Plain numbers
What does control panel design software actually cost?
Vendors in this market mostly do not publish prices, which tells you something by itself. Here is the honest lay of the land for a small shop deciding what to run.
The enterprise tier
EPLAN Electric P8 (with Pro Panel for 3D layout), Zuken E3.series, SolidWorks Electrical — quotes vary by region and bundle, but small shops consistently report totals in the thousands per seat per year once maintenance is in. Add the training course and the parts-database housekeeping and the first-year cost of one seat approaches a good month's revenue for a three-person shop. For enterprises the depth pays; below a certain size it never does.
The middle tier
AutoCAD Electrical sits around the low thousands per year, and AutoCAD LT — what many shops actually use — around $60–70/month. But LT is a drafting board, not a panel tool: no parts intelligence, no wiring schedule, no BOM. Which leads to…
The "free" workflow
LT for the layout, a spreadsheet for the BOM, a printout with pen marks for the wiring. Licence cost: almost nothing. Real cost: the three documents disagree by Thursday, the rework when a duct clash reaches the bench, and the hour someone spends reconciling the BOM against the board every single job. Shops do not leave this workflow because it is cheap — they leave it because it is not.
Where PanelPro sits
| Tier | Price | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 — no card, no time limit | Five projects. Run a real job through it end to end. |
| Pro | $39 / month | The working tool: unlimited projects, cloud library, drawings, schedules, BOM. |
| Shop | $59 / month | Adds build tracking — the QR share link with live progress from the floor. |
Prices are beta pricing, published on the pricing section — no "contact sales" step, deliberately. A year of Pro costs less than the onboarding course for the enterprise packages.