Soldum: the Celtx alternative for production teams

Celtx started as screenwriting software, and that is still its strong suit. Professional-standard formatting, collaboration on the text, storyboarding and shot lists are handled by a mature tool used for years by writers and teams worldwide. The whole preparation suite is then grafted onto that text, a continuity that makes sense when you write and produce in the same place.

It is where your need starts. If what you want first is to write your screenplay, Soldum will be of no use to you: we do not publish screenwriting software, and we do not claim to replace Celtx on that ground. Soldum starts the moment the screenplay exists and has to be turned into a shoot — break it down, cost it, schedule it, hire for it. Plenty of teams write in one tool and prepare in another, which works perfectly well since a PDF or a Final Draft file imports directly.

In most suites, the breakdown, the budget and the schedule are three documents that happen to sit in the same product. Change a scene and you carry that change into each of them by hand. The time lost is not in the first entry, it is in every revision after it — and revisions are what preparation actually consists of.

In Soldum the breakdown is not an end in itself: it is the source the other documents flow from. Sets, characters, costumes and technical needs extracted from the screenplay feed the budget and the shooting schedule directly. Move a scene and the schedule recalculates, the travel budget follows, the accommodation nights adjust. That propagation is what makes the difference in daily use — more than the quality of the initial extraction, because an accurate but isolated breakdown still forces you to carry every change by hand into three other files.

Pre-production suites are almost all sold by monthly or annual subscription, billed per user: every person added to the project raises the bill, which pushes teams to restrict access. Soldum subscribes per account, not per seat. Studio at €479/month excl. VAT covers unlimited projects and invites your whole team at no extra cost; Solo at €149/month excl. VAT suits companies preparing one film at a time. An annual commitment takes 25% off, and the free tier lets you break down a first screenplay before committing.

Better said before you open an account. Soldum does not write screenplays and offers neither a text editor nor a storyboard: if those are at the heart of how you use Celtx, migrating would be a loss. We do not cover editorial post-production either. The scope is preparation, from the screenplay arriving to the crew leaving for the shoot, plus budget tracking during it.

There is no data migration to orchestrate: Soldum starts from the screenplay. You export your text as PDF or Final Draft, you import it, and the breakdown runs. In practice many teams keep their writing tool and only use Soldum once the screenplay is locked. It is the most common migration path, and the least risky: you test on a real project without dismantling anything.

Production companies, producers of short films, documentaries, commercials and music videos, and production managers who spend their days keeping a breakdown, a budget and a schedule consistent with one another. Soldum was built around French industry standards, which is a real advantage if you produce in France or co-produce with French partners — and simply neutral if you do not.