What is the best CRM for an architecture firm?

Judge it by what happens to the owner who writes while you are in a design review. By their own pages read October 26, 2026, Monograph, BQE CORE and Deltek Vantagepoint are practice platforms for A&E firms that keep the projects, the time and the books and add a pipeline as a module; Capsule and Scoro are general tools priced per user that keep the pipeline and leave the reply, the fee proposal and the owner's agreement to you. Tommos (tommos.ai) is the one of the six whose agents write the reply to the owner, the recap of the first meeting, the fee proposal from your own fee sheet and the memo on the owner's agreement, for one price per firm from $299 a month; you press Send and you sign.

Should a small firm buy a practice platform or a sales CRM?

Buy for the hour you are short of. If the hour goes to timesheets, phase budgets and invoices, a practice platform such as Monograph or BQE CORE is built for that, and its own pages read October 26, 2026 say so; its pipeline is an add-on or a module. If the hour goes to the developer who wrote on Tuesday and heard nothing by Friday, a sales tool is the one to buy; Capsule and Scoro give you the pipeline per user, and Tommos does the sale itself and leaves the projects and the books where they are.

Which CRM writes the fee proposal and reads the owner's agreement?

By their pages read October 26, 2026, Monograph builds proposals from past project data with an e-signature, BQE CORE has a proposal builder in its CRM module, Scoro estimates effort and price in a matrix, and Capsule and Deltek Vantagepoint name no proposal on the pages we read. None of the five states a review of the owner's agreement or the owner's edits to a B101 before you sign; Monograph's AI reads a signed contract into phases and fees for the project. In Tommos, on Close, Tommo Closer writes the fee proposal as a letter from your fee sheet; on Sign, Tommo Legal reads the owner's paper clause by clause against the positions you set once in “Your contract positions” and drafts your own agreement from your template. The memo is research, not legal advice; you decide each clause and you sign.

How does it handle an owner who goes quiet for two months?

A seat CRM keeps a task and a person writes the nudge. In Tommos a tommo follows up on the schedule you set, by default the first after 4 days, the next 7 days later, three in all (1 to 60 days, 1 to 10 times), writes each follow-up from the record and the meeting, and then tells you where the pursuit stands; the fee proposal is chased the same way. A follow-up that falls outside the owner's working hours is offered as “Send on” their morning beside “Send now”. The owner's decision is never promised; when the sequence ends, the pursuit is yours to call.

What does a five-person firm pay a year?

On the vendors' own prices read October 26, 2026, for five people: Capsule Growth £1,620 a year billed annually, in the pounds shown to our reader, Starter £840; Scoro End-to-end, the ready combination with the CRM, $3,420 a year at its five-user minimum; Monograph $540 to $5,880 a year by its own range of $45 to $490 a month, with Pipeline an add-on priced on a call; BQE CORE and Deltek Vantagepoint on a quote. Tommos is priced per firm, so five people or fifteen pay the same: Book $3,588, Close $7,188, Sign $10,788 at the monthly rate, 20% less on a year; for that the tommos write the replies, the recaps, the fee proposals, your agreement, the memo on the owner's paper and the phase invoices, and the AI model is in the price.

Does Tommos replace Monograph, BQE CORE, Ajera or QuickBooks?

No. Tommos runs the sale, from the owner's inquiry to the signed agreement and, on Sign, the invoices of a won project through Mercury; the phases, the timesheets, the drawings and the general ledger stay in the tools you have, and a won pursuit becomes a project there by your hand, since nothing syncs today. What it adds beside them is an MCP server, app.tommos.ai/api/mcp, so the Claude or ChatGPT your office already uses can read and move the pursuits.

