Buildr vs. Unanet CRM: Why Buildr is a Unanet CRM Alternative
Buildr is a Unanet CRM alternative built specifically for preconstruction. Compare features across CRM, estimating, bid management, workforce planning, and AI.
Start TrialWhat is Unanet CRM by Cosential?
Unanet CRM (formerly Cosential) is a CRM platform for the AEC industry. It helps architecture, engineering, and construction firms manage contacts, track opportunities, and automate proposals. Unanet CRM is built broadly for the AEC market, with particular strength in proposal automation, government contracting, and integrations with AEC accounting software like Deltek and CMiC.
Why Look for a Unanet CRM by Cosential Alternative?
Buildr is the AI preconstruction workspace built specifically for general contractors from day one. It’s a single platform powered by Kit, Buildr’s AI agent: Buildr connects your precon data, and Kit turns it into action. It handles the full scope of winning work and staffing projects: nurturing client relationships from leads to repeat customers, managing pursuit pipelines, tracking workforce capacity and making the most strategic assignments, and making go/no-go decisions based on real data.
Unanet CRM is part of a broader ERP and CRM suite built for the AEC market as a whole. Buildr takes the opposite approach: a purpose-built precon workspace where an AI agent lives inside the pursuits, estimates, bids, and staffing it acts on. Most software in this space still treats AI as a chatbot you query. Kit is an agent: it plans a multi-step task, works through the steps across your precon data, and brings you the result to approve. That’s the difference between answering questions and doing the work, and it’s where preconstruction is heading.
CRM is just the beginning. In Buildr, your relationships connect directly to your estimating, your bidding, and your workforce planning. When an architect calls about a new project, you see every past collaboration, your win rate with that client, and which estimators have the relationship and availability to staff it. That’s what happens when CRM is part of an integrated preconstruction workflow, not a standalone contact database.
Everything in Buildr speaks GC: the vocabulary, the logic, the priorities. Just the tools general contractors need to win more of the right work. That mindset is why GCs look to Buildr as a Unanet CRM alternative.
What Buildr Offers: Products, Features, Benefits, and Most Common Use Cases
Client Relationship Management (Construction CRM)
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Native construction CRM | ✓ Yes |
| Contact history across all pursuits | ✓ Yes |
| Relationship strength tracking | ✓ Yes |
| Touchpoint and bid history | ✓ Yes |
| Pipeline and pursuit tracking | ✓ Yes |
| Board view (Kanban) | ✓ Yes |
| Activities logged | Calls, emails, meetings, notes, custom |
| Task management & assigning | ✓ Yes |
| Notifications | ✓ Yes |
| Comments & @mentions | ✓ Yes |
| Saved views (personal & shared) | ✓ Yes |
| Custom fields | Unlimited |
Buildr’s CRM is built for contractors who treat preconstruction as a competitive advantage. Track relationships with owners, architects, and repeat clients across years of pursuits. This isn’t a project contact list. It’s institutional memory for your business development.
Relationship strength tracking shows you at a glance which clients need attention and which relationships are thriving. When an architect you’ve worked with calls about a new project, you instantly see every past collaboration. Your BD intel and estimating history, finally in one place.
Construction-Specific & Integrations
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 integration | Email, calendar, tasks sync |
| Email logging (BCC/Forward) | ✓ Yes |
| Procore SSO | ✓ Yes |
| Leads module | ✓ Yes |
| Go/No Go templates & customization | ✓ Yes |
| Account calendar / Bid board | ✓ Yes |
| Marketing asset archive | ✓ Yes |
| Divisions (multi-office support) | ✓ Yes |
| Merge companies (duplicate management) | ✓ Yes |
| Custom activities | ✓ Yes |
Native Microsoft 365 integration syncs your email, calendar, and tasks automatically, with no manual logging or copy-pasting between systems. For teams not on M365, BCC and forward-to-CRM options keep everything captured.
Estimating & Budgeting
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Collaborative budgeting | ✓ Yes |
| Budget change requests & approvals | ✓ Yes |
| Value engineering tracking | ✓ Yes |
| Budget milestones (DD, CD, GMP) | ✓ Yes |
| Budget comparison over time | ✓ Yes |
| Target budget tracking | ✓ Yes |
| Historical cost database (Cost Model) | ✓ Yes |
| AI budget assistant | ✓ Yes |
| Drawing revision comparison | ✓ Yes |
| Win rate analytics | ✓ Yes |
| Mobile estimating | ✓ Yes |
With Buildr’s Estimating, budget change requests let your team propose modifications without touching the main budget until approved. That’s perfect for getting sign-off from lead estimators or keeping multiple people working without stepping on each other. Track value engineering options side-by-side and see the budget impact before you commit. Budget milestones capture snapshots at DD, CD, and GMP so you can compare how estimates evolved and feed that data into your Cost Model for future projects.
