We're Document Collection, Not a CRM (and That's the Point)

We just dropped our price from $49/month to $19/month, tripled our free tier limits, and shipped the biggest integration update in Intake's history. This isn't a fire sale. It's a statement about what we think document collection software should be.

We're Not Your CRM

Every few months, someone asks us: "Are you going to add contact management? Pipeline tracking? Deal stages?" The answer is no. We are never going to be your CRM.

You already have a CRM you like. Or a practice management system, or a transaction management platform, or a spreadsheet that somehow runs your whole business. You don't need another one. What you need is the thing that sits next to it and handles the part your CRM is terrible at: actually getting documents and information from the people on the other end.

That's what Intake does. One thing, done well. You send a link, your client uploads their documents and fills out your forms, and our AI classifies everything automatically. No accounts for your clients to create. No apps for them to download. No friction.

Why the Price Drop

We were charging $49/month because that's what similar tools charge. But similar tools are trying to be platforms. They want to own your client relationships, your data, your workflows. They charge platform prices because they're building platform lock-in.

We're not a platform. We're a utility. Document collection is something every professional needs, but it shouldn't cost a premium. At $19/month, there's no reason to keep using email chains and shared drives. And our free tier now gives you 10 clients, 3 deals, and 5 parties per deal — enough to actually evaluate whether Intake works for your business, not just enough to see a demo.

Built to Connect, Not to Capture

Here's the part we're most excited about. We just shipped a set of features that make Intake the best-connected document collection tool on the market. Not because we built integrations with every platform — because we gave you the tools to connect Intake to anything.

External IDs Everywhere

Every client, deal, and party in Intake now supports external_id and external_source fields. If your CRM has a contact with ID contact_12345, you can tag that same person in Intake with that ID. When you look them up later, you match on the external ID instead of fuzzy-matching on email or name. Clean, deterministic syncs between systems.

Upsert Everything

Our API now supports upserts on clients and deals. Send us a client with an external ID, and we'll create them if they're new or update them if they already exist. No more "check if exists, then create or update" logic in your integration code. One call, idempotent, done.

One-Call Deal Dispatch

This is the big one. Our new dispatch endpoint lets you create an entire deal in a single API call: pick a template, assign clients to roles, generate document requests, and optionally send everything immediately. A CRM webhook fires, your integration hits one endpoint, and your client gets their document request seconds later. No human in the loop required.

Richer Webhooks

We added new webhook events for client creation and updates, deal status changes, request overdue notifications, and more. Every webhook payload now includes external IDs so your receiving system can correlate events back to its own records without a lookup.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Say you're a real estate brokerage. You have a transaction management system that tracks your deals. A new listing comes in. Your TMS fires a webhook to a small integration you've built (or a Zapier/Make scenario). That integration calls Intake's dispatch endpoint with the property address, the deal template for a standard listing, and the seller's contact info.

Intake creates the deal, creates or matches the client, generates the document request from your template (seller disclosures, title docs, HOA documents, whatever you've configured), and emails the seller a link. The seller clicks it, uploads everything, and Intake's AI classifies each document against your checklist.

When the seller finishes, Intake fires a webhook back to your TMS with the deal's external ID. Your system marks the documents as received. Nobody copied a file. Nobody sent a follow-up email. Nobody logged into a second platform.

That's what we mean by being a good citizen of the interconnected internet. We don't want to be the center of your tech stack. We want to be the part that handles document collection so well that you forget it used to be a problem.

The Unix Philosophy for Business Software

There's an old idea in software: do one thing and do it well. Make your output easy for other programs to consume. Write programs that work together.

Most business software ignores this completely. Every tool wants to become a platform. Every platform wants to own more of your workflow. The result is a landscape of bloated, overlapping tools that each do ten things at 60% quality instead of one thing at 100%.

We think there's a better model. Intake collects documents and information. Your CRM manages relationships. Your accounting software handles billing. Your project management tool tracks tasks. Each tool is excellent at its job, and they communicate through APIs, webhooks, and protocols like MCP.

This is where software is heading. Not toward bigger platforms, but toward smaller, sharper tools that compose well. The businesses that figure this out first will run circles around competitors still trapped in monolithic systems that do everything poorly.

What We're Committing To

This update is a signal about the kind of company we're building:

• Fair pricing. $19/month for unlimited clients, deals, and requests. Generous free tier. No gotcha upsells.
• Your data is yours. External IDs, webhooks, full API access. You should never feel locked in.
• Integration-first. Every feature we build has an API endpoint and fires webhook events. We're a node in your system, not a silo.
• Focused scope. We do document collection and client intake. We'll keep getting better at that instead of spreading thin across features you didn't ask for.

If you're tired of tools that try to do everything and end up doing nothing well, give Intake a try. It's free for up to 10 clients, and you'll have your first document request out in under two minutes.