In 2026, the executive director of a Texas-based nonprofit hit a wall. Their CRM — a clunky Microsoft Access database — couldn't keep up: missing features, no portability, no future. Every alternative on the market was a subscription priced to bill forever, with the standing risk of price hikes or the vendor disappearing. So instead of renting software, he built Cortex from the ground up.
Once the migration was finished, it turned out the same problem was everyone else's problem too: nonprofits wanting a modern CRM without paying hundreds of dollars a month in perpetuity. So we packaged the code, wrote a manual, and put up this website.
The promise is plain: the software you buy works the same way ten years from now as it does the day you install it. We don't have a business model that benefits from changing that.