The differences between Buildr and Cosential for preconstruction

Buildr and Cosential are both construction-specific CRMs that are the industry-leading options for general contractors' preconstruction platforms. As you might expect, there is plenty of feature overlap between the two, as well as enough differences that make them both very distinct.

Either platform will be a suitable CRM option for general contractors depending on what your company's goals are.

Let's dive into the similarities and differences of Buildr and Cosential, shall we?

Technical differences (and similarities)

Both Buildr and Cosential are cloud-based platforms with automatic data syncing and fully built mobile apps so you can keep your opportunities and contacts updated even if you're out in the field.

Buildr and Cosential each have an open API, meaning they can integrate with any piece of software in existence.

Implementation times between the two vary somewhat. From our customers that have used Cosential in the past, we've heard ranges of 3, 6, even 12 months to implement, with the worst case being "We never got fully implemented." Based on products, Buildr implementation takes about a month. Cosential implementation can take as little as one month.

Interactivity

"We used Cosential by Unanet as our CRM for a few years before switching to Buildr," said one of our general contractor clients, WPC. "The biggest improvements were the intuitiveness, visibility, and the ease-of-collaboration."

Aesthetically, the two apps differ immensely as Buildr features a clean, simple, and modern UI verses Cosential's more old school layout which can make the user experience feel clunky and complicated. Cosential offers both named user and firmwide licensing. Meanwhile, Buildr's emphasis is more on collaboration and flexibility with its unlimited users for every subscription plan.

Costs and Fees

Buildr and Cosential differ heavily as far as added payments. Implementation, integrations, and real-time support are free with Buildr while Cosential will bill your account if your needed help falls outside the boundaries of "standard support." Buildr also features flexible monthly payment options for the GCs that prefer to test drive softwares before committing to them longterm.

Client Relationship Management (CRM)

As far as traditional CRM features go, Buildr and Cosential match up pretty closely. Users of both platforms can benefit from revenue forecasting, intuitive dashboards, board views, team member interaction, and reports, among others.

The primary though minor difference between the two are Buildr's unlimited custom fields compared with Cosential's thousands.

Workforce Planning

For general contractors looking for out-of-the-box workforce planning tools and dashboards inside of their CRM, Buildr is going to be the one that checks that box. To learn more about the benefits of consolidating your preconstruction processes, be sure to check out our blog Combining CRM with Workforce Planning: Redefining Preconstruction Excellence.

Construction-specific features

For general contractors choosing between horizontal and vertical CRMs, both Buildr and Cosential are vertical, meaning they're both built with the construction workflow in mind. Both require significantly less customization upfront vs. the Hubspots and Salesforces of the world.

Buildr is more specific to general contractors while Cosential divides its audience across architecture, engineering, and construction. Cosential's proposal generation and Buildr's general contractor workflow-expert customer success team are the main differences in this category.

In Conclusion

As we said in the header, both CRMs are perfectly suitable choices for general contractors looking to take their preconstruction to the next level. The ability to have built-in workforce planning capability, better collaboration, better user experience, and higher quality (and zero cost) of customer support are the main reasons why Buildr partners that are ex-Cosential tell us they decided to jump ship.

Primary shortcomings of Cosential for general contractors

• Not user-friendly due to complicated, outdated user-interface
• Low collaboration due to lack of unlimited seats for every subscription and a complicated, outdated user-interface
• Potential added costs for non-standard support
• No monthly payment options
• No workforce planning functionality
• Broader AEC target market rather that specifically general contractors

Cosential partners that opt to stay usually tell us "It's just what we've always used and it feels like it would be too complicated to change our process." This is the main reason we spent so much time making it as easy as possible to upload your previous CRM's customer data into Buildr to get you up and running in no time — feeling like you're too ingrained in a certain process doesn't have to be a reason to not level up your preconstruction.

To learn more about benefits of construction CRM and choosing the right one for your company, check out our blog.

For a personalized walkthrough of the Buildr platform by a product expert, see a demo.