RFQ forms for manufacturers
An RFQ form should ask for the drawing, the quantity, the material, the process, and the date needed, accept the CAD files buyers send, and get a reply the same day.
Written by Shopfloor Agency's lead engineer, who holds a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering and has spent 10 years on marketing for manufacturers.
What this guide concludes
- Ask for the name, company, and email, a drawing upload, the quantity, the material, the process, and the date needed, with a details box for tolerances and specifications.
- Accept PDF, DXF, DWG, STEP, IGES, STL, and ZIP files, and keep the upload optional so a buyer without a released drawing can still ask.
- Add the one or two fields your process is priced on, such as the substrate for a coater or the annual volume for a finisher.
- In a Harvard Business Review test of 2,241 US companies, 23% never replied to a web inquiry. Reply to every RFQ the same day.
- 21 of 66 manufacturer home pages in our study had no quote link on the home page. Put a quote button in the header of every page.
Contents7 sections
What fields an RFQ form should ask for#
An RFQ form for a manufacturer should ask for the name, company, and email, a drawing upload, the quantity, the material, the process or finish, and the date needed, with a details box for tolerances and specifications. Make only the fields you need to price the part required.
An RFQ, or request for quote, is the moment a visitor becomes a customer you can price. A general contact form with a name, an email, and a message box cannot carry a drawing, so your estimator writes back for the print, then the quantity, then the material, then the date. A form built for quoting asks for all of it on one screen.
| Field | What it tells the estimator | Required? |
|---|---|---|
| Name, company, and email | Who to reply to, and whether the company is already a customer | Required |
| Phone | A quick call when one question stands between you and a price | Optional |
| Drawing or model | The part, its tolerances, and its finish, in one file | Asked for, optional |
| Quantity | The lot size, and the yearly volume if it repeats | Required |
| Material | The alloy or substrate, which decides the process and the price | Required |
| Process or finish | What they want done, with a Not sure option | Optional |
| Date needed | Whether you can meet the lead time at all | Required |
| Details | Tolerances to hold, surfaces to mask, and specifications to meet | Optional |
Every manufacturing website we build carries a quote form like this, written around the fields your estimator uses.
Which drawing file types a quote form should accept#
Accept the drawing and model files your buyers send and your estimators can open. For most shops that means PDF, DXF, DWG, STEP, IGES, and STL, plus ZIP for a set of files and images for a photo of the part.
Engineers send what their CAD system exports. A form that takes only PDFs pushes the buyer back to email to send the model, and the request ends up split across two places.
| SurfTech quote form | PDF, DXF, DWG, STEP, IGES, STL, and ZIP, plus PNG and JPG images |
|---|---|
| PLI Sorting request form | PDF, Word, Excel, CSV, text, images, and ZIP, for drawings, sort criteria, and photos |
Fields that depend on your process#
Add the one or two fields your own process is priced on. A finisher needs the part material and the annual volume, a coater needs the substrate and how the part fails now, and a sorting company needs the type of project and where the parts are.
How long a quote request form should be#
Keep the required fields to the ones you need to price the part, and make the rest optional. Baymard Institute found consumer checkout forms averaged 11.3 fields in 2024 where 8 would do, and the same discipline applies to a quote form.
Baymard’s figures come from online checkout, where it found that “the number of form fields in a checkout impacts overall usability far more than the number of steps” (Baymard Institute, 2024). A quote form asks for more than a checkout does, so each required field should earn its place. A Not sure option on the process field lets a buyer ask without knowing your terms.
Spam is the other reason forms fail. On the Mechanical Finishers and PLI sites, Cloudflare Turnstile, a check that screens out bots, and a hidden field keep junk out of the sales inbox. A website for manufacturers should also send job applications to a careers page, so the quote form carries only quote requests.
What happens after an RFQ is sent#
After an RFQ is sent, the request and the drawing should reach your sales inbox at once, be logged with the page it came from, and get a reply the same day: whether you can make the part, a price or a date for one, and any questions.
