The Instant Quote Widget

The Instant Quote Widget is a customer-facing form you embed on any website. Visitors upload their STL files, pick a material, and see an instant price — then send you a request that lands straight in your Printforge inbox, ready to turn into a quote or a job. It's a hands-off way to capture leads and pre-priced work while you sleep.

Create a quote link

Go to the Instant Quotes page and click Create Link. The only required field is a Label (something like "Main website widget") so you can tell your links apart. From there you can tune how it prices and looks:

• Pricing — markup, labour minutes, minimum price, shipping options, and which materials customers can choose
• Display — show or hide dimensions, weight, the price breakdown, your contact details and more
• Appearance — colour pickers to match your brand
• Community Free Quote — an optional mode with open days, hours and submission limits for free or charity work

New links are active straight away. You can create as many as you need — for example, a different link per campaign or landing page.

Embed it on your website

Each link is a card with a View submissions button and a "..." menu that has everything you need to share it:

• Copy link URL — the direct link to the widget
• Preview widget — open it exactly as a customer sees it
• Copy embed code — a ready-made snippet to paste into your site
• Edit link, Activate / Deactivate, and Delete link

Paste the embed code into your site and the widget appears inline and resizes itself to fit — no fixed height to fiddle with. The How to embed on your website guide at the bottom of the page has step-by-step instructions for Shopify, WordPress, Wix, Squarespace and plain HTML sites.

What your customer does

The widget walks visitors through three steps:

• Upload — drop in one or more STL files. Each is measured in the browser (weight, print time, size) with a live 3D preview.
• Material — choose a material and infill; the price updates instantly.
• Details — review the cart total, pick a shipping option, and enter name, email and notes to submit the request. If you take card payments, they can pay on the spot.

Uploading several files at once

Customers don't have to submit one part at a time. They can drag in multiple STL files together — each is added to a cart and priced — and send them all in a single request. In your inbox those parts stay grouped as one request with a "parts" expander, so a multi-part order arrives tidy rather than scattered across separate rows. Anything that isn't an STL is skipped and flagged.

How submissions arrive

Submissions show up under each link on the Instant Quotes page, and four tiles at the top summarise them at a glance: New requests, Reviewed, Quoted and Active links. Each request moves through statuses of Pending, Reviewed and Quoted (paid widget orders show as Paid). Per request you can Download the files, mark it Reviewed, turn it into a Quote or a Job, save the sender as a Customer, or Dismiss it.

Merge separate submissions

Sometimes the same customer sends a few requests separately. Printforge spots this and shows a banner — "N requests from [name] — combine into one order?" — with Merge and Quote or Merge and Job buttons, so you price everything together in one go.

You can also merge by hand: click Select to merge, tick two or more requests, and use the sticky bar at the top to combine them. Merging rolls every part into a single quote or job — the prices add up and all the files come across. If you've selected requests from different email addresses, Printforge asks you to confirm before combining them.

What you need

The Instant Quote Widget is available from the Maker plan up. Card payments in the widget need Stripe connected, and if you want to price a specific customer's file yourself, see Creating a Quote.