Switching from Dubsado to CoreHue
Dubsado is built to be set up for almost any service business. CoreHue is shaped for photography from the start, so there's far less to set up and the wording already fits. It adds client galleries in the same place.
That trade is the whole story: you give up a lot of configurability and get a lot of your evenings back.
What things are called
| In Dubsado | In CoreHue | The difference |
|---|---|---|
| Project, job | Booking, or the contact record | Nothing groups a whole job into one record. A confirmed job is a Booking. Everything about a person sits on their contact record under tabs |
| Lead capture form | Intake form | A public form that creates a contact and opens a conversation carrying every answer |
| Questionnaire form | Questionnaire | A request sent to one person. It carries its own copy of the questions, so editing the template later doesn't change what they were asked |
| Proposal form | Proposal | Pricing, client choices, an optional contract and a payment schedule in one link |
| Sub-agreement, contract | Contract | One contract per document. There are no sub-agreements |
| Package | Item | A reusable priced line. Invoice and proposal lines are named from this catalogue |
| Smart field | Variable | 28 of them, in six groups. A variable that can't be filled in blocks the send instead of printing a blank |
| Canned email | Email template | Free-form and not tied to a document type. Merge fields: client's first name, business name, business email, today's date and current year |
| Workflow | Reminders and scheduled questionnaires | A fixed set of automatic actions, not a builder. You can't set up your own triggers or branching sequences |
| Scheduler | Booking service | Three modes: inquiry, direct booking or mini session, each with its own flow |
| Payment plan | Payment schedule | Up to 12 rows on one invoice, each with a label, amount and due date |
| Client portal | Nothing, but see the difference | No portal to log into. Each document has its own link, and a client's booking page gathers documents and payments once a booking exists |
| Brand (multiple brands) | One business | CoreHue is one business, one logo, one set of client pages |
| Bookkeeping | Nothing | Finance reports money that moved through CoreHue. There's no expense tracking |
| Delivering photos | Galleries | The part Dubsado doesn't do at all |
What to bring across
Your forms. A lead capture form becomes an intake form. Everything you send to an existing client becomes a questionnaire. Both builders have display logic, so a question that only appears when an earlier answer matches still works. One difference worth knowing: questionnaires support a file upload field, intake forms don't.
Your contract wording. Copy it into a contract template and replace smart fields with variables. CoreHue seeds starter templates around the kind of photography you chose at setup, so check those first before you retype anything.
Your canned emails. Retype the ones you actually use into email templates. They appear in the composer whenever you write to a client.
Your packages. These become Items, plus client choices and add-ons on a proposal when you offer levels.
Your clients. There's no spreadsheet import. Add the active ones in Contacts. The rest arrive as they inquire or book.
Your documents and payment history. Download signed contracts and invoice PDFs before you close the account. Nothing about past payments moves.
Set these up first
- Business name, logo and details in Settings → Business.
- Your saved contract signature.
- Your default currency in Settings → Profile. It's permanent.
- Connect Stripe.
- One booking service and your availability.
Your first week
Day 1. Finish setup and the five things above. Take the tour of the app.
Day 2. Rebuild the one form you use most, as an intake form if it's for new inquiries, or a questionnaire if it's for booked clients.
Day 3. Adapt a starter contract template into your real agreement.
Day 4. Put your Items in and build a proposal to yourself, with a contract and a payment schedule. Accept it, sign it, pay it.
Day 5. Turn on reminders for bookings, invoices and documents. That's the nearest thing to the workflows you're leaving behind, and it does most of what they did.
Then. Take your next inquiry through CoreHue from the first reply.
What you'll miss
The workflow builder. Nothing in CoreHue lets you chain your own triggers and actions together. Here's what runs on its own:
- Reminders for bookings, invoices, proposals, contracts and questionnaires
- Questionnaires scheduled around a booking
- Contracts signed at the point of booking
- Invoices raised from bookings and accepted proposals
For most photography businesses that covers it. If your Dubsado workflows do something unusual, check it's on that list before you move.
Multiple brands and team members. Neither exists. One business, one person.