Is Machinae Build metal building CRM software or a lead management system?
Short answer. No. Machinae Build is a configurator, not a CRM. It has no pipeline, no deal stages, no task list, no follow-up sequences and no reporting dashboard. What it does is produce the thing a CRM is usually short of: a lead that arrives already specified — a 3D building, its dimensions and openings, the code items that apply, and a link both sides can look at. If you want that lead inside a CRM, it delivers into HubSpot, Zoho or Pipedrive — the free tiers of the first two are enough — and the CRM stays yours.
What it does with a lead
- Captures it — email, phone, company — before the free designs run out, and keeps the design history attached to it.
- Scores and records it when a quote is requested: the lead is written to a local log and, when a CRM is configured, delivered as a full entity graph — a contact, the company they work for, a deal for the quote, and a note carrying the design and the sales insight.
- Delivers it durably. Capture and delivery are separated by an append-only outbox, so a CRM outage delays a lead and never loses one, and never turns a customer's successful quote submission into a 500.
- Refuses to deliver it twice. Deduplication is re-established against the CRM on every attempt, so replaying the queue cannot create duplicate records.
- Lists and exports the leads from an admin page, with the credit history and the prompts each person actually typed.
What it does not do — and what you still need a CRM for
- No pipeline, stages, or drag-and-drop board.
- No tasks, reminders, sequences, or email sending.
- No quotas, forecasting, commission or territory management.
- No reporting or dashboards beyond the lead list and its export.
- No calendar, no call logging, no shared inbox.
- One-way delivery only: leads go out to your CRM. Nothing is read back from it, and a change you make in HubSpot does not travel the other way.
- No automation of its own: no reminders, no follow-up sequences, no digests. Worth knowing that the free tier of every CRM listed here caps automation too — a free plan gives you the record, not the follow-up.
If you are a carport or metal building dealer looking for a CRM, keep the CRM you have. This replaces the front of that funnel — the part where a visitor cannot describe what they want — not the CRM itself.
What the configurator sends, per lead
| Field | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Contact: name, email, phone, company | the sign-up form, validated (US numbers; disposable domains refused) |
| Company | the email domain, or what they typed |
| Deal | one per quote request, keyed so a replay cannot duplicate it |
| Note | the design, the prompt history, and the sales insight |
Honest status
CRM delivery is optional and off unless configured. With no provider set
the layer is inert and the server behaves exactly as it did before it existed — a
supported state, not a broken one. Before production use it is meant to be checked
against the real portal with npm run crm:doctor, which validates the token,
prints the pipeline and stage that will actually be used, and shows the exact payload
without writing anything.
Related
- Delivering into HubSpot, Zoho or Pipedrive: the integration, in detail
- The embed and its plans: machinaebuild.com/for-builders
- What data is collected: machinaebuild.com/privacy