How we compare

• Billed yearly means the monthly price of a plan you pay for a year at a time. Month to month is the price when you pay each month.
• When a tool lists only a monthly price, we show that and say month to month. If a page gives one price and does not say how it is billed, we treat it as month to month. We never pass a monthly price off as a yearly one.
• A plan billed per user costs one user's price times your team. A flat plan has a set number of users in its price. A larger team moves up to the smallest package that holds it, or pays for each added user where the tool sells them. Where it sells neither, the plan is out for that team.
• A plan with no cap on users says so.
• A free plan stays out of the list until you ask for it.
• If you make an add-on feature a must-have, its price joins the total. It is billed month to month unless the tool lists a yearly price for it.

Month to month only (5 of the 19 tools with a public price): Kickserv, ServiceM8, Tradify, Yardbook and ZenMaid. None of these lists a yearly price.

Price not confirmed means the figure is not on the tool's own US pricing page as we read it. The source may be an archived copy of the page, or a page meant for another country, or two pages of the tool may disagree. The plan says so in its details.

Plans with a price not confirmed (7 of the 19 tools with a public price): Housecall Pro, HubSpot, Jobber, Kickserv, Nutshell, Pipedrive and Zoho CRM.

Priced by volume: Joist, ServiceM8, ZenMaid and Zoho FSM. For these tools the price follows the jobs, appointments or documents (quotes or invoices) in a month, so a busier month can move you up to a bigger package. The jobs a month box in the comparison starts at 40.

No tool's pages give a typical month for a business like yours, so each kind of business below has a round figure of our own. It only moves the price of the tools that count jobs, appointments or documents.

Each plan covers a number of jobs in its price. Past that number you pay for the next package up, or for each extra job where the tool sells them. If the tool sells neither, the plan does not fit a busy month.

Counted in appointments: ZenMaid and Zoho FSM. A job that needs two visits counts as two.

Counted in documents (quotes or invoices): Joist. Each quote and each invoice counts as one document. We take the jobs a month figure as the number of documents, so a job with both a quote and an invoice uses more than the figure says.

Priced by route: GorillaDesk. The comparison counts every person on your team as a route, so a team with office staff reads high. The tool's row says so.

• GorillaDesk: the price list goes up to 30 routes, so a bigger team does not fit.

Choosing a kind fills in its team size and jobs a month, and ranks the tools by how many of its needs each one covers. It never hides a tool. The team and jobs figures are round numbers of our own for a business of that kind.

A need counts as covered when the plan has it built in, or sells it as an extra with a price on the page. A need without a confirmed record, or an extra with no price, is not covered.

Must-haves work the other way. You choose them, and any tool without one is shown as not fitting. One button, "Make these must-haves", switches all of the needs of the kind on for you.

Skimmer and Swept are not listed. Skimmer prices by the locations you service, and Swept by a band of locations. The comparison prices per user and by the jobs in a month, and not per location, so it cannot price either of them yet.

A tool that is not on the list has not been judged either way.