My name is David Bassett. I spent years as a contractor, closing jobs against competitors who only knew how to fight on price, until I found a way to show a homeowner exactly what they were buying before they ever signed. I built that approach into a construction company, sold it for $5.3 million, and then built Evalation so every contractor could sell the way I learned to sell.
I did not start as a software person. I started as a contractor, bidding jobs, framing decks, standing in backyards trying to explain to a homeowner what their yard was going to look like once the crew was done. For a long time I ran my business the way most residential contractors run theirs: a CRM that did not talk to the estimating spreadsheet, a project management tool that did not talk to either one, and an invoicing system bolted on top of all of it. If you have ever compared platforms trying to find one that actually fits how a construction business runs day to day, you already know that patchwork.
I lived inside that patchwork for years while I built my own construction company. I hired crews, took on bigger jobs, and grew the business past what any one person could run out of a truck. Eventually I sold that company for $5.3 million (the sale value from my own closing documents, not a rounded marketing figure). That exit is the credential behind everything else on this site. It came from running a real construction business, not from a career in software.
What I learned building and selling that company is the reason Evalation exists. The tools were never the real problem. The real problem was that a homeowner had to imagine what they were paying for, and imagination is a hard thing to close a deal on.
Somewhere in the middle of running that company, I changed how I sold. Instead of describing a deck with a tape measure and a hand-drawn sketch, I started sitting down with the homeowner and building the design in front of them, live, so they could see the finished structure before they committed to anything. No verbal pitch could compete with watching your own backyard change in real time on a screen.
The shift in my numbers was not subtle. I started closing 73% of the jobs I presented this way, at roughly double what other contractors in my market were charging for the same scope of work. That is a documented number from my own sales records over the years I sold this way, not an industry estimate and not a number a marketing team rounded up later.
The moment a homeowner can see the finished deck instead of imagining it, the conversation about price is already over.
Once I saw what a live 3D model did to my own close rate, I wanted every contractor to have access to it, not just the ones who happened to figure it out the way I did. That is the direct reason Evalation Lab exists inside Evalation: it lets you design a deck, pergola, concrete pad, or fence live in front of the homeowner, show them a 3D model of the finished result, and hand them an estimate before you leave the driveway. Today, that live 3D design piece covers those four trades. If you work in a different trade, Evalation still runs your estimating in minutes and handles the CRM, operations, and invoicing side of the business, even where the 3D design piece is not built for your trade yet.
Evalation itself is what is called a CORR platform. CORR (Company, Operations, Relations, and Revenue) is a category of business platform that runs a contractor's entire company in one system, replacing the separate CRM, estimating, project management, and accounting tools contractors traditionally stitch together. Read the full breakdown of what that means.
I priced it the way I wished software had been priced back when I was running my own crew: visible up front instead of hidden behind a sales call, and locked at whatever rate you join at instead of climbing every year you stay. Evalation costs $297 per month for the first 50 founding members, locked for life, with no per-user fees. The price you join at is the price you pay for life. You can see exactly what that includes, including what happens once the founding 50 spots are gone, on the pricing page.
If you have ever watched a homeowner say they need to think it over, you already know the moment I am describing. Evalation Lab is how you get in front of that moment instead of losing to it.