The best CRM for architecture firms: 6 compared

In 30 seconds

Monograph reports that an average of 80% of A&E work comes from existing clients¹⁵: the developer who comes back, the owner a contractor sent you. Each writes once and waits, and the person who must answer is drawing.
Six tools in one table, each cell from the vendor’s own page, read October 26, 2026: three practice platforms built for A&E firms (Monograph, BQE CORE, Deltek Vantagepoint), two general CRMs priced per user (Capsule, Scoro), and Tommos.
After yes. Monograph and BQE CORE build the proposal from past project data; Scoro estimates effort and margin in a matrix; Capsule and Vantagepoint name no proposal on the pages we read. None of the five states a review of the owner’s agreement before you sign it; Monograph’s AI reads a signed contract into phases and fees for the project. Tommos writes the fee proposal from your fee sheet, reads the owner’s paper against your positions, holds your signature in the card and sends each phase invoice by two presses.
The unit of the price. Capsule and Scoro charge each user, Monograph charges by firm size with Pipeline as an add-on, BQE CORE and Vantagepoint quote after a demo; Tommos charges the firm, $299 to $899 a month, and the AI model is in the price.

The principal sells between design reviews#

Tuesday, 10:15. You are at the big screen with your project architect, the contractor on the phone about a slab edge. A development director writes through your site: a 1960s office building in Sacramento, medical offices, a lender who wants permit drawings by June. You see it at the break and mean to answer after lunch; after lunch there is the slab edge. By Thursday she has met another firm. In a firm of three to thirty people the principal sells, designs and signs the drawings, and a pursuit moves only when that one person has an hour.

The pursuit itself is long. A first meeting and a site walk, a fee you can state only after both (a percentage of the cost of the work, a stipulated sum, or hourly with a cap, the methods the owner-architect agreement allows¹³), a proposal, then the owner’s agreement with its clauses on indemnity, on the reuse of your drawings, on payment tied to a lender’s draw, then the first phase invoice. The AIA warns that client-drafted indemnity provisions “almost always extend your financial obligation”¹⁴. A practice platform records each of these steps once a person types it; a sales CRM records the pipeline. The comparison below asks each tool how much of that work it does itself, and for whom.

Five things to check before you buy#

1. Which half of the work it keeps. A practice platform holds the projects, the time, the phases and the books, and adds a pipeline as a module or an add-on; a sales CRM holds the pipeline and nothing of delivery. The first line of the vendor’s own page says which it is; the FAQ says what the pipeline costs on top.

2. What the AI does when an owner writes. Fills a field, writes a summary, suggests a timesheet, or answers the owner, asks the two questions a principal asks first and books the meeting. Read the verbs; “AI” on a staffing chart does not answer an email.

3. What happens after yes. Who writes the fee proposal, from what numbers; who reads the owner’s agreement, or the owner’s edits to your B101, against your positions; where each phase is invoiced; and what each of those costs beyond the seat.

4. Who approves in your name. An owner reads an email as the principal’s. Find out whether a person sees each one before it goes, whether an autopilot can be switched on per kind of email, or whether the page is silent.

5. Per user, per firm, or after a demo. A per-user price grows with every project architect who must see the pursuit; a firm-size price grows at each hire; a quote after a demo is a number you learn in a sales call. Ask too whether you can open the tool today without that call.

Six CRMs compared for an architecture firm#

The cells come from the vendors’ own pages, read on October 26, 2026; each number points to a source below. Capsule’s pricing page showed our reader pounds, so its prices stand in pounds. Where a cell says “not stated”, the page we read is silent; the vendor may still do it. The Tommos column comes from its own plans and documentation. Monograph, BQE CORE and HubSpot are also compared on the architects’ page.

