Planlined
Formerly BART: carrier documents to branded proposals, presentations and employee guides, with comparisons and contribution modeling. For brokers, brokerage and GA service teams; confirm GA access and branding setup. Product facts and evidence.
Zywave CPQ
Zywave's quoting and proposal tool for employee benefits, built on a rates database of 100,000+ plans from 1,000+ carriers, exporting proposals to PowerPoint or Excel and generating enrollment booklets.
For: brokerages already in the Zywave ecosystem, or feeding sold plans into Employee Navigator, which relies on Zywave CPQ for quoting.
Side by side
Capabilities, one row each.
“Yes” means documented, not independently tested for every carrier or workflow; extraction may need correction or manual entry. “Not documented” means absent from reviewed public sources, not necessarily unavailable. See evidence and limits, including medical PDF and dental spreadsheet examples; confirm vendor scope before choosing.
On smaller screens, scroll across to compare both products.
| Capability | Planlined | Zywave CPQ |
|---|---|---|
| Parses carrier PDFs and spreadsheets | YesDocumented inputs; extraction may be incomplete and require manual entry. | Not documentedPlans come from the rates database rather than uploaded documents. |
| Live carrier rate feed | NoWorks from the quotes you already have. | Yes100,000+ plans, 1,000+ carriers, all 50 states. |
| Side-by-side comparison | Yes | Yes |
| Proposal export | YesBranded PDF and presentation mode. | YesPowerPoint or dynamic Excel. |
| Employee enrollment guide | Yes | YesEnrollment booklets. |
| Contribution and what-if modeling | Yes5+ structures, scenario manager. | Not documented |
| Invoice reconciliation | Yes | Not documentedBrokerageBuilder does commission reconciliation, a different task. |
| Benefits administration / enrollment | No | NoHands off to Employee Navigator. |
| Self-serve signup with a free start | Yes7-day free trial with full features. | No |
| Pricing | $75/month or $744/year ($62/month billed annually); 250 AI credits/month. Unlimited paid cases and exports; AI allowance is separate. Confirm team workspace setup.Pricing and trial terms | Not published. Quote-based; typically bundled with other Zywave products. |
Choose Zywave CPQ when
- Your quoting starts from a rates database rather than from carrier-issued quotes, and you want plans for all 50 states in one place.
- You already run BrokerageBuilder or Employee Navigator and want sold plans to flow downstream automatically.
- PowerPoint is your agency's delivery format and you want it generated directly.
Choose Planlined when
- Your quotes arrive as carrier PDFs and spreadsheets, and you want them parsed rather than re-keyed or re-quoted.
- You need contribution modeling, what-if scenarios and invoice reconciliation, none of which Zywave documents for CPQ.
- You want public pricing and a free trial instead of a bundled contract.
Weighing more than these two? Read our roundup of Zywave CPQ alternatives for brokers, which lines up five tools that do this job.
Frequently asked
Questions about switching.
- Is Planlined a Zywave CPQ alternative?
- For building comparisons and proposals, yes. The approaches differ: Zywave CPQ quotes from its own rates database; Planlined parses the documents carriers actually sent. Planlined supports that document-upload workflow; review extracted values and complete missing fields manually.
- Does Zywave CPQ parse PDFs?
- Zywave's public product page does not describe document parsing. Its plans and rates come from the Zywave database. Planlined is built around parsing carrier documents.
- Can Planlined replace BrokerageBuilder or Broker Briefcase?
- No. BrokerageBuilder is an agency management system and Broker Briefcase is a content library. Planlined covers the comparison, modeling and proposal step, and can sit alongside either.
Sources · reviewed September 3, 2026