appy.agency
CRM for magazine editorial

A CRM built for magazine editorial teams

Stories, issues, contributors and deadlines in one place — copy chases itself, the flatplan fills on time, and fees go out the day the editor signs off.

Free · no signup · a real plan and price in ~10 minutes, in your words.

to a working prototype
~1 week
to start
€500
that chase themselves
Deadlines

Off-the-shelf CRMs were built for a sales team. Not for magazine editorial.

The flatplan lives in a spreadsheet and the copy lives in email — nobody can say what’s actually filed until the week before press.

Deadline chasing is a full-time job done part-time. One late feature and the whole issue slips — and the printer charges you either way.

Contributor fees get agreed in DMs, invoiced from memory and paid late — your best writers quietly drift to whoever pays on time.

Every issue reinvents the process: which draft is current, who has the images, whether the rights were cleared. Ask three people, get three answers.

See it from the inside

What your CRM would look like — screen by screen.

Not stock screenshots — this is the shape of the system we’d build for magazine editorial: your records, your stages, your words. Click through the screens.

The editor’s morning screen — copy due this week, pages still open in the flatplan, and what got chased before anyone sat down.

A real starting point

Here’s the analysis we’d start from — for magazine editorial.

Not a template. This is the data model, pipeline and automations a business like yours actually runs on — mapped in your words. Your free analysis produces exactly this, shaped to you.

Your system, mapped

Your pipeline, exactly as your CRM would show it — your stages, your words. This is what we build from.

What it tracks

StoriesIssuesContributorsCommissionsAssetsInvoices

Where customers reach you

EmailPitch formWhatsAppPhone

Connects to

Google DocsAccounting exportImage library

Busywork the system takes over

  • Deadline chasersnudges the writer at five days, two days, and the morning copy is due
  • Commission packsbrief, contract and fee sent the moment a story is greenlit
  • Fee invoicingcontributor invoice raised automatically on editor sign-off
  • Flatplan gap alertsflags under-commissioned pages three weeks before press day

What this replaces — where it hurts today

  • Flatplan in a spreadsheet
  • Deadlines chased by hand
  • Fees agreed in DMs

Your price, from your answers

Standard scope

Prototype · 1 weekstart here

€500

  • Story + contributor records
  • One issue’s pipeline board
  • The deadline-chaser automation

Full build

€4,000€7,500

Estimate — it becomes one fixed price on the free call. Never hourly, no surprises.

€3,000every appy build lands in this band€9,000

What sets your scope

  • · Per-issue story pipeline & flatplan
  • · Automated deadline chasing
  • · Contributor fees & kill-fee handling

Run · monthly

€180/mo

Hosting, monitoring, fixes and small improvements.

If you go all the way: ≈ €6,160 first year, all-in — and you own everything. Today's only decision is the €500 prototype.

Questions magazine editorial ask us

Does it work with Google Docs and our layout software?
Yes — writers keep drafting where they draft. Each story links straight to its live doc, and once a piece is approved the copy and cleared images are handed to layout in one bundle, not fished out of email.
We run print and digital on different schedules — can it cope?
Yes. A story carries both a print slot and a publish date, so the same piece can sit in the June flatplan and go online the week it suits you. The deadlines and chasers track each independently.
How long until we’re live?
A working prototype in about a week for €500. The full build usually lands in three to six weeks, depending on how many titles, sections and integrations are in scope.
Who owns the system and the data?
You do — entirely. It’s your system, hosted for you, and you can export everything at any time. No per-seat lock-in.

Have a mess like this one?

Book a free 30-min call. We’ll sketch what your version of this system would look like — and put a number on it.

Get a free plan & price