2020 Design for a kitchen showroom: what it covers, and the parts of the business you'll still need to run

A lot of people who type "2020 design alternative" into Google aren't unhappy with their drawings.

They're unhappy on a Tuesday afternoon, when a client calls about install day and nobody can say if the counters were ordered. The kitchen was drawn in 2020. The order was placed from an email. The deposit is in the bank account. The install date is on a whiteboard in the back. None of that lives in the design software, and it was never supposed to.

So before you replace the drawing tool, check which problem you actually have.

What does Cyncly Design Flex (2020 Design) cost?

Cyncly publishes two Design Flex tiers, each with and without a Success Plan, billed per year in US dollars. Foundation is US$1,895 a year without the Success Plan or US$2,195 with it. Design Flex, the tier with manufacturer catalogs, is US$2,495 or US$2,995.

Cyncly also lists a Pay Monthly option, spread over 3, 6, 12 or 24 months, and says it includes 12 months of support and updates. A 14-day free trial is mentioned on its kitchen page.

Two things the pricing page doesn't state: per-seat wording and renewal terms. If you have three designers, ask Cyncly directly how licenses are counted before you multiply anything.

What does Design Flex cover for a showroom?

Design and quoting, mainly. Cyncly lists real-time design and quoting workflows, manufacturer catalogs and supplier integrations, closet design, Cycles rendering, cloud and file catalogs, and an XML integration module for moving data to other systems. For a showroom selling manufacturer lines, that's the core of the sale.

This is the part showrooms are right to protect. Your designers know the program. Your catalogs are loaded. Your quotes come out priced from the manufacturer's own data. Rebuilding that habit in a new program means a stretch of slower designs, and the drawing was never what went wrong on install day.

Other tools connect to 2020 as well. ECI Spruce lists direct import of takeoffs from 2020 Design, and KitchenDEV sells a 2020 to ERP connector. The drawing tends to stay at the center of the showroom's software either way.

What does the Cyncly Kitchen and Bath Suite say it covers?

Cyncly sells a broader Kitchen and Bath Suite with the line "Design, quote, manage, and get paid in one flow," running "from the moment a homeowner finds you online to the day you collect payment." No prices or tiers are published for it, so it's a sales conversation.

If you want everything from one vendor, ask Cyncly for a demo of the Suite and ask specifically how it handles the steps in the next section. The Suite page we read doesn't describe project management or a CRM in detail, so the demo is where you'll find out what "manage" means for a showroom.

Cyncly lists other products on its kitchen page too (3CAD, Spaces Flex, Cyncly Websites, Insight, Mozaik and more), several aimed at manufacturers rather than retail showrooms.

Why do showrooms search for a 2020 replacement?

Usually because the business around the drawing got hard to keep track of, not because the drawing got worse. Orders split across suppliers, dates move, payments go out, and that information sits in email and spreadsheets. The design tool gets blamed because it's the software everyone opens every day.

Here's a quick test. Read the list below and ask which items cost you time last month.

• A cabinet ack that didn't match the drawing
• A supplier balance nobody could confirm
• A delivery date that moved and the installer wasn't told
• Counters ordered late because the cabinet order was on hold
• A client asking about their job while the designer was out
• A remake door with no record of the original order

If most of your answers are there, a new design program won't fix them. If your pain is in the drawings themselves (rendering speed, catalogs, quoting accuracy), then a different design tool is a fair thing to look at.

What's left to run after the drawing is done?

The order. Once a design is sold, someone places each supplier order, checks the ack, watches lead times, records what's paid to each supplier, books delivery and install, and handles remakes. Design Flex quotes the job. Running the job from contract to install is a separate piece of work.

Take an example job at $38,000 with 50% down. That's a $19,000 deposit and $19,000 due on delivery. Cabinets are ordered from one line, counters from a fabricator after template, hardware from a third supplier. That's three orders, three acks, three sets of payments to suppliers, and two dates (delivery and install) that the whole team has to see. And if the cabinet ack shows the wrong finish on two doors, you'll want that recorded against the order before the boxes ship.

Then there's the team. In a two-person studio, the designer who sold the job usually knows where it stands. Add a second designer and an office manager and that stops being true. The person answering the phone needs to see the install date, the supplier balance and whether the order is on HOLD, without opening a drawing file or asking around.

That's what sits behind a search like "2020 design project management". Not more drawing features. One place where each sold job lives, with its orders, money and dates, that everyone in the showroom can open from a phone in the warehouse or a laptop at the desk.

We go through this step by step in tracking cabinet orders from signed contract to install, and the money side in deposits and payment schedules for kitchen jobs.

What does a separate job tracker add next to 2020?

It holds the order after the quote: which suppliers are on the job, what each one costs, what's been paid and what's owed, the delivery and install dates on a shared calendar, the files (drawings, acks, photos), and a status everyone can see. You keep designing in 2020.

A worked example with published prices: Design Flex without the Success Plan is US$2,495 a year. Salone Studio is $99 a month, which is $1,188 a year for up to 3 users. Together that's $3,683 a year. A larger team on Salone Showroom ($139 a month, 4+ users) pays $1,668 a year for the tracker.

Salone is one tracker built for this. It doesn't draw kitchens, load manufacturer catalogs or order from manufacturers, so it sits next to 2020 rather than in place of it. You attach the 2020 drawing and quote PDF to the order as files. If you're still deciding which tools cover which job, we sorted them in the software kitchen showrooms use.

If you want a different drawing tool, what does ProKitchen cost?

ProKitchen, from Real View, Inc. in Grand Rapids, Michigan, sells a 1-year subscription at $1795 with no manufacturer catalogs or $2395 with multiple manufacturer catalogs. It runs on Windows and Mac, and there's a free 7-day trial, which is enough to draw one real kitchen in it.

ProKitchen describes those as "equivalent to $158/mo" and "equivalent to $208/mo," paid annually. It lists 500+ manufacturer catalogs, cloud saving and HD renderings through ProKitchen Online, 3D-GO for sending a rendering to a phone, 360 panoramas and an Oculus VR add-on. Renewal and refund terms aren't stated on its pricing page.

Switching only makes sense if the drawing itself is the problem. Try it on a live job with your own catalogs before you commit, because your designers' speed in the program matters more than any line on a price list.