a fence planner. A homeowner drags the line around the yard, places a gate, switches wood to vinyl, and watches the price move. Underneath, it is fence design software running your rules, so the run that reaches your inbox is one your crew can actually build. The 3D view is the fence visualizer that sells the job, our 3D product configurator wearing your materials and your prices. A fence layout tool on its own produces a drawing. Wired to your price list, it is the front door of your estimating.

What the lead arrives with
The measured line
The run in feet, the corners, and the gates, drawn by the person who owns the yard.
The material breakdown
Posts, panels, gates, and hardware, counted by the rules your fence crews build to.
The price they accepted
Off your price list, seen on screen before you spend an evening on the estimate.
The software

Three things it has to get right

A configurator sells the fence. These three get a fencing job built and paid at the number it was sold at.

A takeoff counting the posts, panels, and hardware of a horizontal cedar slat fence as the line is drawn.

Takeoffs that count themselves

Posts, panels, rails, pickets, gates, and footings, counted from the drawn fence line with the corners and slope in, and priced per linear foot. The takeoff is where fence estimating software earns its keep, because the count is where quotes go wrong.

A branded fence proposal rendered as a physical sheet, its line items counted from a white vinyl picket fence configuration.

Quotes and proposals on your paper

The proposal generates from the configuration: line items, options, and the total on your template, your logo, your terms. The estimate goes out the hour the customer asks, and when the fence changes, the quote changes with it. Nothing is retyped.

Buildability rules blocking a single frame on a wide opening, offering the double drive gate a pine privacy fence needs.

Rules that keep it buildable

Gate widths that need a double frame, post spacing by material and height, what a slope does to a panel run. The rules live in the software rather than in the estimator's head, so a fence that cannot be built cannot be quoted. The material list can be trusted at the yard.

How it works

From the drawn line to the won job

Three moves, and none of them waits for the evening.

  1. Step 01 · Wherever the fence is being sold

    Step 1: Draw

    Your estimator draws the run at the desk, the customer draws it on your website, or the crew draws it in the fence app on a phone at the site walk. Corners, gates, and slope go in as they are measured.

    A fence run being drawn on a phone at the site walk, with the tan PVC privacy fence it will become behind it.
  2. Step 02 · The takeoff builds itself

    Step 2: Count and price

    Spacing turns the line into spans, spans into posts and panels, gates into frames and hinges, posts into concrete. Every count prices off your list as it lands, so the estimate is finished when the drawing is. This is the half of fence contractor software that pays for itself first: estimating stops being an evening job.

    Live pricing on a 6 ft dog ear wood privacy fence, a leader line tying the span count to the post line it prices.
  3. Step 03 · The quote goes out while the visit is warm

    Step 3: Send and win

    The proposal generates from the same record and reaches the customer the same day, at a price that survives the build. Fencing jobs go to whoever answers first with a number that holds, and answering first becomes a settings question rather than a staffing one.

    A quote sent the day of the site walk for a black chain link fence, its status card over the installed run.
Material families

What changes between wood, vinyl, and chain link estimating?

A fencing company rarely sells one material, and each family estimates differently. The rules absorb the difference.

Side by side · four families, one rule set
In the takeoffWoodVinylChain linkOrnamental
What gets countedPosts, rails, and pickets, or prebuilt panelsPosts, prefab panels, caps, and bracketsLine posts, terminal posts, mesh rolls, and top railWelded panels, posts, and gates
What moves the priceSpecies, grade, height, and gatesPanel style, height, and colourGauge, coating, and fabric heightSteel or aluminum, height, and picket profile
Where a hand count slipsPicket counts on long runs, and corner postsA short span still needs a full panelTerminal posts counted as line postsRackable versus stepped panels on a slope

We do not decide what a fence is allowed to be. Height, setback, and pool barrier rules come from the code in force on that lot, and the trade body that tracks them for the people who install fences is the American Fence Association. A configurator carries those limits into the rule set, so the takeoff and the permit agree before a crew is booked.

The arithmetic

Why do two careful takeoffs of the same fence disagree?

