Job management software for UK trades

Start here. The two products I have priced properly for this article, ServiceM8 and Tradify, sit at opposite ends of how this category charges, and most of the others you will shortlist land on one side or the other. One bills you per user and lets you run unlimited jobs. The other bills a flat fee for the whole business and caps how many jobs you create. Work out which side you are on before you look at a single feature grid, because getting the model wrong is how firms overpay quietly for years.

Which is not what most of the buyer guides for this search will tell you. When I went through them in August 2026, the ones at the top were shortlisting enterprise field service platforms, publishing no prices at all, and were plainly written for a facilities firm with forty engineers. A sole trader, or three of you and two vans, is not badly served by pages like that. You are not served at all.

Where I stand. I set up ServiceM8 for a living, certified and listed, though I do not speak for the company. What I do not sell is a licence, for anything. You buy that direct at the same price whichever product you pick. I should add that ServiceM8 pays its partners a share on clients they bring in, so I am not a neutral party and you should read this knowing it. What is true either way is that my fee does not change with the plan you land on, so if the sums below point at a per-user product, buy a per-user product.

The only two pricing models, and which one suits you

One model charges per user and lets you run as many jobs as you like. The other charges a flat fee for the account, tiered by job volume, with as many users as you like. Tradify is the cleanest example of the first, ServiceM8 of the second. On any pricing page, work out which it is doing. Some bury it well.

Scroll the table sideways on a phone.

The sums use Tradify's Pro tier at £37, not Lite at £34, because Lite leaves out compliance certificates, timesheets, job photos and job costing. For a working trade business that is a quoting tool.

• One of you, 25 jobs a month. Flat £0, because the free plan covers 30 jobs for one user. Per user £37. That is £444 a year for something you could have had free.
• Three of you, 120 jobs a month. Flat £59 against £111. A gap of £624 a year that widens with every name you add.
• Five of you, 480 jobs a month. Flat £119 against £185, so the flat model saves £792 a year.
• One of you, 400 jobs a month. Reactive work, short callouts, one pair of hands. Flat £119, because the job count drags you up two tiers. Per user, still £37. That saves £984 a year and it is not close.

Sit with that last one. A small outfit turning over lots of small jobs is the case the flat model punishes, and hardly anybody says so. Tier by tier crossover in the ServiceM8 and Tradify comparison.

What actually matters, in order

With the model settled, this is the order I would work through. Not the order the feature grids use. The first item kills more shortlists than the other three together.

1. Does it talk to your accounts package. Xero, Sage or QuickBooks, whichever your bookkeeper actually opens on a Monday. ServiceM8's UK add-ons page lists Xero, QuickBooks Online and MYOB, and never mentions Sage. Tradify connects to Xero, Sage and QuickBooks Online on every plan. Books on Sage, accountant not moving them? That one line halves your shortlist.

   Stock rides on the same connection. ServiceM8 has no inventory system of its own: no purchase orders, no van stock, no supplier ordering. What it has is stock level visibility mirrored from your accounting package, and the count only moves once an invoice carrying a tracked item is approved and synced. Ask about stock by name rather than trusting a tick in a grid.

2. Can your engineers use it on the phones they already own. Here is where ServiceM8 costs people money and nobody warns them. The full app is iPhone and iPad only. On Android you get a cut down version called ServiceM8 Lite, and ServiceM8 openly recommend buying iPhones for field staff.

   Lite does more than you would expect: own jobs, scheduling, checklists and forms, photos, materials, time on site, PDF quotes and invoices, clock on and off. What it cannot do is take a card payment on site, which is the one that hurts, and it cannot see anybody else's schedule. No asset management, no proposals, no deposits. Whole team on Android and staying there? That alone points you at a product which treats both platforms the same.

3. Can it produce your certificates on site. Big enough for its own section, below.

4. What happens when you take on a second van. On per-user pricing, another £37 to £44 a month, forever, from their first day. On flat pricing the login is free, but you may cross a job tier, and you now need two diaries visible to each other, which loops back to the Android point. Answer it while you are still a one man band.

Certificates on site, and the plan trap that catches electricians

This is the detail most likely to decide whether the software sticks, and I could not find it stated on any of the buyer guides I read.

An electrician needs an EICR, a minor works certificate, an installation certificate. A gas engineer needs service records and a landlord certificate. The whole point of carrying this on a phone is that the certificate is filled in on site, signed on the screen, and emailed before you have shut the van doors.

In ServiceM8 the tool for that is Forms. Building your own Forms is a Growing plan feature at £59 a month. It is not on Starter at £25, and it is not on Free.

Here is how people get caught. You sign up on Starter, because £25 sounds like the sensible number for a small firm. A fortnight goes into loading clients and your price list. Then you go to build your EICR template and find it sits on the tier above. That is the discovery that makes somebody give up in week two and go back to a pad in the van.

Not a ServiceM8 quirk, either. Tradify puts compliance certificates on Pro and Plus but not on Lite. Ask everybody on your list the same question: cheapest plan on which I can build my own certificate, rather than fill in one of yours.

