What Tinsel does well#
Tinsel understands that a seasonal lighting company is a cycle, not a job. The workflow strip on their home page runs from proposal through invoice, inventory prep, install and takedown to reviews. That is the right shape for a holiday shop, and none of the general contractor CRMs see it.
Three things on their site are genuinely deep. Inventory tracking deducts materials from stock as jobs are booked and warns you before you run out mid-season, which is the November problem nobody plans for in September. Automatic job routing groups jobs by geography to cut drive time. The employee portal gives crews a mobile page with a GPS time clock, photo uploads and job completion. Add reporting you can export and a proposal tool that tracks when the customer opens it, and you have a real operations system for ten users at a flat price.
I am not going to invent a weakness. GlowBid does not track inventory and does not optimize routes. If those two are the reason you are shopping, Tinsel is ahead of us on both.
Nowhere, in Tinsel. Their site describes proposals with descriptions, images and multi-year agreements, and a mockup tool for holiday lighting, but nothing that measures a house. The footage in a Tinsel proposal is a number you typed, from a tape, a laser, a wheel, or a separate measuring app.
In GlowBid the footage is the drawing. You upload a photo you took from the driveway, set the scale from something with a known length, a 16 ft garage door or a tape measurement, and draw the runs by type: roofline, ridge line, peak, ground, tree, jump. Each run carries a source tag (reference-scaled or manual) and a confidence level. Runs angled away from the camera get a foreshortening warning so you type the tape length instead. The quote says the measurement is a photo estimate to be confirmed on site. Change the drawing and the footage, the bill of materials and the price change with it. The free roofline tool is that canvas with no login, and the measuring guide explains the reference method.
What happens after the customer signs a 3-year agreement?#
This is the difference I built the product for. Tinsel's proposals can include multi-year agreements. Their site does not say what the system does with that agreement once it is signed, so I will not guess; what I can say is that in a general CRM the answer is usually "you remember." Next September you find last year's proposal, copy it, adjust the price, and hope you did not miss a house.
In GlowBid a multi-year seasonal lease is its own agreement type, next to permanent one-time and seasonal service on customer-owned lights. You pick the term (1, 3 or 5 seasons) and a schedule: flat, declining rent-to-own, or an escalator percent. The homeowner signs on their phone and pays the deposit. On signing, GlowBid creates the install job and the takedown job for every season in the term. A 3-season lease is six jobs on the board the day it is signed, and takedown is a job with a date, not a January afterthought. The sample clause wording ships with a plain notice that it is not legal advice, and you edit your own clauses. The multi-year lease template shows every clause and why it exists.
The same house, leased in GlowBid#
A two-storey with a 150 ft front roofline and two peaks, seasonal lights supplied, installed, taken down and stored by us. In GlowBid I draw the runs on the photo and price them on a custom product line I call "seasonal lease" (these are example rates on a custom line; GlowBid's default card ships with track, no-track and C9 seasonal lines and every installer sets their own):
| Line |
Footage |
Rate |
Season price |
| Roofline, seasonal lease |
150 ft |
$14/ft |
$2,100 |
| Peaks (2), seasonal lease |
25 ft |
$16/ft |
$400 |
| Season 1 |
|
|
$2,500 |
Term: 3 seasons, declining rent-to-own at 10 percent a season. Season 1 is $2,500, season 2 is $2,250, season 3 is $2,025, and the term total is $6,775. The 30 percent deposit on season 1 is $750, paid on Stripe when the homeowner signs on their phone. The moment it is signed, six jobs exist: install and takedown for each of the three seasons, each invoiced from its own job. Price your own house in the free tool and then set the schedule in the product.
Pricing, honestly#
Tinsel is $828 a year for ten users, and more if you pay monthly ($1,068 over twelve months at $89). GlowBid Core is $299 a year at the founding price, $499 regular, or $69 a month, and it covers measuring, the rate card, quote PDFs, e-signature, deposits, invoices, texting and all three agreement types. Pro adds the pipeline CRM with Takedown and Re-book stages, follow-up sequences and quote-view tracking at $499 founding ($899 regular, $119 a month). Ultimate adds the crew side, the production board, work orders and photo-gated checklists, at $699 founding ($1,299 regular, $169 a month).
Like for like, Tinsel's operations depth lines up against GlowBid Ultimate, and Tinsel is $129 more a year than Ultimate at the founding price and $471 less than Ultimate at the regular price. Founding pricing is for the first 100 companies and holds while the subscription stays continuous. Both are USD. See founding pricing.
When Tinsel is the right call#
Choose Tinsel if you run a seasonal-only shop with a storage room, several crews and a real inventory problem. If restock alerts and geographic routing would save you a crew-day a week in December, that is worth more than the price gap. Choose Tinsel if you already measure with a laser on every sales visit and do not want a photo step. And choose Tinsel if you need a proven operations tool this November; GlowBid is open now, but nobody has run a season on it yet. I would rather say that than have you find out.
Moving from Tinsel to GlowBid#
1. Time it to the end of your term. Tinsel's terms say paid fees are non-refundable, so if you are annual, switch at renewal.
2. Export your customers. Names, addresses, phone, email, last season's price and what is in storage for them, as a spreadsheet. There is no Tinsel importer in GlowBid and I am not promising one.
3. Start with the free tool. Photograph the next house, drop it in the free roofline tool, set the scale, draw the runs. If that feels right, the product will.
4. Build the rate card. Per-foot rates by run type and product line, premiums for peaks, storeys and rush, add-ons, minimum job, deposit rule, tax, and a custom line for your lease if you sell one. Fifteen minutes if the numbers exist.
5. Set the lease defaults once. Term, schedule, what is included (product, maintenance, takedown, storage) and your own clause wording. Every lease after that inherits them.
6. Quote the first renewals in GlowBid. Your first re-books of the season are the easiest houses to draw, because you already know the footage and can check the drawing against it.
Mistakes I see with seasonal agreements#
- Copying last year's proposal without a price change. Flat pricing for three seasons while product and fuel go up. Fix: put the escalator in the agreement, not in a note to yourself.
- Calling a one-season deal a lease. It is a service agreement with a return clause. Fix: one season is seasonal service; the lease starts at three.
- No takedown date in the agreement. February phone calls. Fix: a takedown window in the clause and a takedown job on the board.
- Storing lights with no condition log. A dead strand in October becomes an argument about whose fault. Fix: photo and note at takedown, and a storage liability cap in dollars.
- Pricing the lease before measuring. A "typical house" price on a 190 ft roofline. Fix: draw it first, then set the schedule from the drawing.
- Forgetting the deposit covers season 1 only. Later seasons need their own invoice, sent before the crew is booked. Fix: each season's job carries its own invoice.
The pitch#
Tinsel is a real operations system for a seasonal shop, and if inventory and routing are your bottleneck, buy it. GlowBid is for the installer whose bottleneck is the front of the job: getting from a photo to a measured, priced, signed and funded agreement in one sitting, and never rebuilding a multi-year customer by hand again. The founding price is open to the first 100 companies, the trial is 7 days with no card, and the free tool is open now.