The Birdcage Business Hub marketing plan visualizer
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Case study · Our own build

We replaced $3,500 a month of software with one app we own.

We built it because the stack we rented never talked to itself.

The Birdcage Business Hub is the operating system we run the agency on: clients, projects, CRM, content, approvals and an owner view, over one database.

The problem

Six sources of truth.

A strategy-first agency means a stack: projects, CRM, proposals, time, approvals, content calendar, docs. Each solved a slice. None talked to each other.

Every tool was a monthly invoice and a per-seat tax. The total crept past $3,500 a month, and we still spent half our time copying information between systems that should have known about each other.

So we built our own.

What we built

One operating system for the whole agency.

One hierarchy, My Day → Clients → Projects → the work, with CRM and an Owner view over one database. Every client, project, plan, content piece, task, comment, time entry, deal and proposal lives in one place and threads back to its source. No re-keying. Built for how a small team works: one job per view, no badge spam, calm enough for every day.

How the model fits together, clients hold projects, projects hold plans
Clients hold projects · projects hold plans · plans hold the work

What it does

Every slice, in one place.

Plans you can see move.

Every client's strategy is cards travelling across three phases: Strategy, Build, Optimise. The client watches the work happen, no status email.

The marketing plan visualizer, cards moving across three phases

Content drafted in the client's own voice.

Each client's brand strategy, voice, pillars, audience, lives in the system, so the AI drafts in the right voice and shows its working: which framework, which rules, every time.

The creative content workshop drafting in a client's voice

Tasks with everything attached.

Subtasks, threaded comments, time against an estimate, multiple owners, and an AI estimate from similar past work. Desktop or pocket.

A task detail view, subtasks, comments, time and an AI estimate

A business view, not a to-do list.

What shipped this week, what carried over, hours per client, and a quiet AI flag when the same thing slips three weeks running.

The owner's Slipped & Shipped business view

Client approvals without the chase.

Clients see exactly how a post will look, then approve or request changes in two taps. No logins to lose, no email threads to untangle.

Client approval queue on mobile
Client approval list and detail on mobile
Instagram-faithful preview with team notes

It’s real, and it’s in use

Not a concept deck. It runs the agency every day.

My Day, live, a real Monday with seven tasks open
My Day, an actual Monday, three overdue
Content concepts for a live client project
Real client work in flight
Live owner dashboard with AI usage
Owner view, a week shipped and what it cost

The economics

A fraction of the cost, and it doesn’t climb when we hire.

  • $3,500per month replaced
  • ~$42ka year, climbing with every seat
  • 6+ → 1tools collapsed into one app
  • 100%self-hosted, our code, our data

We own it, we don’t rent it

The software fits the business.

Self-hosted, our code, our database, our data. No per-seat pricing, no vendor killing the feature we depend on, no export-and-pray. When we need something new, we build it, usually the same week. This is what we build for clients too.

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