The VAT line, which only bites some of you

ServiceM8's UK prices exclude VAT. Their own FAQ says so, and says they will issue you reverse charge invoices for you to account for VAT to HMRC, which in most cases you will be able to reclaim, resulting in no net additional cost.

Translation. VAT registered, and the headline price is near enough the real price, because the VAT you account for is VAT you reclaim. Not registered, and you cannot reclaim it, so the money leaving your account is 20% above the number on the page. £59 becomes about £71. That is £141 a year you had not planned for.

Tradify's UK page makes no VAT statement at all, and I will not guess on their behalf. Take this to your accountant rather than to me. More in what ServiceM8 costs in the UK, including why every price a UK searcher gets shown seems to be in the wrong currency.

The costs that are not the subscription

People line £25 up against £37 and stop there. The biggest software cost in the business is usually not the subscription.

Card processing, which dwarfs the rest

ServiceM8 Pay in the UK starts at 1.7% plus 20p a transaction, and the published tiers run up through 2.10%, 2.70% and 3.45% plus 20p depending on the card type.

Say you invoice £8,000 a month and most of it arrives on cards. At the bottom tier that is roughly £140 a month in fees once the per transaction bit is added. At the top it is nearer £280. Against a £59 subscription. The rate card deserves several times more attention than the price of the software, and I cannot find a UK page that puts those two numbers side by side.

No argument against taking cards, mind. Getting paid on the day beats chasing a transfer for three weeks, and ServiceM8's free plan earns you extra job credits every time you take a card payment through it. Read the rate table, that is all.

Texts, allowances and the odd add-on

ServiceM8 bundles SMS into the paid plans, 100 or more on Starter and 300 or more on Growing, then 5p a message after that. Tradify charges 10p. Send an on the way text and an appointment reminder for every job and you are on two messages a job, so 150 jobs a month puts you right on the edge of the Growing bundle before you have sent a single quote chaser. Past that it is 5p a go, which is small until it is every job every month.

On allowances, understand what actually happens when you run over, because it is stricter than people assume. You get seven days grace. If your billing month resets inside that window your credits reset and nothing happens. If it does not, you are prompted to upgrade, because only the top plan publishes a price for extra jobs. So you cannot quietly buy your way through a busy month on Starter or Growing. Pick the tier on the features you need rather than shaving the job count, and unless you need what Growing adds, paying the overage is cheaper.

Then the odd extra. Tradify sells a website add-on at £10 a month, ServiceM8 sells a phone system from about £15, and neither publishes an annual discount, so there is no lump sum to save up front and no contract to be stuck inside.

How to actually pick, in a fortnight

The names UK trades usually weigh up are ServiceM8, Tradify, Jobber, Powered Now, Simpro and Joblogic. I have verified UK prices for the first two only, and I would rather leave a gap than fill it with a figure I have not read. The wider field is in the piece on ServiceM8 alternatives.

Both give you 14 days with every feature on, and neither asks for a card. Do not spend that fortnight in the settings screens. Take three real jobs, the awkward ones: the customer who changes the scope on the day, the one needing a certificate signed on site, the one you always chase for money. Run all three on your own phone, in the van, on a bad signal. You will know by day four.

If you would rather skip the fortnight of fiddling, that is the job I do. Setup is £650, setup with training is £800, and the ServiceM8 rebate can bring all of it back. Have a look at the packages.

Why people give up in week two

Here is the honest close, and it argues against half of what I have just written.

Almost nobody abandons job management software because they picked the wrong product. They abandon it because it was never set up round the way they work. Quote template still carrying the vendor's demo wording. Job types straight out of the box. Automations never switched on. Old system still open in another tab, and within a month the lads have drifted back to it.

Migration is where that starts. With ServiceM8, your clients, contacts and price list come across, through a connected accounting package or a spreadsheet import. Assets come too if you use asset management, though somebody still has to walk round site sticking a QR label on every unit. Your job history does not: ServiceM8 documents importing clients and materials, and there is no bulk import for past jobs. Pick a clean cutover date and keep the old system readable for a year.

Setting that up properly is what I do, at fixed prices you can see on the packages page: £650 for setup, £800 for setup with training, £250 for training on its own. No hourly billing surprises.

On ServiceM8 there is also a scheme that changes the sum. If a certified, directory-listed partner does your setup, ServiceM8 credits you 100% of what you paid that partner, capped at £1,000. Pay £800, get £800 back. It arrives as credit against your subscription at half your plan price each month until it runs out, not as a cheque. And one mistake kills it before you start: subscribe through the iPhone app instead of the web dashboard and the claim is void. It is ServiceM8's scheme, on their terms, so read how the £1,000 rebate actually works first.

Tradify's answer is the opposite, and fair: setup help and a free UK phone line included in the subscription. If you want somebody to answer "how do I do this in the software", take that and keep your money. If you want somebody to design the thing round your business and then teach your team the version you have just built, that is a different job. Either way, do your one sum before you pay anybody anything.