Import budget line items directly into bid packages as scope items. When bids come back, level them with AI that flags exclusions and pricing outliers. Award the winner and push the numbers back to your budget. No re-keying, no spreadsheet gymnastics. Drawing revision comparison shows exactly what changed between sets so estimators can adjust pricing in real time.
Bidding & Bid Management
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Bid packages & ITB management | ✓ Yes |
| Trade partner bidding portal (no login) | ✓ Yes |
| Intent to bid tracking | ✓ Yes |
| Automated bid reminders | ✓ Yes |
| Bulk bid upload with AI matching | ✓ Yes |
| AI-powered bid leveling | ✓ Yes |
| Scope comparison tools | ✓ Yes |
Buildr’s ITB workflow surfaces scope gaps and pricing discrepancies so your estimators can focus on decisions, not data entry.
Create bid packages, upload drawings and specs, and invite trade partners with a single click. Subs get their own bidding portal (no login required) where they can view documents, declare intent to bid, and submit proposals. You see who’s planning to bid before the deadline, and automated reminders keep subs on track without your team chasing them down. Bulk upload handles the bids that come in via email, with AI automatically matching documents to the right trade partner. After bids come in, AI-powered bid leveling flags scope gaps and pricing outliers so you can focus on awarding, not reconciling.
Workforce Planning
Capacity Planning
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Preconstruction team capacity tracking | ✓ Yes |
| Pipeline-aware forecasting | ✓ Yes |
| Estimator workload across pursuits | ✓ Yes |
| Gantt and utilization views | ✓ Yes |
| Employee bench | ✓ Yes |
| Map view | ✓ Yes |
Know before you commit to a deadline whether your team can actually hit it. Workforce planning for the people winning your work, not just the crews building it.
Pipeline-aware forecasting connects pursuit probability to capacity planning, so you’re not caught flat-footed when three proposals land simultaneously. Gantt and utilization views give executives real visibility into estimator bandwidth, while the employee bench shows who’s available and when.
Map view helps you staff projects across geographies without overloading any single office, and ensures assignments make logistical sense so your team isn’t grinding through brutal commutes.
Team & Assignments
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Employee profiles with work history | ✓ Yes |
| Skill and relationship-based assignment | ✓ Yes |
| Divisions / Multi-office support | ✓ Yes |
| Assignment types (PM, Super, Estimator) | ✓ Yes |
| Project Team management | ✓ Yes |
| Certification tracking | ✓ Yes |
| Custom fields for employees | ✓ Yes |
Employee profiles track every project someone has worked on (as estimator, PM, or superintendent) so you can answer “who’s done this before?” in seconds. When you’re assigning a healthcare project, Buildr surfaces the estimator who knows the local hospital system and has the client relationship. Skill-based assignment meets relationship context.
Divisions let you organize employees by region or office, and Buildr automatically suggests team members from the matching division when you’re staffing a project. Certification tracking ensures you’re assigning people who are qualified, not just available. Custom fields capture whatever else matters to your business: security clearances, union status, language skills.
AI Capabilities
Kit: AI That Works While You Work
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| AI-powered bid leveling | ✓ Yes |
| AI budget assistant | ✓ Yes |
| AI drawing processing | ✓ Yes |
| AI trade partner matching | ✓ Yes |
| Cost Model queries | ✓ Yes |
| Go/No-Go scoring | ✓ Yes |
| AI file generation (proposals, decks, dashboards) | ✓ Yes |
Kit is the AI agent built for general contractors, and it works inside every Buildr workflow, not as a chatbot bolted on the side or a banner on top. Agentic means Kit doesn’t wait for a prompt at every turn: it plans a multi-step task, carries it out across your precon data, and checks back when it needs a decision. Kit follows a simple rule the whole way through: Plan, Approve, Apply. Kit drafts the work, you review it, and only changes you approve ever touch your system of record. The agent does the busywork; the human stays in control.
Take RFP intake. Kit reads a long RFP, even one that runs past 300 pages, in minutes and drafts a full CRM record so you’re not retyping scope by hand. From there, Kit scores the pursuit against your win history, backlog, and bonding capacity, so a go/no-go call is grounded in data from day one rather than a gut read in a conference room.
Kit handles the document grind too. Upload a drawing set and Kit pulls the sheet information, including title, number, and discipline, so nobody’s keying metadata for 200 sheets. Bulk upload trade partner bids and Kit matches each document to the right company, even when file names are cryptic. When bids come back, Kit flags the sub who included something the others excluded, or the price that’s dramatically out of range, so you’re not eyeballing five spreadsheets to spot the scope gap that blows up your buyout. And because any task Kit does can be saved as a reusable Skill, Kit grows more specific to how your shop works over time.
