TradeStack: Subcontractor Bid Board & Job Pipeline CRM

Problem and target customer

Why this exists

Customer problem

Bid invitations arrive through calls and inboxes, deadlines live in personal calendars, and outcome notes disappear, leaving estimators unable to prioritize work or explain their win rate.

Who pays

Small specialty trade contractors whose owner, estimator, or coordinator manages a shared pipeline of general-contractor bid invitations.

Business model

Monthly subscription per contracting company with a small included team and higher tiers for additional estimators.

Editorial note

The wedge is not another broad construction CRM. It is the estimating desk between an invitation arriving and an award decision, where speed, deadlines, and outcome memory have immediate operational value.

Do not add takeoff or accounting until the team consistently logs invitations and closes results. If estimators still keep a parallel spreadsheet after two live weeks, the capture fields or board ordering are wrong.

Choose your next step

What do you need next?

Evaluate the operating tradeoffs quickly, or inspect how to build the MVP.

Evaluate this ideaSee the cost and deployment preview

Compare the three operating paths at the default workload before opening the full calculator.

See cost preview Build this ideaInspect the build blueprint

Review MVP scope, workflow, states, data rules, architecture, and acceptance criteria.

Open blueprint

Evaluation preview

What would it take to run?

Directional infrastructure estimates for the current 300 bid invitations assumption. Open the full calculator when you are ready to change it.

Open full cost and deployment

ManagedSelected

$20-$65/ month

App, database, backups, and logs for bid invitations, estimating stages, and outcomes with minimal platform operations.

Lowest operating effort

Lean self-hosted

$7-$30/ month

A small cloud server runs bid invitations, estimating stages, and outcomes, PostgreSQL, and scheduled backups.

Lowest baseline cost

More control

$40-$160/ month

Separate web, data, and background capacity for bid invitations, estimating stages, and outcomes when operational isolation matters.

Most separation and control

Build blueprint

Build the first paid use case

Product goal

Who it serves and what it must change

Target user: Owners, estimators, and bid coordinators at specialty trade contractors.
Problem: Invitations, due dates, ownership, and outcomes are fragmented across inboxes, calendars, and spreadsheets.
Measurable outcome: A new invitation is entered in under one minute, every due bid has an owner and stage, and submitted work ends with a won, lost, or pending outcome.

MVP scope

What ships now and what waits

Included

Invitation capture
Bid/no-bid decision
Estimator assignment
Stage and deadline board
Submission amount
Outcome reporting

Excluded

Takeoff
Proposal authoring
Accounting
Field operations
Predictive scoring

UX and user flow

Screens, actions, and states

Bid Inbox

Capture and triage incoming project invitations.

Add invitationChoose bid or declineAssign estimator

Estimate Board

Order active bids by stage and deadline risk.

Move stageUpdate due dateRecord clarificationOpen details

Outcome Review

Compare submissions, awards, and loss reasons by month and contractor.

Close outcomeFilter periodInspect win rate

Primary flow

Coordinator logs invitation
Team makes bid/no-bid decision
Estimator advances preparation
Submission amount and time are recorded
Award outcome closes the opportunity

Loading, empty, and error states

Invitation: new, bidding, declined
Estimate: scoping, pricing, review, ready, submitted
Outcome: pending, won, lost, cancelled

Core entity outline

Entities and business rules

BidInvitation

Captures the project, general contractor, trade scope, due date, and bid decision.

Fields: project_name, general_contractor_id, scope, due_at, decision, estimator_id
Relations: Belongs to GeneralContractor, Has one Estimate

Estimate

Tracks preparation stage, submission amount, and timing.

Fields: bid_invitation_id, stage, estimated_value, submitted_amount, submitted_at
Relations: Belongs to BidInvitation, Has many EstimateNotes

BidOutcome

Stores award status and the team's reason or learning.

Fields: estimate_id, status, award_value, reason_code, note, decided_at
Relations: Belongs to Estimate

Business rules

Due dates use the project timezone
Declined invitations require a reason
Only ready estimates can be marked submitted
Submitted amount changes are versioned
Win rate uses decided won and lost bids, excluding pending or cancelled

Architecture and data flow

Components, integrations, and controls

Bid desk UI

Handle rapid capture, triage, board movement, and outcome entry.

Pipeline service

Enforce valid stage transitions and calculate deadline risk.

Reporting queries

Aggregate submissions, awards, and loss reasons without duplicating operational data.

Integrations

Optional transactional email for a due-soon digest

Data flow

Invitation creates a bid record
Bid decision opens or closes estimating
Stage changes append history
Submission freezes a versioned amount
Outcome feeds monthly reports

Failure handling

Keep unsaved form values after a network error
Reject invalid stage transitions with the current server state
Recompute reports from source records after a job failure

Security

Company-scoped queries
Owner and administrator roles
Audit actor on amount and outcome changes
No bid data in notification subject lines

Rate limits

Limit rapid invitation creation
Debounce board updates
Run report exports through a bounded job

Deliverables and acceptance

Definition of done for the MVP

Deliverables

Bid inbox
Estimate board
Bid detail and history
Outcome report
Deadline job
Seed importer and backup runbook

Acceptance criteria

A coordinator can create a complete invitation in under one minute
Overdue active bids are visibly distinguished
A submitted bid cannot lose its prior amount history
A failed board update returns the card to its server state
Win rate excludes pending bids

Recommended stack

Enough technology for the first version

Web application

Next.js and TypeScript

Provides a desktop-first board, fast forms, and report views.