What	Tommos	Monograph	BQE CORE	Deltek Vantagepoint	Capsule	Scoro
What the vendor says about architecture firms, and which half of the work it keeps	Built for the sale of a firm of 1 to 50 people: the owner’s inquiry, the first meeting, the recap, the fee proposal from your fee sheet, the owner’s agreement, your signature, the phase invoices. Projects, time, drawings and the books stay in the tools you have	“Built for A&E firms”, “trusted by 16,000+ architects and engineers”: projects, teams and finances in one place; Pipeline, its CRM, “is offered separately as an add-on”³¹	A practice platform for “Professional services firms of all kinds”: time, projects, billing and the general ledger in Foundations; CRM is an additional module, CORE Pursuit, “The CRM built to help A&E firms win more work”⁵⁴	“An AI-powered ERP application” for project-based firms “of all sizes”, with “CRM & Pipeline Management” as one module among accounting, resource planning and projects⁶	A general small-business CRM, “Simple to start. Built for growth.”: contacts, opportunities, pipelines and project boards; no projects-and-billing suite⁸	Work management for agencies and consultancies sold as app combinations: Sell, its CRM, in the End-to-end combination beside Estimate, Invoice and projects, or added to a custom combination¹⁰
What the AI does when an owner or a developer writes	Tommo SDR reads the inquiry, your “Playbook” and the record, and writes the reply in your voice: the two or three questions a principal asks first, two or three times from your Google Calendar; the time the owner picks is the first meeting; a quiet owner hears again on the schedule you set	“Capture and manage incoming opportunities in a firm-wide pipeline”, with leads, ownership and next steps tracked; AI on its pages is for staffing, timesheets and invoice follow-ups; a reply to the owner: not stated²³	Pursuit tracks the pursuit; an AI feature: not on the pages we read; a reply to the owner: not stated⁵⁴	Dela, “native to Vantagepoint”, gives “AI-supported pursuit insights”, business summaries and “Ask Dela”; a reply to the owner: not stated⁶⁷	Starter: an “AI Pipeline Generator”; Growth: “AI Business Enrichment”, “AI Summaries”, “AI Contact Enrichment” and “AI Meeting Prep” in beta; the email to the owner comes from “Email Templates” you send⁸	ELI, its AI assistant, surfaces insights, builds reports and handles “repetitive tasks like putting together a project team, updating budgets, or sending reminders”; a reply to a client: not stated¹¹
After yes: the fee proposal, the owner’s agreement, the phase invoices	Tommo Closer writes the fee proposal as a letter from your fee sheet (a percentage of construction cost, a stipulated sum or hourly with a cap), Tommo Legal drafts your agreement from your template and reads the owner’s paper clause by clause against your positions, you sign in the card, and on the won deal each phase invoice goes out by two presses through Mercury	Proposal Builder: “Build, send, and manage proposals”, “Use historical data to price the project profitably”, “Pipeline supports e-signatures on proposals”; invoicing in the platform; its AI reads an uploaded signed contract into phases, fees and roles for review; a review of the owner’s agreement before signing: not stated²¹³	An “Industry-tailored project proposal builder” in the CRM module; “Simple, manual, and batch invoicing” and “Recurring and automatic invoicing” in Foundations; a review of the owner’s agreement: not stated⁴	Proposals are not on the Vantagepoint page we read (Deltek sells proposal pricing to federal contractors as ProPricer); billing in the ERP; a review of the owner’s agreement: not stated⁶	Proposals, quotes, invoices and e-signature are not named on its pricing page; Xero and QuickBooks as integrations⁸	Estimate: “Plot out effort, price, and margin for your deliverables in matrix style”; Invoice: “Handle every billing scenario and track payments”; a proposal written from the estimate and a review of the owner’s agreement: not stated¹²¹⁰
Who approves what goes out in the firm’s name	A person presses “Send” or “Skip” on each card; after 12 clean replies of one kind on a form, a person may switch on “Let Tommo send here”; a fee proposal never goes alone	“AI when it helps, you when it matters”; an approval step on outgoing emails: not stated³	Not stated⁴⁵	Not stated⁶⁷	“Workflow Automations” on Growth run as set up; an approval step: not stated⁸	ELI’s actions run on your prompt; an approval step: not stated¹¹
Price, its unit, the trial	$299 a month per firm (Book), $599 (Close), $899 (Sign); no seats, the AI model included; 14 days, no card	“$45 - $490 /mo” by firm size on a calculator; “Pricing depends on your firm size and how you’re using Monograph”; Pipeline is an add-on; a trial is not named, the door is “Get a demo”¹²³	“Per-user pricing that’s clear and intuitive”, every module on “Request Quote”; no trial named, “Book Your Demo”⁴	No price on its pages; “Complete this form and a Deltek representative will contact you to schedule a personalized demonstration”⁶	Shown in pounds to our reader: Free for up to 2 users and 250 contacts, Starter £14, Growth £27, Advanced £42 per user a month billed annually, Ultimate, “ideal for scaling teams with 5+ users”, no price shown, its sales team gets in touch when you sign up for the trial; “Free 14-day trial. No card required.”⁸	Per user a month: Time-billing $17, Projects & Resources $29, Quote to Cash $29, End-to-end $57, the ready combination with the CRM; “Minimum 5 users”; “Free 14-day trial · No credit card required”¹⁰
Your own AI gets in	An MCP server inside the CRM: Claude, ChatGPT or Cursor works your pursuits as you	Not on the pages we read¹²³	Not on the pages we read⁴⁵	Dela lives inside Vantagepoint; an outside AI tool getting in: not stated⁷	Capsule MCP: a ChatGPT connector “now live”, Claude and Cursor in a private beta by request on “Growth plan or above”, free during the beta (June 26, 2026)⁹	Not on the pages we read¹⁰¹¹¹²

