The Followup CRM alternative that reads the plans, not just the pipeline.

Followup CRM is a genuinely established construction CRM. It came out of a Fort Lauderdale roofing contractor in 2012, and its bid log, closing ratio dashboards, and ERP integrations have earned a 4.5 rating across 228 Capterra reviews. So why do estimating teams look at Pursuit instead? Three reasons keep coming up.

The documents live somewhere else. Followup CRM tracks the status of a bid; the plans, specs, addenda, and vendor quotes that decide the bid sit in email and shared drives. Pursuit stores the documents on the bid and lets you ask them questions in plain English, with the answer cited to the page it came from. When the GC calls about frost depth or alternates, the answer is on the record, not in someone's inbox.

Vendor quotes are half of an estimator's correspondence, and a sales pipeline CRM has no place for them. Pursuit sends RFQs to vendors, tracks who has responded, and keeps every quote on the bid it belongs to.

The buying process itself. Pursuit publishes its prices, starts free, and has no seat minimum. Followup CRM requires a demo to learn the price, and third-party reporting describes a 5 seat minimum, a setup fee, and a 60 day written cancellation notice. Cancellation friction is the single most repeated complaint in Followup CRM's own reviews. We would rather earn the renewal than write it into the contract.

Pursuit: 5 users on Pro+ with annual billing ($39.17 per user per month, 2 months free) is about $2,350 a year, $7,050 over 3 years. Followup CRM does not publish pricing; third-party reporting (prospeo.io, 2026) puts a 5 user contract near $4,500 a year plus a setup fee of roughly 20% of the first year, about $14,400 over 3 years. Treat the Followup figure as an estimate and confirm with their sales team; the published-vs-quoted difference is the point.

How to migrate

1. Create a free Pursuit account at app.vertigraph.com. No credit card, no demo call.
2. Add the bids due in the next 30 days first. You do not need to migrate history to get value; the open bids are where the risk is.
3. Connect Outlook or Gmail so correspondence starts logging to the right project.
4. Drop the plan sets and specs for those bids into each project. On the Intelligence plan, ask a few scope questions you already know the answers to and check the citations.
5. Send your next round of vendor RFQs from Pursuit so the quotes come back onto the bid.
6. Record outcomes as bids land. Hit rate by customer starts building from day one.
7. Run both systems through one bid cycle before you decide. Followup CRM's reported terms include a 60 day cancellation notice, so check your renewal date early.