Honest answers.

The full Cortex application as a ZIP file: PHP source, MySQL schema, the setup guide, and 30 days of email support.

You can install it on as many of your servers as you want, modify it, and keep using it indefinitely. It is not time-limited.

Because we're selling you software, not a service. Hosted SaaS pricing has to cover servers, support staff, sales reps, and venture-scale growth targets — forever, every year.

Per-org. Run as many copies as your org needs — staging, production, dev, a sandbox for the new hire — for the same nonprofit entity. Just don't redistribute or resell it outside your org.

No trial download — but we offer a 20-minute live demo on a real install with seeded data. Schedule one here.

A few small ones, paid directly to the providers — not us:

• A web server. You can install Cortex on your existing web server, or set up a new one on Amazon Lightsail for ~$20/month. We provide a setup guide with detailed instructions for configuring your Lightsail instance.
• S3 for attachment storage. Any files you upload to Cortex (docs, spreadsheets, etc.) are saved to your own bucket — typically pennies a month.
• AWS SES for transactional email — roughly $0.10 per 1,000 messages.
• reCAPTCHA, to keep bots off your login page — free.

Four optional integrations, billed by the third party as you use them:

• Real Validito — automatically detects phone number types. Per-lookup pricing.
• Handwrytten — sends personalized handwritten thank-you cards to your donors. Per-card pricing.
• Anthropic — generates AI overviews of donors based on their transaction and conversation history. Pay-per-token.
• Google Geocoding — geo-locates every customer/donor so you can run location-based reporting. Google's free tier includes 10,000 lookups per month.

All four are opt-in. Cortex works fine without any of them — leave the API keys blank and the features stay hidden.

A reasonably modern LAMP stack:

• PHP 8.1+ with standard extensions (mbstring, pdo_mysql, gd, curl)
• MySQL 8
• Any web server (Apache or Nginx)

A $20/mo Amazon Lightsail instance handles a 10,000-record database without breaking a sweat.

You need someone technical — staff, contractor, or volunteer. The setup guide is straightforward, but it does involve setting up a server.

If you don't have that person, our $1,499 white glove setup covers it.

Probably not. The setup documentation assumes you have CLI access to your server, which most shared hosting doesn't provide. Amazon Lightsail is the best option for hosting, and it's much cheaper than shared hosting anyway. 

Yes. If you're techy, you can import the data into Cortex using a tool like MySQL Workbench. If that sounds like gibberish, we can provide a custom data migration analysis.

You'll have access to bug fixes and updates for one year. You can download the latest source code and update it on your server.

In your MySQL database, on your server. We never see it.

You have full access to the database, meaning you can back it up however you'd like and whenever you'd like. The best option is to automate it with a cron job using mysqldump, exported to S3 or Backblaze on a cron. The White Glove plan includes setting up automated recurring backups.

Nothing happens to your install. You have the source code, you have your database. The software keeps running. That's the entire pitch.

Cortex doesn't send bulk newsletters. It can send email receipts for donations, and you can export segements of your donor list to Excel (based on tags or geo-location) for easy import into your email newsletter service.

There is no direct integration. However, Cortex produces daily sales reports that break down your income by type and payment method. You can plug this data into QuickBooks manually.

Cortex was built by the Executive Director of a Texas nonprofit that was tired of relying on Microsoft Access for their CRM. More on the About page.

The self-hosted license isn't going anywhere. We may eventually offer an optional managed hosting tier for orgs that want one, but that won't affect you unless you want it to.