How an architecture firm takes an owner's inquiry to a signed agreement in Tommos#

Tommos (tommos.ai) is a CRM whose AI agents, the tommos, take a B2B inquiry to a signed contract. For an architecture firm that is the pursuit and nothing of the project: the plans, and the firm’s own page, Tommos for architects, walk one commission card by card. The steps as they happen on an owner’s inquiry:

The owner is answered before the design review ends. When the development director writes through your form, Tommo SDR reads the inquiry, your “Playbook” and the record, and writes the reply in your voice: the two questions a principal asks first (are there drawings of the existing building, is a tenant signed?) and two or three times from your Google Calendar; the time she picks becomes the first meeting. An owner who goes quiet hears again on your schedule (the defaults: after 4 days, then every 7, three times). Every reply first lands on a card: “Send”, “Skip”, or an edit, from your phone at the break.

The recap and the fee proposal are written from your fee sheet. On Close, Tommo Closer turns the first meeting, recorded with Google Meet or Granola and read onto the record, into a recap for everyone who was there, and writes the fee proposal as a letter from the sheet you share by link: basic services at 8% of a $2.8 million construction budget split by phase, or a stipulated sum through permit with construction administration hourly, or a feasibility study not to exceed $18,000, whichever your sheet says. When the pursuit has no fee sheet (Tommos calls it the estimate), a card asks you for its link; a fee, a scope or a date it does not have, it never makes up. The same schedule chases the proposal, and the pursuit’s standing is reported to you. A fee proposal is never sent by a tommo alone.

The owner’s agreement and the phase invoices stop waiting for your evening. On Sign, Tommo Legal drafts your own agreement and a mutual NDA from the templates in the “Templates” folder it shares with you, with the scope, the fee and the schedule your sheet holds; the owner’s own paper, or their edits to your agreement, is read against the positions you set once in “Your contract positions”, and the clause memo says, clause by clause (a duty to defend the owner, the reuse of your drawings on another site, a limit of liability, payment tied to a lender’s draw), what to accept and what to send back, with the changes tracked in their Word file. The memo is research, not legal advice; for a large project it goes to your attorney with the markup done. Your signature is in the card, through the e-signature service in the Sign price; an owner’s own envelope is signed in that envelope. Once the pursuit is closed as won, Tommo Closer reads the signed agreement and puts the payment schedule on a card, by phase or by month; you accept or change it. Each phase invoice is then proposed on its day and goes out by two presses through Mercury; a reminder past the due date is written on its day and sent by one press.

The firm’s name stays in the principal’s hands. Until you say otherwise, an outward email waits for your press. When 12 replies of one kind on a form have gone out clean (an admin can set the number from 1 to 100), Tommo offers “Let Tommo send here”; the switch is yours, on a paid plan.

Your office’s Claude works beside the tommos. Point it or ChatGPT at app.tommos.ai/api/mcp and ask which fee proposals wait on an owner. What an agent can do in Tommos. Monograph, BQE CORE, Ajera, Revit and QuickBooks stay where they are; a won pursuit becomes a project there by your hand, since nothing syncs today.

Set up an architecture firm in Tommos#

One evening sets this up; from then on the tommos work every inquiry that reaches the firm.

