A Programa
alternative.

What Programa actually is.

Programa is an Australian studio operations platform built for interior design practices. It covers specifications, presentations, project management, a product library, a web clipper, a client dashboard, invoicing, time tracking and procurement. It is comprehensive by design: the pitch is that the whole studio runs inside it.

It lists at roughly 59 US dollars per seat per month, or about 47 per seat on annual billing, with regional pricing pages including one for the UK. For a three-person studio on monthly billing that is a real line in the accounts, and it is the right line if the platform is doing three-people’s worth of work.

Reviewers commonly rate the operations side highly and note that the moodboard tools and the product library feel less refined than the rest of the platform. That is the honest reason this comparison exists. Those two things are not a side feature of VADE, they are all of it.

Side by side.

When Programa is the better choice.

There is no version of this comparison where VADE wins on scope, and pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon. If any of the following describes you, buy Programa.

You raise purchase orders

If your process runs on purchase orders, supplier acknowledgements, deposits and delivery tracking, that is procurement, and procurement is a system of record with money attached. VADE has none of it. A studio doing serious FF&E procurement on spreadsheets is losing more than 59 dollars a month to the spreadsheets.

You invoice and track time from the same place

Time tracking that feeds invoicing that reconciles against a project budget is genuinely valuable and genuinely tedious to assemble from separate tools. Programa does it in one platform. VADE will never do any of it.

You want the client in a portal

A client dashboard showing schedule, approvals and documents is a different proposition from a beautiful board on a link. If your clients expect to log in and see the state of the project, VADE’s deliberately account-free shared boards will feel too light.

You want one platform, not two tabs

Some studios are better run on a single system, even an imperfect one, than on a well-chosen pair. If consolidating is the actual goal, a library that deliberately refuses to grow into an operations suite is the wrong purchase.

When VADE is the better choice.

If the part of the week that hurts is sourcing rather than admin, the maths changes. You are looking for a chair in the right green, you know you saw one, and you cannot find it. VADE extracts a palette from every product you save so you can search the library by colour or hex with results ordered closest-match first, and paint saves render as flat colour tiles with the hex printed on the swatch. No operations platform does that, Programa included.

If you specify a lot of small makers, the one right-click savematters more than a catalogue. It keeps the URL, title, price and image from any vendor page, including to-the-trade sites, and everything you save from a brand collects on that brand’s vendor card with your trade terms alongside.

And if the board is the deliverable, VADE composes editorial moodboards from what you have saved and shares them on a link with no client account and trade prices hidden per share. At £12 a month, roughly a fifth of a Programa seat, that is a smaller decision than adopting an operations platform.

You do not have to choose.

There is no migration to run and no data to move. VADE is not trying to be your operations platform, so the two sit side by side without arguing. The pattern we see most often: source and colour-search in VADE, present the client board from VADE, then raise the purchase orders, invoices and programme in whatever operations system the studio already runs on.

Because every save keeps its original URL, nothing you build in VADE is trapped in it. A saved product is a live product page with the price and the supplier attached, which is as portable as sourcing data gets.

Try it on the project you are on now for three weeks, in parallel, and see which tab you actually open when you need to find something. Then read the rest of the comparisons, including Houzz Pro if leads are part of what you are paying for.

Questions, answered.

Is VADE a replacement for Programa?

Only for part of it. Programa is a studio operations platform covering specifications, presentations, project management, invoicing, time tracking and procurement. VADE covers sourcing, colour search, supplier records and client boards. If you use Programa for the operations half, VADE replaces nothing. If you only ever used the product library and moodboards, it replaces most of what you touch.

How do the prices compare?

Programa lists at roughly 59 US dollars per seat per month, or about 47 on annual billing, with regional pricing pages including one for the UK. VADE is free to start, 12 pounds a month for Solo and 29 pounds a month for Studio covering up to five seats. For a two-person studio that is a meaningful difference over a year.

Can I run VADE and Programa together?

Yes, and several studios should. Source and colour-search in VADE, present client boards from VADE, and keep purchase orders, invoicing and scheduling in Programa. Nothing in VADE assumes it is your only tool, and there is no migration to complete before it is useful.

Does VADE do purchase orders or invoicing?

No. There are no purchase orders, no invoicing, no payments and no project scheduling in VADE, and none are planned. That is the clearest line between the two products. If procurement paperwork is the job you need solved, buy the platform that does it.

Does VADE have a web clipper like Programa?

Yes. VADE saves any vendor or product URL in one right-click, keeping the URL, title, price and image, and there is an iOS Shortcut and an email capture address for anything you find on a phone. Every save is palette-extracted so the library becomes searchable by colour.

What do reviewers say about Programa?

Reviewers commonly rate the operations side highly and note that the moodboard tools and product library feel less refined than the rest of the platform. Those two areas happen to be the whole of what VADE does, which is the honest reason the comparison is worth making at all.

Is VADE built for UK studios?

Yes. It is made in Edinburgh, priced in pounds and built around saving from any URL, which matters when you specify UK mills, small lighting studios and to-the-trade suppliers that never appear in a closed catalogue.

How hard is it to leave VADE?

You cancel from billing settings in one click, without emailing anyone. Your saves keep their original URLs, so what you built is a list of live product pages rather than something trapped in a format.