ConnectMachine turns the paper business cards a plumber collects into clean digital contacts. Point your phone at a supplier's or another trade's card and the AI reads the name, company, title, email, and phone in seconds, then keeps the original image. Every contact is searchable, so the rep or GC you need is a tap away, not lost in the glovebox.
A plumber collects business cards without even trying. The supply house rep hands you one at the counter, the HVAC tech swaps cards on a job, a GC who wants a reliable plumber slips you his, and you grab a stack at the trade show. They end up in the visor, the glovebox, and the junk drawer at the shop, faded and bent.
The trouble starts when you need one of them. The card for the guy who does backflow testing, or the water heater rep who owes you a callback, is somewhere in that pile, if it did not go through the wash. Business card scanning with ConnectMachine fixes that: scan the card once and it becomes a clean contact you can search, with the original image kept just in case.
Where all those cards come from
Plumbing is a trade built on the people you deal with every week, and most of them hand you a card. The problem is never getting cards. It is finding the right one months later, when it is buried in a stack held together by a rubber band.
Think about how many cards cross your hands in a normal month. Every one is a contact that could send you work or save you a job, and every one is at risk of being lost the second it lands on your dash.
- The rep and the will-call guy at the supply house.
- Manufacturer reps for water heaters, pumps, and fixtures.
- Other trades on the job: the electrician, the HVAC tech, the GC.
- Referral partners: real estate agents, property managers, and restoration crews.
- The stack you grab at a plumbing expo or a home show.
Scan a card in the time it takes to read it
Business card scanning turns that pile into contacts without you typing a thing. You do it right on your phone, one card at a time, in the ConnectMachine app.
- Open ConnectMachine and point your phone camera at the card.
- The AI scanner reads the card and pulls out the name, company, title, email, and phone.
- It saves the original card image too, so nothing is lost if a detail is smudged.
- Check it once, add the person to your contacts, and move to the next card.
- Work through the whole glovebox stack in one sitting at the kitchen table.
The free plan lets you scan three paper cards to try it. The Individual plan, at $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year, makes card scanning unlimited, so the whole rubber-band stack and every card you pick up after is covered.
Every field, not just the phone number
A card is more than a phone number. The company, the title, and the email all matter when you are trying to remember who someone was. The AI pulls every field off the card, so the contact is complete without you squinting at tiny print.
- Name and company, so you know who they are and where they work.
- Title, so you know if they are the rep, the owner, or the counter guy.
- Email and phone, ready to tap and call or send a message.
- The original card image, kept on the contact in case you need the logo or a note on the back.
It reads cards in more than five languages too, which helps when a manufacturer's card or a supplier rep's card is not in plain English. You still get a clean contact out of it.
A note on who they are and what they trade
A stack of clean contacts is good. Contacts you actually remember are better. The moment you scan a card, add a quick voice note about who the person is and what work you trade with them, while it is still fresh.
Say it out loud: 'Met Dave at the expo, does commercial HVAC, sends me the water heater jobs he does not want.' That ten-second note turns a name on a card into a referral partner you can act on, and ConnectMachine keeps it right on the contact.
- How you know them and where you met.
- What they do and what work you send each other.
- Their pricing or terms, if they are a supplier or a rep.
- Anything worth remembering before the next time you call.
Find the right card without digging
This is the payoff. Because every card is a searchable contact now, you never dig through the glovebox again. When you need someone, just ask.
The AI Concierge searches your contacts in plain language, the way you would ask a buddy. 'Who was that backflow guy?' or 'who is the water heater rep for the west side?' and it pulls the contact from the cards you scanned, in seconds. The person you met once at a supply counter is still one question away.
Every contact in one place, ready to use
The cards you scan do not get stuck inside one app. They land in one organized list that works with the tools you already run.
- Export your contacts to a CSV on any plan, for a spreadsheet or your accountant.
- Sync them to your CRM on a paid plan, so office follow-up stays in one system.
- Connect to 5,000+ apps through Zapier to push new contacts wherever you want them.
- Your contacts stay private by default and are never sold, encrypted whether they are stored or moving.
So the card the supply rep handed you at the counter ends up in the same place as every other contact, searchable and backed up, instead of faded on your dashboard.
