Chord - A CRM for creatives that protects your boundaries
by•
Chord gives your clients one branded portal for proposals, contracts, invoices, files and feedback. It also protects your boundaries by preventing scope creep, and helps you beat the feast-or-famine cycle with forecasts for your workload and income.
Replies
Hi everyone! I’m Mel.
It’s ten minutes to 5pm on a Friday. You're already winding down. Then your phone lights up with a new email. “Re: re: re: Changes to page.”
You don’t need to check the name. You know who it’s from, and you know your weekend just got shorter.
I’ve had that email more times than I can count in 10 years of running a creative business, across design, copywriting, marketing and media. Clients sent “just one more tweak” long after our two revision rounds were used up. They sent files wherever suited them: Pinterest, random emails, texts. Sometimes I had to chase them more than once. On top of the creative work, I was gathering and sorting all the client admin myself.
I was also stuck in the feast-or-famine cycle. When I was busy, I felt anxious about fitting it all in and wondered if I’d said yes to too much. When things were quiet, I was constantly worrying there wouldn’t be enough income that month. I’m sure a lot of founders know that feeling.
I tried so many tools to help me manage my workload and clients. I fell in and out of love with most of them, but none of them were The One. None of them handled both the paperwork and the project management, or helped me protect my boundaries.
So I built Chord.
It started as a workload and income forecast, just for my personal use. Plenty of CRMs forecast income, but I couldn’t find one that tied it to actual project hours. Then I added the paperwork, because I didn’t want to pay for multiple different tools and move my client from place to place.
Here’s what else is in it:
Project management with control over exactly what each client sees.
Proofing inside the task, so feedback sits right on the work via pinned comments.
Final files that unlock only after the last invoice is paid. No more “just following up on the invoice” emails.
Revision rounds that count themselves. When a client sends feedback, Chord tells them “This will count as revision round 1 of 2 included.” If they start a third round, it tells them it may be billable. I’m an introvert, so I’m very happy to skip that conversation!
A message button in your client portal. It's easy for clients write to you from there, and it arrives in your inbox as a regular email.
A traffic-light workload view that shows at a glance when a week is full.
The ability to take a day off with one click. I’m a mum to a two-and-a-half-year-old, and you know how childcare is. I used to move every task deadline by hand and manually close my scheduler so no one could book a surprise meeting. Now it’s one click.
It also had to look good for me and for my clients. So every studio can use its own logo and colours, even on Starter.
My hope is that Chord takes the client admin off more creatives’ plates and protects their boundaries, so they can focus on the work they love. God knows the world needs more art.
A few paying studios are already on board, and each one is helping to shape it. If you’d like to try it, your first month of Pro is free with the code PRODUCTHUNT. Open your studio from the link on this page and the code is applied for you at checkout. Cancel any time before it renews.
I’m around all day to answer questions. How do you protect your boundaries with clients right now?
@orcastra congrats on launching!
I've been dealing with clients for the lats 13 years, and indeed protecting boundaries is really hard.
I'm curious to ask, does Chord also handle timekeeping for clients to see where you're spending the most time?
What integrations to other tools are available at this stage? Such as Stripe or Xero, or even Google Workspace for example (since that's where my calendar lives).
@cianseren Hi Giulia! Good questions. Chord does sync with Google Calendar for deconflicting its scheduler and Google Drive for backing up files that your client sends through the portal, so you never lose anything. Your clients can pay you via Stripe too, or via a payment QR or bank transfer if you prefer. Other integrations like Xero are in the pipeline, but a current workaround is to connect to Claude and get it to copy over the transactions to your accounting tool. As for timekeeping, it's a good idea! I'll put that in the roadmap. Thanks for the suggestion!