Switching
You already run an agency. This is the awkward page.
Everything else here is written for somebody meeting the idea. This one is written for somebody with thirty-four live journeys, a team who know their spreadsheet, and good reason to be sceptical — so it answers the four questions that actually decide whether a demo is worth your half hour.
One · Does it fit how we work?
Surrogacy is not one process, and we do not pretend it is.
An agency in Bogotá, one in California and one placing families across a border are running genuinely different operations. The twelve-phase spine is a shape, not a rulebook: enquiry to handover, with your stage names, your steps and your durations hung on it. Here is what actually varies, and what the platform does about each.
Compensated or altruistic
Whether the carrier is paid, and on what schedule, changes the entire payments spine — and in some places changes what may be recorded at all.
What the platform does
Milestone schedules are yours to define. An agency running altruistic journeys simply has fewer of them, and the payments module can be switched off entirely.
Who holds the money
Escrow agent, trust account, the clinic, or the agency. Each puts a different party in the middle of every milestone.
What the platform does
We track against milestones and never hold funds, so whoever holds them stays in place. The party you are waiting on is a field, not an assumption.
Where the carrier lives, and whether anyone travels
A domestic journey and a cross-border one are different operations: consulates, exit paperwork, a family living abroad for weeks.
What the platform does
Trips and appointments carry their own timezone, and the travel module is separate — an agency with no cross-border work never sees it.
What has to happen before a birth
Pre-birth orders, post-birth adoption, parentage declarations, apostilles. The names differ, the sequence differs, and the deadlines differ.
What the platform does
These are steps on your journey template with your names and your durations. The platform records what your attorneys decide; it never advises.
Who the carrier is matched by
Some agencies match in-house, some work with carrier agencies, some run both.
What the platform does
Matching is a module. Turn it on to run it here, or leave it off and record the outcome of a match made elsewhere.
How many parties touch a case
Clinic, attorney, escrow, translator, embassy, a second agency — the list is longer in some models than others.
What the platform does
Every blocking step names the party it is waiting on, from a list you control. That is what makes “whose fault is this delay” answerable.
What it will never do is tell you what the law is. It records what your attorneys and clinicians decide and makes sure the right people know — in every jurisdiction, that is the same job.
Two · Why not what we already use?
Most of the time, the honest answer is “stay where you are”.
A tool your team open every morning is worth more than any feature list. So here is where each of the usual alternatives is genuinely the right answer, and the specific point at which it stops being one.
A spreadsheet
When it is the right answer
Genuinely fine up to about eight or ten journeys with one coordinator. It is fast, free, and everybody already knows it.
Where it stops being one
It breaks at the hand-offs. A spreadsheet records where a family IS; it cannot tell you that nobody has moved them for nine days, and it has no way to show the family anything. The second coordinator is usually where it stops working.
Airtable, Notion or a shared drive
When it is the right answer
A real step up from a spreadsheet, and the right answer for plenty of small teams. Views, forms, some automation.
Where it stops being one
No journey semantics. There is no such thing as “overdue for this phase at this agency” unless you build and maintain it yourself — and nothing to give an intended parent except a link you would rather not send.
A general CRM
When it is the right answer
Excellent at what it is for: a pipeline of deals that close.
Where it stops being one
A surrogacy journey does not close, it runs for two years after the sale. CRMs model the part you have already finished and go quiet exactly when the work starts.
Another surrogacy platform
When it is the right answer
If it fits how you work and your team open it every morning, that is worth more than any feature comparison we could write.
Where it stops being one
Switch only if something specific is wrong — you cannot see the whole book at once, the family-facing side embarrasses you, or you cannot answer “why was last quarter slower”. If none of those bite, stay.
Three · What does it connect to?
Fewer things than you might expect, on purpose.
An integration is a promise that two systems will agree forever, and most of them quietly stop being true. So the things a journey genuinely needs are built in rather than wired up — and where we have not built something, we would rather say so than show you a logo.
E-signature, built in
Agreements are sent, signed and returned inside the case record — no third tool, no downloading and re-uploading, no wondering which version was executed.
Email that comes back
Notifications go out to whoever needs them, and when somebody replies the reply lands on the case rather than in one coordinator’s inbox.
Translation, both ways
Messages translate between English, Spanish, Russian and Turkish, with the original always kept alongside. The product and the portals are localised in the same four.
Your data, on the way out
Everything exports. We would rather help you leave than build a platform that has to trap you to keep you.
Not connected today
- Calendar sync (Google or Outlook) — appointments live here and are not yet pushed to your own calendar
- Accounting (Xero, QuickBooks) — payments are tracked against milestones and reconciled by you
- A public API — planned, not shipped; ask if it is a requirement and we will tell you where it stands
Four · What happens to the journeys already running?
Nobody starts a surrogacy platform from zero.
A new agency can be live this afternoon, and we say so elsewhere on this site. An agency already carrying thirty families cannot, and pretending otherwise would tell you we have never done this. Two weeks is realistic, you do not stop working while it happens, and the old system stays on until you decide it does not.
What we need from you is smaller than it sounds: the families, the phase each one is in, and the date they entered it. Everything else can arrive later or never.
- 1
Before
We look at what you actually have
A call and a copy of your spreadsheet, or a screen-share of whatever you use now. We are looking for your real stage names, the steps that matter and the ones nobody uses, so the journey we build is the one you already run rather than ours.
- 2
Week one
Your journey, and the book that is already running
Your workspace, your branding, your stages. Then your live journeys go in — every family with the phase they are in and the date they entered it, so the map is true from the first morning rather than after a quarter of accumulation.
- 3
Week one, still
You keep working the old way
Nothing is switched off. Run both for as long as you need — a week is typical — and use the overlap to find the things nobody thought to mention until they saw them missing.
- 4
Week two
The team moves, then the families
Coordinators first, while the stakes are low. Portals go out to intended parents once your team are comfortable, because the worst possible order is a client finding a problem before your own staff have.
- 5
From then on
It starts measuring you against you
The baselines start as templates and become your own history. After a quarter the platform is comparing this month against your months, which is the number that was never available before.
Bring the spreadsheet. We’ll tell you if you should switch.
Half an hour, your own book, and a straight answer about whether this is worth the disruption. If your current setup is working, we will say so — we are looking for agencies we can genuinely help, not for a signature.