How to Learn Electrical Estimating Online (No Classroom Needed)
You can learn electrical estimating from your own office or kitchen table, without ever sitting in a classroom. Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software built its own online school for Electrical Estimating specifically for that reason, so electricians, project managers, and even people with no electrical background could learn to price jobs correctly on their own schedule. This isn’t a theory. It’s how the company has trained electrical contractors for years, and it’s still how new students learn today.
What Is Electrical Estimating, and Why Do So Many Electricians Learn It the Hard Way?
Electrical estimating is the process of figuring out what an electrical job will actually cost before you agree to do it, materials, labor, overhead, and profit all worked out ahead of time so you don’t lose money on the job. Most electricians never get taught this in a classroom. They learn it by trial and error, usually after underbidding a job and eating the loss themselves.
That’s exactly the gap that led to the creation of this company back around 1989, when it started as 1st Choice Electrical Estimating Software, known at the time as 1CEES. The very first product, the First Choice Budget Estimator, was built for people who weren’t well-versed in electrical estimating or cost estimation at all. It let someone with very little knowledge of electrical work still arrive at a reasonable electrical price. That single idea, that estimating could be taught, not just inherited, has shaped everything the company has built since.
Electrical estimating done right isn’t a talent some contractors are born with; it’s a skill that can be taught step by step, even to someone starting from zero.
How Did an Online School for Electrical Estimating Get Started?
Once the First Choice Budget Estimator was discontinued, it became clear there was a real need for entry-level electrical estimating and bidding software that could also teach the person using it. That need led to the 1CEES System for Commercial Electrical Estimating and the 1CEES Residential Electrical Estimator, which was actually the first electrical bidding software built specifically for residential electricians.
Those 1CEES programs weren’t just calculators. They were teaching aids that helped electrical contractors move away from guesswork and toward a repeatable estimating process. As more contractors used them and asked for more capability, the company retired the 1CEES product line and shifted entirely to what it sells today: The Best Bid Electrical Estimating product line, built around the same goal: sensible, learnable estimating for electrical contractors.
The Best Bid Online School for Electrical Estimating grew directly out of that history. It exists because the software alone was never the whole answer; people also needed to understand why an estimate is built a certain way, not just which buttons to press.
What Do You Actually Learn in an Online Electrical Estimating Course?
The Online School for Electrical Estimating focuses on two things: how to structure an estimate and how to price a project accurately. Those sound simple, but they’re the two things that separate a contractor who wins profitable work from one who’s constantly guessing.
Structuring an estimate means learning how to break a job down the way an electrician actually thinks about it, not the way a generic accounting program organizes numbers. Best Bid’s software modules are built around electrical terminology on purpose, so a student is never stuck translating unfamiliar software language into what they already know from the field.
Pricing accurately means understanding every piece that goes into a number before it ever reaches a customer: material costs, labor hours, labor difficulty, overhead, profit, bonds, and engineering. Students also learn to account for the costs that get forgotten, things like remote office charges, per diem, fuel, lifts, temp power, permits, and supervision, because those “other costs” are often where profit quietly disappears.
An estimate is only as good as the structure behind it, and that structure is exactly what the Online School for Electrical Estimating is designed to teach.
Do You Need Classroom Experience to Learn Electrical Estimating Online?
No, and this is one of the core ideas behind how the school was designed. The course provides useful information for anyone from a housewife to a seasoned electrical estimator, because every course is designed around the specific needs of the student rather than a fixed classroom curriculum.
That flexibility matters for two very different kinds of learners:
- Someone brand new to the trade side of estimating who needs to start from the basics of how a bid comes together.
- An experienced electrician or project manager who already understands the fieldwork but has never been formally taught how to estimate or price a job.
Companies don’t have to send people through this one at a time either. Under the Company Plan, project managers and estimators can attend the school together, which means an entire office can get trained on the same process instead of everyone estimating a slightly different way.
How Does Electrical Estimating Software Fit Into Learning Electrical Estimating Online?
Learning to estimate and using electrical estimating software aren’t two separate steps at Best Bid, they happen together. The company currently offers two main products: Best Bid Next Generation and Best Bid Hybrid Pro.
Best Bid Next Generation is the advanced level of the product line, built for experienced users who want more products, more options, and more control over their estimates. Best Bid Hybrid Pro has been the company’s flagship software for years and was designed specifically to build estimates with the fewest possible keystrokes, which keeps the learning curve short for newer users.
Both products were built by a team of electrical contractors who estimate electrical projects daily, not by programmers who have never bid a job. That distinction shows up in small but important details, like how the software groups Custom Assemblies (special groups of products a contractor can save and reuse, such as grounding materials, transformer stands, or seismic material) instead of forcing a student to dig through page after page of generic products to find what they need.
The software also connects to real pricing data through a partnership with Esmarts’ NetPak, giving users access to the Industry Data Warehouse, manufacturer product data, and real-time distributor pricing. For a student learning online, that means the numbers they’re practicing with reflect real, current material costs, not outdated placeholder pricing.