1
Open one workspace for the whole firm
At tommos.ai/signup, sign in with the Google account the owners write to; the workspace opens at once, 14 days of everything, no card, and no seats to count for the project architects who will read the pursuits. On the start path press “Connect mail and calendar”: one Google consent covers both, and the start creates the “Intro call” meeting, 30 minutes with a Meet link, which becomes your first meeting. On the Meetings step answer “Yes, with Google Meet” and connect it, or “Yes, with Granola” with your key: the words of each first meeting then reach the record, and the recap is written from them; without a source of meetings there is no recap.
2
Put a project inquiry form on your site
Create it on the “Forms” page, switch on “Tommo SDR works the leads from this form”, and embed it where owners find you: your site, the link in your AIA chapter listing, the referral page a contractor sends. Under “After submit” choose “Show the booking calendar”, so a developer with a lender’s deadline books the first meeting at once.
3
Teach the Playbook how a principal answers
At the start Tommo reads your site into the “Playbook”: the building types you take, the counties you work in, how you describe a commission. Add the lines a principal never puts in a first email: no fee before a site walk, no schedule before the existing drawings are found, the stipulated sum only through permit. Replies and fee proposals take their voice and their limits from these pages.
4
Approve the first replies at the break
Each inquiry puts a card in front of the principal who owns new work: the reply and the times; the recap and the fee proposal arrive as cards too, the proposal only once the pursuit has the link to your fee sheet: “Send”, “Skip”, or edit first. After 12 clean replies of one kind on the form, Tommo offers “Let Tommo send here”; switch it on when the voice is yours.
5
Add your agreement, your positions and your bank, on Sign
On Tommo Legal’s page, under “Documents”, press “Copy the folder’s address” and drop your owner-architect agreement, your scope exhibit and your NDA into the “Templates” folder in Drive; answer “Your contract positions” once on the start path, or later from Tommo Legal’s page: the positions Tommo Legal reads an owner’s paper against, in its own questions, with “Do it later” at any point. For the money, open Settings, “Invoices” (or the Invoices step of the start path): in Mercury allow the address shown under “First, in Mercury, allow this address on the token”, paste the token and press “Connect Mercury”; a phase invoice is then “Make the invoice” and “Send”.

Which CRM to pick#

You want the projects, the phases, the timesheets and the invoices of an A&E firm in one place, and a pipeline added to it. Monograph, $45 to $490 a month by firm size with Pipeline as an add-on, by its pricing page; a demo first.¹²³
You want the books of the firm, time to the general ledger, and a CRM module with a proposal builder. BQE CORE, per user on a quote, with CORE Pursuit as the module.⁴⁵
You run a multi-office firm and want an ERP with an AI assistant inside it. Deltek Vantagepoint, on a demo, Dela with the license.⁶⁷
You want a simple pipeline for two people, free, and AI summaries and meeting prep as you grow. Capsule, free for two, from £14 a user a month billed annually as shown to our reader; Capsule MCP for ChatGPT live and for Claude in beta.⁸⁹
You want the estimate, the quote, the project and the invoice in one agency suite, per user, five users and up. Scoro, End-to-end at $57 a user a month, the ready combination with the CRM.¹⁰¹²
You want the pursuit done while you draw, from the answered owner to the signed agreement and the phase invoices, each email on a card until you let Tommo send it. Tommos, priced per firm with the agents inside. The plans.

