We are a small Swiss software company in Herisau. Since 2019, we have focused exclusively on a single problem: the days a manufacturer loses between receiving an enquiry and sending out a price. steelit is the result. It is the only product we sell, and sheet metal manufacturers across the DACH region use it to quote every day.
Manufacturers running press brakes and fibre lasers were pricing the work those machines would do out of an Excel that one person maintained and nobody else could fully read. In 2019, in Herisau, we decided that the calculation itself was the product worth building.
The machines on the shop floor had been modernised twice over. The calculation in the office in front of them was still a spreadsheet, and it took days.
Pricing logic built up over years sat in a workbook belonging to whoever had built it. New estimators inherited formulas they could not audit, unusual parts turned into a phone call to the one person who knew, and holidays became a bottleneck the whole order book felt.
Put the calculation where the whole team can see it, run it and check it.
Companies were losing work they were perfectly equipped to make, at prices they were perfectly able to meet, because someone else replied on Tuesday and they replied on Friday. Speed was not an engineering problem in these companies. It was a commercial one, sitting in the office.
Let the file do the reading, so the answer goes back the same day.
That produced the one deliberate choice this company is built on. The established tools in this market answer the problem with more detail. We went the other way on purpose. steelit is simpler than they are, because detail you do not need is time you do not have, and because a quote nobody but a specialist can produce is not really a quoting system, it is a dependency.
Values are cheap to write and easy to swap between companies. Each of these four is followed by the thing in the product that proves it. If a belief had nothing behind it, it is not on this page.
Our tagline is not a mood, it is a specification: We love speed! The measure that matters to a manufacturer is the hours between an enquiry landing in the inbox and a price going back out. That number is the one we measure against.
About 90% of the quote is read directly from the CAD file, so quoting takes minutes rather than days.
A quote should be something a junior estimator can produce alone and a managing director can check in a minute. Complexity in a quoting tool is not rigour. It is a bottleneck with a good interface, and it always lands on the same overloaded person.
Deliberately less detailed than the established tools: fewer inputs, defensible numbers, anyone on the team.
Your rules, not ours. A manufacturer's way of calculating represents the accumulated knowledge of what its machines, materials, and technology actually cost. Software should follow that method rather than quietly replacing it with someone else's.
Rates, surcharges and calculation logic are configured to your method, customisable rather than prescriptive.
Every hour spent typing the same numbers into a second system is an hour nobody is doing a quote. And software priced per seat quietly penalizes a manufacturer for growing, which is precisely the wrong moment to be taxed.
One price per company, every user included. Quotes hand over to the ERP instead of being typed twice.
One product, one industry problem, since 2019. We have turned down the breadth on purpose: depth in sheet metal calculation is the thing a manufacturer is actually buying, and it is the only thing our week goes into.
steelit is quoting software for sheet metal and steel fabrication.
A company uploads a STEP or DXF file, a single part or a full assembly. steelit reads the geometry directly: material and thickness, cut contours and pierces, every bend, and how the part nests on the sheet sizes you actually stock. It then prices each operation at your own machine rates, material costs and margin rules, not at a generic table. What comes back, in minutes, is an itemised, branded quote with its full cost breakdown, ready to send to your customer.
Geometry, material, bend count and nesting, read from the uploaded STEP or DXF file. The geometry reading is built on WiCAM technology together with AI, not on an engine of our own, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
A branded quote and the calculation behind it: material, machine time, markup and margin, itemised so the number can be defended in front of the customer who asks about it.
An ERP, where a shop runs one. It is optional, not assumed. Where it exists, quotes, bills of materials and routing can be handed over instead of retyped.
NC code, CAM nesting, or an ERP of our own. Those are other companies' jobs, done well by them, and the honest answer is more useful to you than an ambitious one.
Built for metal, proven in textiles. Filtex and Lantal Textiles quote with steelit too.
Explore the steelit platform, CPQ software for manufacturing or laser cutting quoting software.
At Blechexpo/Schweisstec 2025, figure it ag took second place in Sheet Metal, Tube and Profile Processing, out of more than 50 entrants and on a shortlist with Trumpf and Prima Power.
We are not going to pretend that is a small thing, and we are not going to dress it up either. The result is a matter of public record, which is exactly why it is worth more than an adjective.
You have met the team. The next step is half an hour and a part of your own. Upload it, watch steelit read it, and see the price come out with the breakdown behind it. If it does not convince you, you have lost thirty minutes and learned what your own file contains.
From ten-person companies to groups the size of Liebherr, it is the same software at the same speed. Nobody is given a different version, and nobody is given a different price list.
FILTEXLANTALRethought its quoting around a bidirectional ERP interface and STEP file upload, replacing the spreadsheets the calculation had been running on.
Read the case studyMoved its calculation off Excel and onto steelit. The case study is filed, in the company’s own words, under “Bye, bye Excel”.
Read the case studyUses a quote calculator built for steel beams, so the profile work is priced on the same terms as the sheet metal beside it.
Read the case studySwiss quality and reliability, Appenzell ingenuity. We are based in eastern Switzerland and work mainly with manufacturers across the DACH region, though the software is in use beyond it. The phone number below is answered by one of the four people above.
