Buy it once. Host it yourself. Own it forever.
A complete operations system in a box — CRM, lifecycle marketing, automations, forms, reporting, role-based access. Pre-built. Deployed to your infrastructure in two to four weeks. Yours from day one, with no per-seat fees, no vendor lock-in, no rent that climbs every year.
Eight modules. One system. Configured for how you work.
The Box is pre-built but not pre-baked. We configure pipelines, custom fields, workflows, and reporting to your operating model during setup. The architecture is proven; the configuration is yours.
People & organizations
Contacts, accounts, households, foundations. Custom fields and tags built right. Search in plain English. Import from anything you have today.
Pipelines
Sales motion or donor cultivation, your stages, your fields. Forecast views. Win/loss reasons. Full activity timeline on every record.
Lifecycle communications
Transactional email. Drip sequences. Event-triggered automations (inquiry → confirmation → day 1 → day 3 → day 7). Templates with merge fields. Sent + received inbox view.
Forms & lead capture
Embeddable forms for your website. Spam protection built in. Submissions routed into the CRM and out to whoever needs to act.
Reporting & dashboards
Pre-built dashboards for pipeline health, donor segments, lifecycle metrics. Custom query builder. Scheduled email reports your board or team actually reads.
Tasks & workflows
Personal task queues. Workflow rules that route work to the right person. Reminders and approval chains where judgment matters.
Documents
Proposals, contracts, invoices, donor acknowledgments — generated from your data, branded, ready to send. E-signature integration where you need it.
Auth & roles
Email/password plus optional SSO. Role-based access so the major-gifts officer sees what program staff shouldn't. Audit log on every record.
What you're actually running.
Boring, modern, well-understood. Nothing exotic. Anything we use is something a competent operator can pick up if you ever need to take it fully in-house.
Frontend
Modern web app, fast on mobile, accessible by default
Database
PostgreSQL — the relational database every serious system runs on
Hosting
Your choice of provider — Hetzner, DigitalOcean, AWS, Render, your own server
Deploy
Containerized, one-command deploy, monthly release cadence
Postmark or Resend (your account), so deliverability stays clean
Backups
Automated daily snapshots to your cloud storage, with restore tested in setup
What the Box costs vs. what you're paying right now.
A representative comparison for a 15-person team currently on a mid-tier SaaS marketing and sales stack at $48K/year. Your real numbers will differ; the shape rarely does.
The Box pays for itself in year one against most SMB SaaS stacks. After that, every year is free except your infrastructure — typically $1.8K–$4.8K. A team currently spending $20K/year on SaaS saves roughly $33K by year three; a team at $48K/year saves over $120K. That's not a sales pitch; it's arithmetic.
Two to four weeks. Live system, trained team.
Discovery call
Thirty-minute, no-charge call. We confirm fit and scope, give you a fixed quote, and answer hard questions.
- Goal clarity
- Fit check
- Fixed quote
Setup & configure
We provision your infrastructure, deploy the Box, configure pipelines, fields, and workflows to your operating model.
- Cloud provisioned
- System deployed
- Configuration locked
Data migration
We move your existing data in — from spreadsheets, Notion, HubSpot, Salesforce, Bloomerang, wherever. Cleaned and deduplicated.
- Source mapping
- Cleanup
- Validated import
Integrations & training
Email, calendar, Stripe, Slack, and any custom integrations wired in. Your team trained on what they'll actually use.
- Integrations live
- Team training
- Runbooks
Go-live & handoff
System is yours. Credentials transferred. Documentation delivered. Thirty-day post-launch support included.
- Production cutover
- Credentials transferred
- 30-day support
Run it yourself. Or keep us in the seat.
The Box is fully yours from day one. Most clients pair the launch with an Operating Partnership retainer for the first 6–12 months, then make a call. Either path keeps the system running cleanly.
You run it
Documentation, runbooks, and a one-hour-monthly check-in option ($0). Most technically competent teams can operate the Box without ongoing engagement. We're available on a per-incident basis if something breaks.
Operating Partnership
We host, monitor, maintain integrations, and ship monthly improvements. $400–$3,000 per month, fixed-fee, scoped to system size. One bill, one point of contact, codebase still in your repo. Cancelable on 60 days notice.
Build Capacity
Ongoing custom work — new modules, deeper integrations, second-system projects. $1,500–$8,000 per month, fixed-fee, scoped as outcomes per quarter. A good fit when your operations are evolving fast.
The Box is a good fit if…
Right fit
- 5–50 person team currently paying $5K+ annually on SaaS for sales, marketing, or donor tools
- Tired of vendor pricing climbing every renewal
- Want to own the data and the system, not lease access
- Have technical capacity in-house OR ready to retain Operating Partnership
- Need a working system in weeks, not months
- Comfortable with self-hosting on a cloud provider (we set it up; you choose the provider)
Probably not yet
- Need a heavily custom operating model out of the gate (a bespoke build is better)
- Enterprise compliance scope — SOC 2 audited, HIPAA, FedRAMP
- Need it deployed tomorrow (the Box is fast, not instant)
- Pre-revenue or pre-product (find the customer first)
- Want pay-as-you-go SaaS pricing rather than own the system
Common questions about the Box.
What's the actual price, and what changes it?
Setup starts at $7,500 for small organizations (5–10 person team, basic data, light integrations). Mid-size builds land $12K–$18K. Larger nonprofits and SMBs with heavier configuration or migration scope land $20K–$35K. The number is fixed at engagement signing — you don't get a surprise bill in week 3. Running costs ($150–$400 per month) you pay directly to your cloud provider, email service, and storage; we don't mark them up.
What if I want changes after launch?
Three paths: do it yourself with the runbook (free, requires technical capacity); pick up an Operating Partnership retainer that includes monthly improvements ($400–$3,000 per month); or pick up a Build Capacity retainer for ongoing significant work ($1,500–$8,000 per month). All fixed-fee.
What if I want to leave Wholeshift entirely?
You already own everything. The code is in your Git repo from week 1. The database is on infrastructure you control. The credentials are yours. Any competent operator can pick up the system and run it — we use standard PostgreSQL, standard hosting, standard integrations. Nothing exotic. Nothing locked.
How does this compare to a fully custom build?
A custom build ($12K–$140K+) is the right answer when your operating model is unusual enough that the Box's defaults would fight you. The Box is the right answer when your model is closer to mainstream and you'd rather spend your customization budget on the 10% that's unique to you, not the 90% that's standard.
Can I see the Box before I sign?
Yes. The discovery call includes a walkthrough of a configured Box on a sandbox instance, with sample data that matches your industry shape. You see the workflows, the reporting, the admin UI, and the runbook before any contract.
Ready to price out a Box for your team?
Thirty-minute discovery call, no charge. We confirm fit, walk through a configured sandbox, and quote a fixed price the same week.