“Uptool costs the part and leaves the price to you. Setell prices the quote like you would — and gets you paid.”
Feature comparison
They cost the part. We price the quote.
Uptool is a genuinely strong estimating tool — it reads your inbox, extracts parts from CAD and drawings, and runs them through per-shop calculators for machine time, setup, and finishing. But the founder is explicit: “final pricing is an art… we don’t try to guess markups.” A human enters every operation’s minutes and types the final number. Setell prices the quote from your actual history — your QuickBooks invoices and the quotes you’ve already won — and shows its work. Pricing intelligence is the claim they don’t make.
Learned, not configured
Uptool’s costing is dozens of calculators you configure once and maintain by hand. Setell’s baseline learns: it warm-starts from industry benchmarks and converges on how your shop actually prices within your first 10–20 jobs. No calculator library to tune — the more you quote, the more it sounds like you. Their learning layer is announced but unshipped; ours is live today.
Quote-to-cash, not quote-and-stop
Uptool sends a quote back as an email reply and hands off to a shop-floor traveler. There’s no customer approval portal, no e-signature, no deposit or payment capture — the “to-cash” half of the loop is missing. Setell closes it: a branded customer portal, signature, approval, invoice, and two-way QuickBooks sync. One evolving job from inbound email all the way to paid.
A machine-shop tool vs. an engine for any shop
Uptool is manufacturing-locked by design — its calculators and travelers are machining code. Setell runs one adaptive engine that learns each operator’s vertical from their own data, so the same product quotes a machine shop, a fab shop, a landscaper, or a contractor. And because Setell exposes its capabilities as an agent (MCP) surface, you can drive it from Claude or ChatGPT — something an app-only competitor can’t match.
Where Uptool is ahead — and where it doesn’t matter
Both tools read native 3D CAD geometry — Setell pulls bounding box, solid volume, and stock weight straight from a STEP or IGES solid, on every plan including free. Uptool’s remaining edge is the layer on top: a mature library of per-shop operations calculators (machine time, setup, finishing) that turn that geometry into a cost, tuned by hand. Setell takes the other road — it reads the same geometry as evidence and prices from your actual QuickBooks history and won quotes, so the number is learned from what you really charge instead of configured in a calculator stack. If you’ve already invested in a hand-tuned costing library, that’s Uptool’s edge; if you’d rather the price be learned — and start free — that’s Setell.
Setell vs Uptool: FAQ
Is Setell a good Uptool alternative?
Yes, especially if you want the quote priced for you and closed end-to-end. Both tools read RFQs from your inbox and draft quotes. Uptool costs the part and leaves the final price to a human; Setell prices the quote from your own history, then adds a customer portal, e-signature, invoicing, and QuickBooks sync. Setell also works beyond machine shops and starts free.
Does Uptool set the price automatically?
No. Uptool's founder describes final pricing as “an art” and leaves markup and the final number to a human estimator — its AI produces costing inputs, not the price. Setell's pricing intelligence learns your rates from QuickBooks history and won quotes and proposes the price, with show-your-work provenance so you can see why.
Does Setell read CAD files like Uptool?
Yes. Setell reads native 3D CAD geometry from STEP and IGES solids — bounding box, solid volume, and stock weight — plus 2D drawings and PDFs, and it does this on every plan, including free. The difference is what each tool does next: Uptool feeds geometry into per-shop costing calculators to estimate machine time; Setell uses the geometry as evidence and prices the quote from your own QuickBooks history and won quotes. Uptool starts at $195/mo; Setell reads your CAD geometry free.
How much cheaper is Setell than Uptool?
Uptool starts at $195/mo for a 1–2 person shop and scales to roughly $2,000/mo. Setell is free to start and $49/mo on the paid plan, with self-serve setup in about 5 minutes instead of an assisted onboarding call.