What to Ask a Web Agency About COINS Integration Before You Sign
Most web agencies will say yes to COINS CRM website integration. It is a reasonable thing to claim, and most clients never probe further. The problem is that saying yes and actually having done it are two different things. COINS has a specific API, a data model that takes time to understand, and operational context that only comes from working inside the housebuilding sector. A generalist agency that has never touched it will underscope the work, underestimate the complexity, and leave you with an integration that degrades quietly over months.
These are the six questions worth asking before you commit. They are not trick questions. A specialist will answer them without hesitation. A generalist will either guess or go quiet.
In this article:
The six questions to ask
1. Have you built a COINS integration before, and at what level?
This is the starting point. You want a specific answer, not a general claim about CRM experience. There are two distinct levels of COINS integration: routing enquiries from your website into COINS, and syncing plot data from COINS back to your website. They are technically different projects. An agency that has only done one should be honest about it. An agency that conflates them probably has not done either properly.
2. What are you proposing: form routing or a full data sync?
If an agency cannot distinguish between these two things in their proposal, that is a warning sign. Form routing means enquiries submitted on your website are passed directly into COINS in real time, with no manual step. Full data sync means plot data flows from COINS to your website automatically, so your listings stay current without anyone updating the CMS. Both are legitimate depending on your brief. Conflating them leads to a project that delivers neither properly.
Not sure which approach is right for your setup? We’re happy to talk you through the difference between form routing and full data sync before you commit to anything.
3. How does your proposed CMS structure map to COINS data fields?
This question separates agencies that have read the documentation from those that have actually built something. COINS holds plot data in a specific structure: development, phase, plot, status, price, attributes. For a two-way integration to work reliably, your CMS needs to be architected to match that structure, not the other way around. If an agency cannot describe how they plan to map your COINS fields to your CMS at briefing stage, they have not thought it through.
4. What happens when the integration breaks after launch?
This is the question most clients forget to ask. Integrations break. A field changes in COINS, a plot status gets updated in an unexpected format, a server configuration shifts after a hosting migration. A well-built integration has error handling that catches failures and alerts someone before the problem becomes visible to buyers. A poorly built one fails silently. Ask the agency what their monitoring setup looks like, and what the support arrangement is post-launch. Vague answers here are expensive later.
The same principle applies whether you’re running COINS or any other business-critical integration. See how we took on Beresfords’ legacy website and stabilised a complex property feed that the entire site depended on.
5. When in the project does integration planning happen?
The answer should be discovery, not development. COINS integration shapes decisions about CMS architecture, data structure, and hosting that are significantly harder to change once design has started. An agency that plans to sort out the integration in the build phase is telling you they have not accounted for it properly. Integration requirements need to inform how the CMS is built, not be retrofitted into a CMS that was designed without them.
6. How will plot availability changes in COINS reach the website?
Ask them to walk you through the data flow in plain language. The answer should cover how often the sync runs, what triggers it, what happens if a plot is marked as reserved versus sold, and whether the website reflects that distinction correctly. If the agency describes a manual export and import process as part of the flow, that is not an integration. That is a workaround with extra steps.
What a confident answer looks like
A specialist will answer these questions with specifics: the COINS API version they use, how they handle the keystore authentication for portal feeds, what Node.js service they build for data sync, how error logging works. They will not need to check with a developer before responding. If you are getting vague answers or a lot of reassurance without substance, that is useful information.
The honest reality is that COINS integration is not difficult for an agency that has done it before. It is time-consuming, it requires care, and it demands an understanding of how housebuilders actually operate. But it is not a mystery. The agencies that struggle with it are the ones who treat it as a standard CRM webhook job and discover three months into the project that the data model is more complex than they expected.
Working with a specialist integration agency from the start
At Crucible, we are property and construction specialists with over ten years of experience working with UK housebuilders. COINS integration is a core part of how we build housebuilder websites, not an add-on we scope in after design. If you are briefing agencies and want to talk through what a properly built COINS integration looks like for your specific setup, we are happy to have that conversation before any commitment is made.
We’d love to hear about your project. Get in touch with the Crucible team →