Questions to ask every vendor — including us.
Feature lists look alike on paper. Daily reality is where systems separate — and these questions find it in a demo. Build a scorecard from ours, add your own, print it, and score the answers while they’re fresh.
Decide from notes, not memory.
Score each vendor on the same questions while the answers are fresh, and the shortlist sorts itself.
Print one scorecard
Build the list you want, name your vendors, and print it. One sheet covers your whole shortlist.
Ask them all
Ask the same questions in the same order. Answers you can line up side by side are the point.
Score it before you leave
Out of 5 by default — pick a different scale if you’d rather. What matters is scoring while the answers are fresh.
Ask every vendor the same ones.
None of them are trick questions. They’re the ones where a vendor either shows you something concrete or starts talking around it.
- “How many screens before a new plant is sellable?” Count the setup steps from “new variety” to “on the availability list.”
- “Here’s our most nursery-specific workflow — show it, don’t describe it.” Bring your hardest one. Watching it built tells you more than any feature table.
- “What does your AI actually do?” Ask whether it finishes a task — like turning an emailed order into a draft — or answers questions about your data. And ask whether it’s shipped or still in beta.
- “How do invoices reach QuickBooks — a running sync, or an export I have to remember?” And ask whether each sync leaves a record you can check later.
- “What does support look like? Am I billed per phone call?” Then ask the same about customizations. It’s a quick question, and the answer tells you how often your team will actually pick up the phone.
- “If we were ready today, how long does onboarding and implementation take?” Then ask what it costs, in writing — and what happens to your data if you leave.
- “Do your customers keep a spreadsheet running next to the system?” Ask their references directly — it’s the single most revealing question about whether the numbers can be trusted.
We publish these because we think they’re a helpful measuring stick — whoever you end up choosing.
Score every vendor on the same questions.
Print it, fill it in during the demo, and compare afterwards.
Rename the vendors, reorder with the arrows, drop what doesn’t apply, and add your own. We’ve put ourselves in the first column — score us on the same sheet, or clear it. Your version is saved in this browser and prints on its own page.
| Question | Plantiful | Vendor 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Steps to make a plant sellable | ||
| 2 My biggest pain point, shown live | ||
| 3 What the AI actually does | ||
| 4 How invoices reach QuickBooks | ||
| 5 What support looks like and costs | ||
| 6 Onboarding and implementation | ||
| 7 The parallel spreadsheet | ||
| Total out of 35 |
Questions about evaluating
Practical questions growers ask us while they're in the middle of choosing — answered the way we'd answer them on a call.
How long should choosing take?
Most nurseries take a few weeks to a couple of months from first demo to decision. We recommend engaging the different people on your team who will actually use the system — office staff, growers, whoever picks and ships — so everyone is on the same page before you choose rather than after.
What should I ask a reference that I cannot ask a salesperson?
Ask what they still do outside the system, and what the last thing that went wrong was. Vendors answer questions about capability; references answer questions about daily reality. The most useful one is whether anyone keeps a spreadsheet running alongside the system to trust the counts.
The demo looked great. How do I know it holds up?
Ask them to build your hardest workflow live rather than describing it — the one with the exception everyone in your office knows about. Rehearsed demos cover the common path. Watching someone work through your edge case shows you both the software and what their team is like to work with.
Should I expect pricing in writing before I commit?
Yes — subscription, onboarding, and support, itemized. Vendors price support and onboarding differently: ours includes support with no per-call or per-customization fees, and quotes onboarding separately and up front. Ask everyone you are considering for that same split in writing. One who will not put implementation cost and timeline on paper is telling you something useful.
How many systems should I seriously evaluate?
Fewer than you might think. Most nurseries land on a short list of two or three, and what matters from there is depth rather than breadth: the same questions asked of each, your hardest workflow shown live, and reference calls with nurseries your size. A long list of shallow demos mostly tells you which one you saw last. We would rather be looked at closely than briefly.
Does a longer feature list mean a better system?
No. Feature lists are close to a draw across many systems, and length mostly reflects age. What separates them is whether your team can find what they need, get through the day without the system in the way, and trust the numbers in season. A feature nobody can find is not a feature — that is what these questions are testing for.
Ask us the same questions.
Book a walkthrough and bring your hardest workflow. We'll show it rather than describe it — and tell you where we don't fit.