Ask Kit Anything
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Plain-English pipeline queries | ✓ Yes |
| Custom reports on the fly | ✓ Yes |
| Conversational AI workspace | ✓ Yes |
| Proactive trend alerts | ✓ Yes |
| Relationship insights | ✓ Yes |
| Win rate analytics | ✓ Yes |
Ask Kit about your business in plain English. Get answers in seconds, not after a ticket to your ops team.
“Who on my team has worked with this architect before?”
“What’s our average margin on K-12 projects?”
“Which pursuits are due this month and who’s assigned?”
Kit answers instantly, pulling from CRM, workforce, pipeline, and historical data. Ask it a workforce question and it tells you in plain language whether you have the bench to staff the pursuit. Ask for a report and Kit builds it on the fly, which kills the “can you pull me the numbers on…” requests that eat up hours every week. Kit can also turn that same data into client-ready proposals, executive briefs, decks, and dashboards from your own company templates, so the work goes from raw data to something you can hand a client without a designer in the loop.
Kit also surfaces trends before they become problems: “Your Q3 pipeline is 40% below last year” or “You haven’t touched this client relationship in 6 months.” Relationship insights show which clients need attention. Win rate analytics break down performance by market sector, project size, client, and estimator, so you can double down on what’s working and fix what isn’t.
User Experience
Platform & Flexibility
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| Procore integration | ✓ Yes |
| Mobile app with offline access | ✓ Yes |
| Cloud-based | ✓ Yes |
| Saved & shared views | ✓ Yes |
| Board View (Kanban) | ✓ Yes |
| Unlimited custom fields | ✓ Yes |
| Custom activities | ✓ Yes |
| Custom reports & export | ✓ Yes |
| Divisions (multi-office) | ✓ Yes |
| Granular permissions | ✓ Yes |
Buildr adapts to how you work, not the other way around.
Unlimited custom fields let you track whatever matters to your business: companies, contacts, leads, projects, and employees. Custom activities mean you’re not forcing your process into someone else’s categories. Saved views let every user build their own filtered lens into the data, and shared views keep the whole team aligned on the same pipeline picture. Board view gives you Kanban-style pipeline management for teams that think visually (and Kanban is just kind of fun to say).
Divisions organize your projects and employees by region or office, so reports and assignments stay relevant. Granular permissions control who sees what; limit users to their own projects, restrict tools by role, or give leadership full visibility. When you win in Buildr, the Procore integration hands off project data without re-entering it, so you’re not rekeying everything for field ops.
Onboarding & Support
| Feature | Buildr |
|---|---|
| White-glove onboarding | ✓ Yes |
| Implementation length | 2-4 weeks |
| Data importing | Included |
| Buildr University | ✓ Yes |
| Help Center & Guides | ✓ Yes |
| Live support team | Unlimited |
| Avg. response time | < 10 minutes |
| Target audience | General contractors |
| GC size | Any |
| Regions available | US & Canada |
| Pricing | Custom & transparent |
Enterprise software shouldn’t require a six-month implementation or a consulting engagement.
White-glove onboarding means we handle data importing, workflow configuration, and training. You’re not handed a login and left to figure it out. Buildr University provides video courses for ongoing learning, and the Help Center has self-service guides for everything else. Most teams are fully operational in as little as two weeks, with rare exceptions of being up and running the next business day.
When you need help, you get a live team that responds in under 10 minutes on average. Not a ticket queue, not AI, not a chatbot. A living, breathing human being. With Buildr, you have unlimited access to real people who know construction, know the GC workflow, and (most importantly) know the product. Pricing is custom based on your modules and build volume: transparent, no hidden fees, no surprises. Buildr runs on an unlimited-seat model, so Kit is included for every seat, not sold as a per-seat AI add-on.
Already Using Unanet CRM by Cosential?
If your CRM is working but your estimating lives in spreadsheets and your workforce planning lives in your head (or another tool), you’re experiencing the fragmentation that a complete preconstruction platform solves. Buildr connects everything, so your relationship data actually drives your operational decisions, and Kit acts on it. Since CRM data is at the base of all of Buildr operations, feeding into Kit and the rest of the platform, it wouldn’t be possible (or make logistical sense) to have Unanet CRM by Cosential integrate with Buildr.
The Bottom Line
If your relationships are tracked separately from your estimates, your capacity planning happens by gut feel, and your pursuit decisions don’t account for your team’s actual bandwidth, you might be ready for a platform where CRM is just the beginning, not the whole story.
Ready to see the difference? Start your trial →