Platform Overview
Sustentus is a multi-tenant B2B service marketplace that automates the end-to-end lifecycle of service delivery — from lead intake through to project completion and payment. The platform connects three core stakeholders: vendors who source service leads, experts who deliver the work, and customers who request services.
How It Works
Vendors onboard onto the platform and configure their service categories — a new tenant’s first user is taken straight to an AI concierge wizard at /onboarding and kept there until setup is complete, chatting while a setup blueprint (profile, catalogue, skills, SLAs, settings) fills in beside them section by section as the conversation covers it, then confirming the blueprint as a whole before launching it live. When a customer submits a service request (a lead), the platform’s AI agent gathers business requirements through a conversational interface, producing a structured Business Requirements Document (BRD). Once the customer approves the BRD, the lead enters the bid pool where matched experts submit proposals. After a bid is accepted, the project moves to delivery, tracked through milestones with payment processing at each stage.
Stakeholders
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Vendor | Organisation that sources service leads and manages customer relationships. Signs up via the marketing site and configures their service offerings. |
| Customer | End-user requesting a service. Writes their requirements with the assistant and reviews expert proposals. |
| Expert | Service provider who bids on leads in the bid pool, submits proposals with milestones and pricing, and delivers the project. |
| CSM | Customer Success Manager. Customer-facing internal role that oversees engagement quality and steps in when flagged by experts. |
| SDM | Service Delivery Manager. Expert-facing internal role that manages expert performance and delivery standards. |
| Admin | Platform administrator with full system access including tenant configuration, workflow management, and snapshot control. |
For detailed responsibilities and what each role sees in the platform, see Roles.
Business Model
Sustentus operates on a tiered subscription model for vendors.
Subscription Tiers
| Tier | Target | Key Features |
|---|---|---|
| Self-Service | Small vendors | AI intake and routing, dashboard and analytics, email support |
| Growth | Mid-market vendors | All Self-Service features plus advanced user management, custom roles and permissions, priority support |
| Managed (Enterprise) | Large vendors | All Growth features plus dedicated CSM and SDM, custom workflows, SLA and governance |
| Partner (Enterprise) | White-label partners | White-label delivery, API and SSO integration, revenue sharing |
A tenant’s tier is recorded on its Clerk organisation and is set by Sustentus staff from the tenant-management console, never by the tenant: it appears read-only on the tenant’s own /admin/settings/general, and every change records the staff member who made it, the movement and their reason on the console activity trail. Staff see each tenant’s tier in the console directory and change it from tenant detail, where the confirm step names what the tenant gains and loses before the change lands.
Of the capabilities in the table, one is a gate the product enforces today: custom roles and permissions — the role-template editor and per-user permission overrides — are available from Growth upwards, and a workspace below that tier is told so rather than shown an editor it cannot use. The rest are commercial or service commitments Sustentus makes outside the software, or capabilities not yet built; they become enforced gates one at a time, as each becomes real.
Transaction Terms
The markup on a lead is Sustentus’s platform fee, separate from the vendor’s subscription above. It is a percentage of services revenue that Sustentus sets for each tenant from the tenant-management console — never the vendor’s to edit, and never shown or changed anywhere in the vendor’s own workspace settings. A tenant Sustentus has not set a markup for is charged no fee: there is no default percentage. The fee is stamped on each quote when it is issued: the quote shows the expert’s delivery cost, the platform fee and the total customer price (cost plus fee), so the price a customer pays is not the amount the expert is paid. The vendor, CSM and SDM see all three; the customer sees only the price and the expert only their cost (see Quote & Acceptance). The SDM’s service-revenue figures show the fee each paid invoice carries. The platform records the fee and shows it — it does not invoice or collect it.
Multi-Tenancy
Every vendor operates within their own tenant — an isolated instance with its own users, leads, and settings. This means:
- Data isolation: Each vendor’s leads, proposals, invoices, and team are scoped to their tenant.
- Shared status workflow: All tenants follow the same deterministic status workflow, defined in version-controlled JSON; SLA timers and automation rules are configured per tenant.
- Independent settings: Notification templates and product catalogues are tenant-specific.
- Managed lifecycle: Tenants are created from the tenant management console — by the Sustentus team, or by a partner provisioning their own client. A tenant can be suspended, which closes the workspace to its people without removing anything, and reactivated just as easily. Ending a tenant is two steps: it is first deleted, recoverable in full for 30 days, and only a separate, deliberately awkward confirmation erases it and its data for good. Each of these moments is emailed to the people it affects: the tenant’s own administrators are told what happened to their workspace, and the partner administering it and the Sustentus team are told as operators.
Integration Points
| Integration | Purpose | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Clerk | Authentication and user management | Active |
| PostHog | Product analytics and conversion tracking | Active |
| Sentry | Error tracking for the web app | Active |
| Stripe | Payment processing for expert payouts and usage fees | Planned |
| CRM (Webhook) | Inbound lead ingestion from vendor CRMs | Active |
| Embeddable Forms | Lead capture forms vendors embed on their own websites | Active |
Platform Architecture (Non-Technical)
The platform consists of several user-facing applications:
- Marketing Site — Public website where vendors learn about Sustentus and sign up for a subscription tier.
- Platform Application — The main dashboard used by all roles (vendor, customer, expert, CSM, SDM, admin) with role-based views.
- Requirements conversation — the assistant’s customer register guides customers through writing their service requirements, and the team reads the conversation on the request.
Each vendor gets a personalised dashboard showing their funnel performance — from lead intake through to project delivery — with conversion rate metrics at every stage.