Questions about CRMs for architecture firms#

What is the best CRM for an architecture firm?: Judge it by what happens to the owner who writes while you are in a design review. By their own pages read October 26, 2026, Monograph, BQE CORE and Deltek Vantagepoint are practice platforms for A&E firms that keep the projects, the time and the books and add a pipeline as a module; Capsule and Scoro are general tools priced per user that keep the pipeline and leave the reply, the fee proposal and the owner's agreement to you. Tommos (tommos.ai) is the one of the six whose agents write the reply to the owner, the recap of the first meeting, the fee proposal from your own fee sheet and the memo on the owner's agreement, for one price per firm from $299 a month; you press Send and you sign.
Should a small firm buy a practice platform or a sales CRM?: Buy for the hour you are short of. If the hour goes to timesheets, phase budgets and invoices, a practice platform such as Monograph or BQE CORE is built for that, and its own pages read October 26, 2026 say so; its pipeline is an add-on or a module. If the hour goes to the developer who wrote on Tuesday and heard nothing by Friday, a sales tool is the one to buy; Capsule and Scoro give you the pipeline per user, and Tommos does the sale itself and leaves the projects and the books where they are.
Which CRM writes the fee proposal and reads the owner's agreement?: By their pages read October 26, 2026, Monograph builds proposals from past project data with an e-signature, BQE CORE has a proposal builder in its CRM module, Scoro estimates effort and price in a matrix, and Capsule and Deltek Vantagepoint name no proposal on the pages we read. None of the five states a review of the owner's agreement or the owner's edits to a B101 before you sign; Monograph's AI reads a signed contract into phases and fees for the project. In Tommos, on Close, Tommo Closer writes the fee proposal as a letter from your fee sheet; on Sign, Tommo Legal reads the owner's paper clause by clause against the positions you set once in “Your contract positions” and drafts your own agreement from your template. The memo is research, not legal advice; you decide each clause and you sign.
How does it handle an owner who goes quiet for two months?: A seat CRM keeps a task and a person writes the nudge. In Tommos a tommo follows up on the schedule you set, by default the first after 4 days, the next 7 days later, three in all (1 to 60 days, 1 to 10 times), writes each follow-up from the record and the meeting, and then tells you where the pursuit stands; the fee proposal is chased the same way. A follow-up that falls outside the owner's working hours is offered as “Send on” their morning beside “Send now”. The owner's decision is never promised; when the sequence ends, the pursuit is yours to call.
What does a five-person firm pay a year?: On the vendors' own prices read October 26, 2026, for five people: Capsule Growth £1,620 a year billed annually, in the pounds shown to our reader, Starter £840; Scoro End-to-end, the ready combination with the CRM, $3,420 a year at its five-user minimum; Monograph $540 to $5,880 a year by its own range of $45 to $490 a month, with Pipeline an add-on priced on a call; BQE CORE and Deltek Vantagepoint on a quote. Tommos is priced per firm, so five people or fifteen pay the same: Book $3,588, Close $7,188, Sign $10,788 at the monthly rate, 20% less on a year; for that the tommos write the replies, the recaps, the fee proposals, your agreement, the memo on the owner's paper and the phase invoices, and the AI model is in the price.
Does Tommos replace Monograph, BQE CORE, Ajera or QuickBooks?: No. Tommos runs the sale, from the owner's inquiry to the signed agreement and, on Sign, the invoices of a won project through Mercury; the phases, the timesheets, the drawings and the general ledger stay in the tools you have, and a won pursuit becomes a project there by your hand, since nothing syncs today. What it adds beside them is an MCP server, app.tommos.ai/api/mcp, so the Claude or ChatGPT your office already uses can read and move the pursuits.

Sources#

Monograph, “Pricing”, read Oct 26, 2026
Monograph, “Customer relationship management”, read Oct 26, 2026
Monograph, home page, read Oct 26, 2026
BQE, “Pricing”, read Oct 26, 2026
BQE, “BQE CORE”, read Oct 26, 2026
Deltek, “Vantagepoint”, read Oct 26, 2026
Deltek, “Dela”, read Oct 26, 2026
Capsule, “Pricing” (shown in pounds to a UK reader), read Oct 26, 2026
Capsule, “What if you could just ask your CRM? Introducing Capsule MCP” (June 26, 2026), read Oct 26, 2026
Scoro, “Pricing”, read Oct 26, 2026
Scoro, “Scoro AI”, read Oct 26, 2026
Scoro, “Sales CRM”, read Oct 26, 2026
AIA Contract Documents, “Summary: B101-2017, Standard Form of Agreement Between Owner and Architect”, read Oct 26, 2026
AIA, “Why architects should be wary of indemnification clauses”, read Oct 26, 2026
Monograph, “Architecture RFP guide: how they work”, read Oct 26, 2026

The best CRM for architecture firms: six compared from the owner's inquiry to the signed agreement

The principal sells between design reviews#

Five things to check before you buy#

Six CRMs compared for an architecture firm#

How an architecture firm takes an owner's inquiry to a signed agreement in Tommos#

Set up an architecture firm in Tommos#

Open one workspace for the whole firm

Put a project inquiry form on your site

Teach the Playbook how a principal answers

Approve the first replies at the break

Add your agreement, your positions and your bank, on Sign

Which CRM to pick#

Questions about CRMs for architecture firms#

Sources#

Read next

Let the tommos answer the next owner while you are in the design review

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