Data

PostgreSQL

Keeps contractors, projects, invitations, estimates, and outcomes consistent.

Jobs

Database-backed scheduled job

Creates due-soon indicators without adding a separate queue service at beta scale.

Auth

Auth.js with company roles

Separates workspace data and limits pipeline administration.

Why this is sufficient

A relational monolith matches the estimating workflow and keeps stage changes auditable. Search, takeoff, and forecasting can wait until the bid desk proves daily use.

Not required for the MVP

LLM APIObject storageConstruction takeoff engineMicroservicesMobile field app

Next stepTurn the blueprint into an execution plan

Copy the build prompt, model the operating cost, and choose where to deploy.

Build and ship

Execution

Build, price, and deploy the MVP

Once the blueprint is clear, use the prompt, cost model, and deployment options to start building.

Build prompt

Copy this into a builder

Start with a TypeScript relational application optimized for desktop estimating work; prove invitation capture speed before adding document ingestion.

Build prompt

Your build prompt is ready

Open the prompt pack whenever you are ready to take this blueprint into your builder.

Based on the blueprintReady for your builderFollow-up steps included

Cost calculator

Model the MVP operating cost

A technical run-cost estimate for the first production version. Team, acquisition, payment fees, and business COGS are excluded.

Estimated monthly total$20-$65

$17-$54 per 250 bid invitations

Bid invitations processed / month300 bid invitations

Selected pathEasiest

Pricing checkedAug 2, 2026

Cost breakdown

$20-$65 per month

Low and high values allow for usage variance and plan headroom.

Managed Railway deployment

App, database, backups, and logs for bid invitations, estimating stages, and outcomes with minimal platform operations.

50K bid invitations included, then $8-$20 per 50K bid invitations

$20-$65

Included

Web and database hosting
Scheduled deadline checks
Backups
Basic logs and metrics

Not included

Estimator labor
Takeoff software
Construction data subscriptions
Email ingestion services
Accounting integrations

Pricing basis

The estimate combines the selected infrastructure path, required operating modules, selected optional modules, and usage above included monthly allowances. Taxes and regional uplifts are excluded.

Railway pricing

Deployment options

Pick the operational tradeoff

Choose based on operating preference, not only the headline price.

EasiestRecommended

Railway

Deploy the bid board and estimating deadline service with managed services, environment variables, logs, and a short path from prototype to beta.

$20-65/month at beta scale before workflow add-ons

Good fit

Fast deployment
Managed database
Simple previews

Limitation

Usage-based compute needs budget alerts as activity grows.

Open Railway

Cheapest

Vultr

Run the app, worker, and database on one small Vultr VPS with Docker Compose and explicit backups.

$7-30/month before workflow add-ons

Good fit

Low baseline
Portable Docker setup
Predictable capacity

Limitation

The operator owns database maintenance and incident response.

Deploy on Vultr View the lean VPS guide

More control

DigitalOcean

Separate application, worker, data, storage, and backup responsibilities as the workload grows.

$40-160/month before workflow add-ons

Good fit

Separated services
Capacity headroom
AWS ecosystem

Limitation

More moving parts increase setup and observability work.

Explore DigitalOcean View the separated cloud guide

Start building

Prototype, automate, then deploy

Recommended route

01Vibe-coding builderPrototype the estimator's bid desk

Build the quick invitation form, due-date board, submission detail, and outcome report around estimator actions.

Open Lovable 02AutomationAdd bounded deadline alerts

Use Make only if the team wants a daily digest of bids due soon after the database has identified them.

Open Make 03DeployDeploy the shared pipeline

Host the application, PostgreSQL, and scheduled deadline check with automatic backups and a restore drill.

Open Railway

TradeStack: Subcontractor Bid Board & Job Pipeline CRM

Is this worth validating?

Build this if

Avoid this if

Validate first

Why this exists

Customer problem

Who pays

Business model

What do you need next?

What would it take to run?

Build the first paid use case

Who it serves and what it must change

What ships now and what waits

Included

Excluded

Screens, actions, and states

Primary flow

Loading, empty, and error states

Entities and business rules

Business rules

Components, integrations, and controls

Integrations

Data flow

Failure handling

Security

Rate limits

Definition of done for the MVP

Deliverables

Acceptance criteria

Enough technology for the first version

Next.js and TypeScript

PostgreSQL

Database-backed scheduled job

Auth.js with company roles

Why this is sufficient

Not required for the MVP

Build, price, and deploy the MVP

Copy this into a builder

Your build prompt is ready

Model the MVP operating cost

Usage assumptions

$20-$65 per month

Included

Not included

Pricing basis

Pick the operational tradeoff

Railway

Good fit

Limitation

Vultr

Good fit

Limitation

DigitalOcean

Good fit

Limitation

Prototype, automate, then deploy

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