When the software and the training are built by the same people who estimate jobs for a living, students learn the software and the skill at the same time instead of learning one and struggling to apply it to the other.
What Makes Best Bid Different From Other Electrical Estimating Software?
A lot of electrical bidding software on the market was built by computer programmers with no hands-on electrical experience, people who have never estimated an electrical project in their life. That shows up as software that’s cumbersome to learn, expensive, and slow, which is precisely the problem Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software set out to fix.
Every Best Bid product comes with the same core commitments:
- Unlimited license
- Free technical support
- Lifetime software updates
- One-time fee, and the contractor owns the software
There are no commission fees, no technical support charges, no annual update costs, and no additional license fees layered on top. The company also offers interest-free financing options so the cost of learning and using the software doesn’t become a barrier on its own.
Best Bid’s advanced substitutions are another example of how the software mirrors real electrical decision-making. If a student enters ½” EMT and needs to switch it to ¾” EMT, or wants to change copper conductors to aluminum, that substitution happens with a single click, the same kind of value-engineering decision an estimator makes constantly on real jobs.
How Do I Get Started Learning Electrical Estimating Online With the Best Bid?
Getting started doesn’t require signing up for a semester or committing to a fixed schedule. A few practical steps make the process straightforward:
- Visit the Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software page to see how the Next Generation and Hybrid Pro products differ, so you know which fits where you are today.
- Request a free electrical estimating consultation to talk through your current estimating process and where the gaps are.
- Read the About Us page to understand the company’s history and why the Online School was built the way it was.
- Check the FAQ for quick answers before your first conversation.
- Contact the company directly through the Contact Us page or by calling 800-941-7028 to ask about enrollment, including the Company Plan if you’re training more than one person.
- If you run a larger operation, look at the dedicated page for electrical estimating software for large contractors to see how the same training and software scale up.
Contractors who want ongoing tips can also follow the Best Bid blog for continued learning after the initial course, or connect on LinkedIn, Facebook, or the Best Bid YouTube channel to see the software in action before enrolling.
What Happens After the Course? Support, Mentoring, and Freelance Help
Finishing the Online School for Electrical Estimating isn’t the end of the relationship with Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software. The company describes its role as going beyond simply supplying software, the goal is a supportive partnership for a better future, which includes software, online classes, freelance estimating, drafting, and mentoring under one roof.
That matters because estimating skills don’t stop developing the day a course ends. A new estimator might finish the school confident in small residential jobs but still unsure how to structure a large commercial bid. Rather than leaving that person to figure it out alone, Best Bid also offers freelance estimating and drafting services, so if a contractor runs out of time on a project, or wants a second set of eyes on a bid while they’re still building confidence, they don’t have to pass up the work.
This is also where Best Bid’s drafting tool, Accura CADD PDF Draw, fits into the bigger picture. It was introduced as a way to create and modify PDF drawings with precision, and it works alongside the estimating side of the business so a student learning to estimate isn’t stuck relying on a separate, unrelated drafting program.
Training doesn’t end when the course does, mentoring, freelance estimating, and drafting support are built into the same relationship as the Online School for Electrical Estimating.
Key Takeaways
- Electrical estimating can be learned entirely online, without classroom attendance, through the Best Bid Online School for Electrical Estimating.
- The school traces back to 1989 and the original 1CEES First Choice Budget Estimator, which was built to help people with little estimating knowledge produce accurate electrical pricing.
- Courses are tailored to the individual student, whether that’s someone brand new to estimating or a seasoned professional sharpening their process.
- Best Bid’s software, Next Generation and Hybrid Pro, was built by electrical contractors, not outside programmers, so the training and the tool speak the same language.
- Every Best Bid product includes an unlimited license, free technical support, and lifetime updates for a one-time fee, with no commission or annual charges added later.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Do I need any electrical background to start the online course?
No. The course is designed for a range of students, from a housewife with no electrical background to a seasoned electrical estimator, and each course is shaped around the individual student’s needs.
- Can my whole office go through training together?
Yes. The Company Plan allows project managers and estimators from the same company to attend the school together, so a team learns one consistent estimating process instead of several different habits.
- What’s the difference between Best Bid Next Generation and Best Bid Hybrid Pro? Best Bid Next Generation is the more advanced product, offering more products, options, and control for experienced users, while Best Bid Hybrid Pro is the long-standing flagship product built to create estimates with the fewest possible keystrokes.
- Does the training cover pricing, or just how to use the software?
Both. Students learn how to structure an estimate the way an electrician thinks about a job, and how to price it accurately, including material, labor, labor difficulty, overhead, profit, and often-forgotten indirect costs like permits, per diem, and supervision.
- What if I want to see the software before enrolling in the course?
You can request a free electrical estimating consultation or call 800-941-7028 to schedule a walkthrough before committing to anything.
About the author: Steve Griffin is a designer and trainer at Best Bid Electrical Estimating Software, the company behind the Best Bid Next Generation and Best Bid Hybrid Pro estimating platforms and the Online School for Electrical Estimating. Connect with Steve and Best Bid on LinkedIn, or reach the company directly at 800-941-7028 or through the Contact Us page.