- Minute 0The buyer sends the form with the drawing, quantity, material, and date.
- Minute 0The request and the file reach your sales inbox, and a row is added to your lead sheet with the page it came from.
- Within hoursThe estimator checks the process, material, size, and tolerance against what you run.
- Same dayThe buyer gets a reply: whether you can make it, a price or a date for one, and any questions.
The speed of the reply decides how many requests turn into conversations. In a Harvard Business Review test of 2,241 US companies, 37% replied to a web inquiry within an hour, 24% took more than 24 hours, and 23% never replied. Companies that tried to reach the buyer within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to have a meaningful conversation with a decision maker as those that waited even one hour longer (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, 2011).
The study is fifteen years old and publishes no industry breakdown, but most plants know the pattern: a request arrives on a Friday afternoon and waits until Monday.
Put your own quote volume, reply time, and win rate into the calculator below to see what slow and unanswered requests cost you in a year, and the full quote response calculator sets the result against the same study.
Reply by email unless the buyer asks for a call. In GlobalSpec’s 2026 survey, 59% of technical buyers said email is how they prefer to speak to a supplier’s salesperson for the first time, against 22% for a phone call (GlobalSpec, 2026).
On the sites we build, every request from the form and from the AI assistant goes to your sales inbox and is saved to an Excel lead sheet you keep, and tracking shows which page it came from. A question sent at night gets an answer from your approved pages, and anything those pages do not cover goes to a person on your team.
Where the quote form belongs on the site#
Put a quote button in the header of every page and a link to the form at the end of every process page. In our study of 66 US manufacturer home pages, 21 had no quote link on the home page at all.
A buyer who has decided to ask should not have to look for the form. Every Phillips Light Industrial site has a request button and the phone number in its header. The rest of the pages a quote form depends on are set out in our guide to the pages a manufacturing website needs, and our page on B2B website design covers the spec tables buyers check before they send anything.
Our RFQ-first manufacturing websites are built around this form, which is one part of lead generation for manufacturers. The quote form, the assistant, and the lead sheet are part of every $6,000 manufacturing website, and a shop with one or two processes gets the same form on the $2,000 starter site.
What each option costs, and how that compares with the market, is in our guide to manufacturing website cost and on the pricing page. If your current form is the problem, our website audit checks it along with the rest of the site. The lead sheet and every account stay in your company’s name, as set out under website ownership.
Questions about RFQ forms#
Four questions owners ask about RFQ forms.
What is an RFQ form?
An RFQ form is the request for quote form on a manufacturer’s website. A buyer uses it to send a drawing with the quantity, material, and date needed, so your estimator has what they need to price the part on the first read.
What should an RFQ form ask for?
It should ask for the name, company, and email, a drawing upload, the quantity, the material, and the date needed, plus a details box. Add one or two fields your own process depends on, such as the substrate for a coater or the annual volume for a finisher, and keep everything else optional.
Should the drawing upload be required?
Ask for it on every form and keep it optional. Some buyers are still waiting on a released drawing or cannot share one before an NDA is signed, and they should still be able to ask. Accept the files your buyers send, such as PDF, DXF, DWG, STEP, IGES, STL, and ZIP.
How fast should a manufacturer reply to an RFQ?
Reply the same day, even if the reply is a question. In a Harvard Business Review test of 2,241 US companies, 37% answered a web inquiry within an hour, 24% took more than 24 hours, and 23% never answered at all.
Written by someone who read the drawings first
Shopfloor Agency is led by an engineer who holds abachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and works only with US manufacturers and industrial service companies. That background is why this guide spends its time on tolerances, certifications, and what a good request for quote looks like.
- First published
- November 14, 2026
- Last checked
- November 14, 2026
- Length
- 11 minutes, 7 sections
- Price
- Free to read
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Find out which part of this guide to do first.
Tell us what you make and who buys it. We will reply with a direct answer about which part of this guide is worth doing first for your company.