The takeoff is arithmetic. The mistakes are manual. One straight fencing run, counted out loud, before a single corner or gate complicates it.

One 200 ft run at 8 ft post spacing · arithmetic on a stated assumption
  • Spans

    25

    200 ft at 8 ft spacing. The first corner changes that, which is the point.

  • Posts to set

    26

    At 8 ft spacing on that 200 ft run, one more post than spans. Every corner and gate in the fence adds more.

  • Bags of concrete

    52

    Two bags a post is the stated assumption. Soil and wind move it, so it is a rule, not a memory.

A material list computed from a drawn run, the posts and panels of a 4 ft wood picket fence counted and priced line by line.
Where the hand count drifts

Corners add posts. A gate takes a panel out and puts a frame and hinges in. A slope stretches the spacing or steps the panels. The arithmetic is grade school and the exceptions are not, which is why two careful takeoffs of the same fence disagree. The estimating software runs the same rules on every line, every time.

Who it's for

From a two-person crew to a dealer network

A fence dealer's yard with racked prehung fence panels beside the sales counter where drawn runs get quoted.
  • Fence contractors and installers

    Fencing crews quoting at kitchen tables and site walks, who want the estimate and the proposal finished before they leave.

  • Fence manufacturers with dealer networks

    Your rules and your price lists behind every dealer's counter. Each dealer quotes on its own numbers, and your costs stay on your side.

  • Fence dealers and supply yards

    A fencing run quoted at the counter instead of a list pencilled off the rack. Fence builder software a seasonal counter hire can use in week one.

If your fences sell through dealers, the portal each dealer signs into is our b2b customer portal. The nearest live vertical to this one is our shed design software, the same argument in a different yard. And when a buyer wants the yard shaded as well as fenced, our pergola configurator prices that build from one catalog too. The software's pricing model is on what a configurator costs, and the whole platform is on the Dealect homepage.

FAQ

Fence estimating software questions

There is no self-serve trial and no published list price, because the number depends on how many material families and estimating rules your line needs. Pricing is per company, not per seat, so the estimator, the crew, and the counter all quote on one bill, and a seasonal hire does not move it. Dealers never pay for portal access. You hear your figure on a 30-minute demo call: bring your price list and the materials you sell, and we draw a run from your own line while the software counts it with your rules and prices it as you watch. Nothing else has to be prepared before the call. No CAD files, no data cleanup, and no long setup project, because the rules and prices you already estimate with are the setup. The pricing model itself is written up on our pricing page.

Yes. A two-person fencing crew uses it to get takeoffs and proposals out of the evening. A larger company, or a manufacturer with dealers, uses it so every estimate comes off one set of rules no matter who quotes. The software setup is the same either way: your materials, your rules, your price list.

Yes. Proposals generate on your templates: your logo, your terms, and the line items the drawn fence produced. The document comes from the configuration, not from retyping, so changing the fence changes the quote and the two can never disagree.

Yes. It is cloud-based and runs in the browser on whatever is in the truck: a phone at the site walk, a tablet at the dealer counter, a laptop at the desk. Nothing to install, and a fence drawn on site is the same estimate the office opens later.

Because the count is computed, not remembered. Post spacing, corner posts, gate frames, slope, and concrete are rules, and the software runs them against the drawn line the same way every time. The estimate, the material list, and the quote come from one record, so the posts, panels, and gates the crew loads are the ones the customer priced.

Yes. Wood counts pickets, rails, and posts. Vinyl counts prefab panels. Chain link counts mesh rolls, line posts, and top rail. Ornamental counts welded panels and how they rack on a slope. Each family carries its own counting rules and price list, so the estimator picks the material and the software changes the arithmetic.

Last updated

Next step

Watch a fence line get quoted, in 30 minutes.

Bring your materials and your price list to a 30-minute call. We will draw a run, let your rules count it, and produce the quote while you watch. The same engine runs the fencing software your customers will use on your website. We reply by email to set a time.

  • 30-minute personalized demo
  • See real configurators in your industry

Your call is with the Dealect team.

See pricing