Gravity Forms
+ Supplier RFQ & Bid Comparison

Buying through a shared inbox is slow and hard to compare: every supplier replies in a different format, prices arrive after others were opened, one supplier gets an answer the others never see, and months later nobody can show why the order went where it did. The Gravity Forms Supplier RFQ & Bid Comparison add-on runs the whole request for quotation from your WordPress admin.

You list what you need as line items with quantities and units, attach drawings or specifications, add the suppliers and set a deadline. Each supplier gets an e-mail with a private signed link to their own page, where they download your documents, ask questions and submit a bid through a Gravity Forms bid form: a unit price per line, lead time, how long the quote is valid, notes and files. They can change their bid until the deadline; after it, bids are refused on the server.

With sealed bids you only see how many bids arrived until the deadline, and no supplier ever sees another supplier's bid, name or files. Answers to questions are published to every invited supplier without naming the asker. After the deadline you compare all bids side by side with the lowest prices highlighted, score them on price, lead time and your own criteria, award one supplier and send the others a polite not-successful e-mail. An audit log, CSV and PDF summary, protected file storage and an RFQ buyer role are included. Everything runs on your own server, with no outside connection. For Gravity Forms 2.9 and newer.

Each request for quotation is stored in the add-on's own tables with its line items, documents, deadline, scoring weights and supplier list. Each supplier link carries the request, the supplier and an HMAC signature made with a secret key that only your site knows, so a changed link is refused. The supplier page and the Gravity Forms bid form are created for you on the first invitation. The bid form gets one price field per line item on the supplier page; when a bid is submitted the server checks the link and the deadline, copies the bid into the add-on's table, moves the files to a protected folder under random names and deletes the Gravity Forms entry, so a sealed bid never shows in your entries. Until the deadline of a sealed request the buyer screen, e-mails, audit log, file downloads and exports reveal only the number of bids. After the deadline the comparison scores price as lowest total divided by each total, lead time the same way in days, and your own criteria from your 0 to 10 marks, then weights them. Everything happens on your own server — the add-on makes no outside HTTP request beyond the licence and update checks.