Calisto Pro vs Dubsado & Bonsai

• 18 Only in Calisto Pro
• 4 In both

Any spreadsheet you export from Dubsado can be mapped onto Calisto, column by column.

• Deliverables: Versions, Not a Dropbox Link

  Neither tool ships work. Designers send a Dropbox link, the client comments in email, and three rounds later nobody can say which file was approved. Calisto delivers from Depot into the client portal that already holds the brief and the contract: every revision kept and the approved one marked, comments attached to the revision they refer to, source files and licences archived beside the exports, and an approval that is recorded rather than remembered.

• Retainers: Scope Creep You Can See

  A retainer invoiced as a flat recurring line hides the month where the client asked for twice the work. Calisto bills retainers in Registry and tracks hours against the agreed scope rather than a running total, so the overage is visible while there is still time to talk about it rather than at renewal. Utilization per designer falls out of the same numbers, which is what capacity planning actually needs.

• Selling the Work: A Store, Not a Portfolio

  Illustrators and fine artists sell prints, licences and originals. Dubsado and Bonsai sell nothing. Calisto publishes the portfolio in Sites on your own domain and turns it into a storefront: prints, licences and workshop or gallery-opening tickets priced in Catalog, checked out through Pulse, paid through your own processor, with the order landing on the same customer record as the commission work.