BuildNest - Construction Company Website Script with Client Portal, Estimates & Invoices

BuildNest - win the job online, run it in one place

BuildNest is a complete website script for a construction company or general contractor, with a client portal and an admin panel. Visitors browse your services and finished projects and send a free quote request with photos and plans. Your office turns the lead into an estimate, the client approves it online with a typed signature and pays the deposit, and the job becomes a project with stages, weekly site photos, documents, change orders, inspections and a budget. Every finished stage is billed with a progress invoice the client pays online.

One installation = one company website under your own name, logo, colours and texts. Payments are one-time - estimate deposits and invoices with Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, Razorpay, bank transfer or check / cash at the office. Nothing renews.

Live demo

• Website: https://buildnest.anowdemo.com/
• Client (portal) (Rachel Morgan): one-click login - rachel.morgan@example.com / password
• Admin (owner, everything) (Ben Hartwell): one-click login - ben.hartwell@example.com / password
• Documentation: https://buildnest.anowdemo.com/codester/docs/index.html

Leads that arrive ready to price

• A 6-step free quote request: project type, size & scope, budget & timeline, photos & plans, contact details, done with a reference number
• Every list, step, text and upload limit is an admin field
• Leads & quotes in the admin: assign, book a site visit, create an estimate, won / lost with reason, convert to a project, CSV export
• Bell and e-mail for your team the moment a request arrives

A website that shows real work

• Home with hero, stats, services, featured projects, a before / after slider, process, reviews and an install-app block
• Services with sub-services, what is included, stages, FAQ and a price / timeline / deposit card
• Portfolio with filters and a neighborhood map (MapLibre + OpenFreeMap, no key); project pages with facts, story, gallery by week and the client's review
• About & team, licenses & insurance, reviews with a 4.9 summary, blog, careers with resume upload, contact

Estimates signed and paid online

• Estimate builder: groups, lines with qty / unit / materials / labor, optional lines, margin check, PDF
• Sales tax on taxable materials only (US default), tax-exempt clients
• The client approves or declines options, types a signature (name, time and IP stored) and pays the deposit (15 % default)
• Viewed, approved, declined and expired - all tracked

A client portal that answers every call

• Progress ring and stage bar, contract / paid / due, what is waiting, what is coming up
• Site photos by stage and week, documents you share, estimates and invoices
• Messages with photos, notifications, sign-in link by e-mail and two-step sign-in
• Works on any phone and installs as an app

Projects with stages, photos and budget

• Stages with weight and billing %, dates and this week's checklist; save & notify the client
• Site photo upload by stage and week, documents client-visible or internal
• Change orders, inspections, budget vs actual with margin, team
• Invoice this stage in one click - progress invoices with partial payments and reminders

Payments you can trust

• Estimate deposits and progress invoices - one-time payments, nothing renews
• Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, Razorpay and bank transfer with receipt + approval; check, cash, bank deposit or card terminal recorded by the office
• Amounts checked on the server, signed webhooks over the raw body, one completion per transaction
• Optional card surcharge, exchange rates for gateways in another currency

Your company in numbers

• New leads, open quotes, active projects and revenue
• Invoiced vs collected chart, lead sources, the pipeline with win rate and average won job
• Today's site visits, newest leads and the money waiting
• Team members with the admin sections each may open

Your brand on every page

• Light and dark theme, 6 colour presets + custom colours with AA readout, logos, fonts, corner style
• Every text, photo, list and number of the website in the admin
• Social networks with icons + Add network, installable app (PWA) with offline page
• Languages with an editable translation editor and auto-translate

What you get

• The complete script with the vendor folder and a browser installer (MySQL / MariaDB or SQLite) with optional demo data
• Demo data in Austin, TX: Hartwell & Rowe Builders with its team, 9 portfolio projects, 312 reviews, 42 blog posts, 386 clients, 211 leads, a kitchen remodel at stage 6 of 9 with 64 site photos and two years of invoices and payments - fresh at any hour, with one-click demo logins
• Illustrated HTML documentation: installation (cPanel, VPS, Windows), cron, the full job flow, the client portal, payments with webhook URLs, sales tax, every settings area, demo mode, updates and FAQ
• Free updates of version 1.x

Built for real contractors

• USA defaults (USD, English, America/New_York, US date formats, sales tax on materials) - every price, rate, deposit, limit and text is an admin setting
• Laravel 13, PHP 8.3+, own CSS and vanilla JavaScript - no build step, works on shared hosting
• Fast on phones: every page works from 360 px wide, panels turn into cards, the header keeps its icons at the right edge

• PHP 8.3 or newer (8.3, 8.4, 8.5)
• MySQL 5.7+ / 8.x or MariaDB 10.3+ (SQLite 3 for small sites and local tests)
• PHP extensions: pdo (pdo_mysql or pdo_sqlite), mbstring, openssl, tokenizer, xml, ctype, json, fileinfo, curl, gd, zip
• Apache with mod_rewrite (cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin), LiteSpeed or Nginx
• A cron job every minute and an SSL certificate (payments, installable app)
• No Composer, Node or SSH needed - the vendor folder is included
• Your own merchant accounts for online payments (Stripe, PayPal, Paystack or Razorpay)

Install

1. Create an empty MySQL / MariaDB database and user in your hosting panel and select PHP 8.3 or newer.
2. Upload the contents of the buildnest folder into the document root of your domain (the included .htaccess files route everything to the public folder) - or point the domain to its public folder.
3. Open your domain: the installer checks the server, connects the database, asks for your company and the admin account (optionally with the demo data).
4. Sign in at /login. Set Tax & general, Business & accounts, Payments, E-mail sending and Brand & colours; add your services, team and projects.
5. Add the cron job: * * * * * cd /path/to/buildnest && php artisan schedule:run

Payments

Paste your keys in Admin > Payments and add the webhook URLs shown there to your gateway dashboard: /webhooks/stripe, /webhooks/paystack, /webhooks/razorpay (PayPal needs none).

Full guide: documentation/index.html in the download.

1.0.0 – November 2026

• Initial release: construction company website (services, portfolio with before / after and map, reviews, blog, careers, 6-step free quote request)
• Leads, estimate builder with materials / labor, optional lines and sales tax on materials; online approval with signature and deposit
• Projects with stages, site photos, documents, change orders, inspections, budget; progress invoices
• Client portal: progress, photos, documents, estimates, invoices, messages
• Stripe, PayPal, Paystack, Razorpay, bank transfer and check / cash – one-time, no auto-renew
• Light and dark theme, PWA, social networks, languages with auto-translate, demo mode