# 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](https://machinaebuild.com/answers/metal-building-configurator-hubspot) - The embed and its plans: [machinaebuild.com/for-builders](https://machinaebuild.com/for-builders) - What data is collected: [machinaebuild.com/privacy](https://machinaebuild.com/privacy) Last reviewed 2026-09-16 against the code. Reviewed against `services/crm/` and `docs/CRM-LAYER.md`.