The Bid Sheet
Where to find public bids around Salt Lake: the honest comparison
We sell the $99 email, so read this knowing that. Here is what every other way costs, what it covers, and the jobs where you should use one of them instead of us.
Nobody paid to be in this table, and there is no row we were asked to include. If a comparison never tells you to use somebody else, it is not a comparison — it is an advertisement wearing one.
What was scored, and why those things
Not features. The things that decide your morning:
- Does it cover buyers you can actually bid? A feed of state work is no use to a crew whose work is a district's pump station.
- What does it cost to read?
- Is there a login between you and the notice?
- Does it put closing dates in front of you, or do you have to go looking?
- Does it sell your attention — per-lead fees, upsells, your name passed around?
The comparison
| Where | Cost, as published | What it covers | When it beats us |
|---|---|---|---|
| Utah Public Procurement Placeutah.bonfirehub.com | Free — registration, email notifications and electronic responses are free | The state's own portal: state agencies plus the cities, counties, school districts, special service districts and colleges that opt in. UDOT posts its publicly advertised solicitations here too. | For any buyer who uses it, every time. It is the agency's own posting — the full document set, no lag, no middleman — and it reaches the whole state, not just your circle. What it does not do is read the agencies that never post there, or put closing dates in front of you at 6am. |
| UDOT Contractor Zoneconnect.udot.utah.gov | Free to look; registration and prequalification to bid (price not published) | UDOT-managed highway and construction work. | The official letting system: advertised projects, project previews, unofficial bid results — and prequalification is mandatory for much of that work, which is paperwork only you can do. |
| Utah Public Notice Websiteutah.gov/pmn | Not verified here — it is the state's own site | Official public notices across state agencies, counties, cities, special service districts, schools and courts, searchable by government type and entity. Bid notices sit among them. | It catches an entity that files a legal notice without ever building a bid page. It is free and it is authoritative. It is not a digest, and meetings and hearings outnumber the work. |
| Utah Legalsutahlegals.com | Free to read — "available to utahlegals.com users at no charge" | The notices Utah newspapers publish, including advertisements for bids. | Those are the legally required notices, in one searchable place, statewide, at no cost. |
| Utah APEX Acceleratorbusiness.utah.gov/apex | Free — one-on-one counseling, statewide | Help finding and winning federal, state and local work. | It is a person. Registration help, bid and RFP review, certifications — free, and better than anything we do at that part. It is not a daily feed, and it will not ring at 6am. |
| BidNet Directbidnetdirect.com | Basic $0; Local $599/yr (one state); Regional $1,199/yr (three states); National $1,999/yr; analytics add-on $499 | State and local bids from its member agencies, by state, with daily summaries. | Reach. If you want the neighbouring states in one inbox at once, or you work far outside the circle, it is built for exactly that — and it costs several times what we do. |
| DemandStarnetwork.demandstar.com | Free to search; $5 per bid package; county plan from $60/yr per county; state plan $100–$1,499/yr | Agencies in its network, including the state portal's listings. | Cheap per-county notifications, and a free tier if all you want to do is look. |
| QuestCDNquestcdn.com | Free membership; each agency sets its own per-document fee (not verified here) | Agencies that host their bid documents there, project by project. | The documents. If the job you want is on QuestCDN, the plans and the addenda are right there. |
| Utah Builders Exchange Plan Roomutahplanroom.com | Membership by phone or email; price not published | Utah public and private projects, with plans, specifications and addenda and a member login. | Pricing off real drawings — and the private side of the market that never shows up on a public notice. |
| ConstructConnectconstructconnect.com | Starter $129/month per market per seat; Professional from $199/month; Premium from $10,000/year | Commercial projects, public and private, by market, with planning-stage pipeline and bidder lists. | Private commercial work, and seeing a project months before a public notice is ever posted. |
| AGC of Utahagc-utah.org | Dues from $1,000/yr, scaled to your volume | No bid feed and no plan room that we could find on their site. | Advocacy, training and the room where the people who let work stand around. That is worth real money — it is just not a notice feed. |
| SAM.govsam.gov | Not verified here — we could not load the page | Federal contracting, nationwide. | If you want federal work, that is the system you register in. Nothing local replaces it. |
"Not verified here" means we could not confirm it from the page on the day we looked. We would rather write that than repeat a number we never read.
Where we come first — and it is not everywhere
On the five questions above, inside the circle, for a contractor who works there: a public buyer that posts work inside your radius is in the email, including the districts and agencies that only ever post on their own page. One list, no filter on our side, no login, closing dates at the top, one price with no per-lead fees and no upsell — and your name never sold on.
Outside that, use the right tool:
- Federal work? SAM.gov, then APEX for free help with it.
- Need drawings and specs to price from? A plan room. We point at notices; we do not host documents.
- Work statewide or out of state? BidNet or a plan room reaches further than we do.
- Want free? The state portal is free, and the state notice site and Utah Legals are free. Use them. We are the part that reads the ones you have no time to read, and puts the dates in front of you before they cost you a job.
What we will not claim
- We are not free. The state's own portal is, and you should be on it.
- We are not exclusive. Every notice we send is public.
- We are not a plan room, a bond broker or a lead service, and we cannot tell you what your competitors price at.
- We are not statewide or national. If your work is outside the circle, somebody else serves you better.
Sources
- utah.bonfirehub.com — participating entity categories on the state portal
- State of Utah vendor guide (PDF) — registration, notifications and electronic responses are free
- connect.udot.utah.gov — Contractor Zone: registration, prequalification, advertised projects, bid results
- UDOT purchasing — the state portal as the source for UDOT's publicly advertised solicitations
- utah.gov/pmn — the state public notice site's search by government type and entity
- utahlegals.com — notices at no charge, including advertisements for bids
- business.utah.gov/apex — free one-on-one counseling statewide
- bidnetdirect.com vendor solutions — $0 / $599 / $1,199 / $1,999 pricing and the $499 add-on
- DemandStar supplier pricing — $5 per package, county from $60/yr, state $100–$1,499/yr
- constructconnect.com/pricing — $129 per month, from $199 per month, from $10,000 per year
- utahplanroom.com — membership by phone or email; plans, specs and addenda
- AGC of Utah dues schedule (PDF) — dues from $1,000/yr
- questcdn.com — membership levels; agencies set per-document fees
The email is the easy part: every public notice we can place inside your radius, in one message, every weekday at 6am, closing dates first.
See what it costs