Unscripted – The New Up and Coming CRM for Photographers

Updated December, 2022

CRM stands for Client Relationship Management, and there’s a million different CRM systems out that that help you juggle all of your sessions, clients, payments, and more all in one place. You’ve probably heard of some of these- Honeybook, Dubsado, and 17 Hats are all popular choices amongst photographers.

Unscripted began as a posing app, but it’s definitely moving up into the CRM competition. Especially since they are delving into the all-in-one-platform space by offering not only client management, but client galleries as well. They also have a few unique features that other CRMs don’t offer that brought me to them in the first place.

While I still don’t think they are the best option for very large or busy businesses (mainly because of their lack of automation that other CRMs and galleries offer), right now they are a fantastic option for smaller businesses on a budget.

*Information shown here is not real client information*

My Favorite Pros:

• Sun Tracker. This is one I use for every single session to determine what time I should book them! You can type in where your session is going to be located and it will tell you what time golden hour is for both sunrise and sunset.

• Poses. Especially when I was first starting out, I would get to the session early and sit in my car and scroll through poses and prompts on the app. You can save you favorites and go back to them later, so sometimes I would just pull out my phone in the session, kickstart my memory, and try something new. They now have posing categories for almost every single thing imaginable, so no matter what you do you can find some posing help.

• Contracts and Invoices. They have premade contracts, or you can edit your own to your hearts content. You can also send invoices and connect your paypal, or have them pay through their credit card.

• Mobile Friendliness. Every single thing Unscripted does can be done though your phone. Their app is amazing, and there’s almost no learning curve at all. *cough* Dubsado! *cough* Everything is super intuitive, and basically all the features are just in tabs at the top of your screen. You can also pretty much send anything and everything to your clients through text message if email’s not your jam.

• Canned Emails and Messages. If you find yourself sending the same emails (or text messages!) to your clients multiple times, you can save them! Then it’s just a one click solution to send messages. You don’t need to waste any more time typing out every single email or text to your clients.

• Cost. Other CRMs can cost hundreds of dollars in subscriptions fees. You can expect to pay anywhere from $200-$600 for a one year subscription with a typical CRM. Unscripted currently (December, 2022) costs $160 for an entire year, and only $20 for a monthly subscription. They also sometimes offer lifetime subscriptions, which if you’re like me, you can’t pass up an opportunity to get rid of a subscription. (You can even get lifetime or yearly access for a $20 discount with the code “SAVVYLEIGH”)

• Their Facebook Group. You don’t even have to have the app to join their Facebook group, and I love it. No lie, it’s honestly one of the most kind and uplifting photography groups there is. The Unscripted group and the Amy & Jordan groups are pretty much the only places I post. The community is seriously awesome! Go join it here.

Other Notable Features:

• Checklists/To-Do Lists for each session
• Questionnaires
• Timelines for Weddings and Photoshoots (you can set it to buzz you during the timeline if you need help staying on track!)
• Camera settings guide
• Basic photography education guides
• Editable style guides to send to clients
• A directory to collab with other professionals
• They now offer a gallery delivery service, so you can manage your clients, their session info, and their photos all in one place!

The Cons:

• No White Labeling. This means the Unscripted logo and branding is on your stuff (some of your stuff). For some people, this isn’t a big deal, but personally it’s a big pet peeve of mine. Especially with client galleries, I’m not a fan of having the unscripted logos on the top and bottom! Honeybook is perhaps a worse offender at this, since even your emails get branded with Honeybook, but Dubsado is one that does offer white labeling.

• No Automation. Other CRMs like Honeybook or Dubsado will allow automations to take over certain tasks in your business. Things like sending emails a certain number of days before their wedding, sending payment reminders, etc. Unscripted does not currently offer any workflows or automations that I’m aware of.

• No Client Portal. I personally love having a client portal embedded in my website. Although some people don’t care for client portals, I would love to see Unscripted come out with this feature at some point.

• Style Variety. The entire app seems to only use photos of a very similar moody, brown style. Sometimes you can tell poses are accepted and featured because it’s a pretty picture- not because the actual pose is helpful, which can be annoying.

• Limited Sales Options for Galleries. When you send out an Unscripted gallery, there’s no option to purchase prints, canvases, or albums. There’s also no option to allow for a certain number of images to be downloaded, or to watermark digitals. So if your photography business model relies on post-session sales, just keep in mind everything would have to be done manually.

Final Thoughts on Unscripted

Should you purchase Unscripted?

If you are still relatively small and don’t need fancy automations yet, Unscripted is perfect for you. You can easily jump right into all of the basic necessities that a photographer needs. You can get Unscripted today, and have a business system set up tomorrow. There’s not a lot of CRMs out there that can make that claim.

The simplicity of the app partially comes from the lack of more complex options. However, they’ve also proven that they are consistently growing and adding to their platform. They’ve becoming quite a competitor for even long standing companies like Honeybook in the past couple years, and they seem dead set on becoming an all-in-one program for photographers.

At that’s only looking at the CRM aspect of the app! But even without those client management and gallery features, I use the Unscripted sun tracker for every single shoot I do. And I frequently refer to their posing inspiration, so it was worth it for me regardless.

Only you can make the decision for what’s right for your business. I hope this article helps make that decision easier. Unscripted is a great choice for a small photography business. Even if you’re not a small business, it might be worthwhile to stick around with them as they evolve and improve.

Need a discount code? Copy and paste this code at checkout to get $20 off a yearly or a lifetime subscription for Unscripted: SAVVYLEIGH

Looking into Dubsado? That same code will also get you 20% off over there