Four pricing pages show $29, $59, $48 and $208. You could look at those numbers and conclude that one plan costs seven times more than another for the same job.
Those numbers are not measuring the same thing.
The $29 is ServiceM8 Starter, which buys 50 jobs a month and unlimited users. The $59 is Housecall Pro Basic, one user, billed annually. The $48 is Kickserv Start, five users, billed annually. The $208 is Service Fusion Starter, unlimited users, billed annually.
Before you compare features, find out what each vendor is counting. None of the four are counting the same thing, and none of them are counting the phone either.
Per user pricing rises when you add people
Jobber, Housecall Pro and Kickserv all charge by user, and none of them use the same allowance.
Jobber’s entry tier, Core, runs $29 a month billed annually for one user, with extra users added at $29 each. Housecall Pro’s Basic tier is $59 a month annually for one user. Kickserv starts more generously: Start includes five users for $48 a month annually, with no free tier and a 30 day trial on every paid plan.
The difference shows up immediately. Kickserv hands you five seats where Jobber and Housecall Pro hand you one, so the sticker price at the bottom of each page is not telling you the same story.
Every one of these plans counts users, which means the bill resets every time you hire. Dial72 doesn’t work that way. Starter, Growth and Pro price the receptionist, not the headcount, so a shop going from two trucks to three doesn’t also have to recalculate what answering the phone costs.
Flat pricing costs more at the door and nothing per tech
Service Fusion charges a flat monthly rate with unlimited users, regardless of plan. Starter runs $208 a month billed annually, Plus $325, Pro $533. Their pricing page states it plainly: “No matter the plan you choose, you’ll have unlimited users.”
That’s the highest entry price on this list, and the only one where hiring another technician changes the software bill by exactly zero. Dial72 runs on the same flat idea for the phone: Starter, Growth and Pro are $95, $295 and $495 a month with no per-call metering, so a busy week doesn’t multiply that bill either.
Software doesn’t answer the phone regardless of which meter it uses. If you’re weighing office labor against software cost, the cost comparison of a part time dispatcher and an AI receptionist is the other half of that budget, and what actually changed in one four truck office when the office manager got off the phone is worth reading before you assume a platform fixes it. None of these platforms cover nights and weekends by themselves, so the four after hours coverage options stay a separate line item.
ServiceM8 charges for jobs, not for people
ServiceM8 uses a different meter entirely. It bills by jobs per month and ignores headcount.
The free plan is $0 for 30 jobs a month with one user, described on their page as completely free for solo operators. Starter is $29 for 50 jobs. Growing is $79 for 150 jobs. Premium is $149 for 500 jobs. Premium Plus is $349 for 1,500 or more, with overage at 20 cents per job. Every paid tier includes unlimited team members.
Run the arithmetic on a four tech shop doing three calls per tech per day across about 21 working days. That is near 250 jobs a month, which lands in Premium at $149, not Growing at $79.
The shop is still small by truck count. The job meter does not see trucks, it sees how hard the crew is running. Per user pricing rises when you add people. Per job pricing rises when you add work.
It only sees the jobs that got created, though. A call that rings out at nine on a Tuesday night because nobody picked up never becomes one of the 250 jobs in that count, on ServiceM8 or on any per job meter. That’s a separate leak from the software question, and it’s the one Bella is built to close: she answers in under a second, 24/7, on every Dial72 tier, so the job at least has a chance to exist before anyone argues about which meter should price it.
Quote only pricing is slower, not sinister
ServiceTitan, FieldEdge and Workiz publish no dollar figures at all.
ServiceTitan says “Our per-technician pricing is designed to fit your business and goals, at any size,” and every tier carries a Request Pricing button. FieldEdge routes buyers to a demo call, saying pricing can vary by the features and add-ons a shop needs. Workiz lists Standard, Pro and Ultimate behind Request pricing buttons, with a seven day trial.
Quote only pricing is not automatically a red flag. It usually signals a sales led product built for larger shops. It does mean a small shop cannot run its own comparison from a web page and has to spend a sales call to get a number, and it’s a step none of Dial72’s three tiers require: the price is on the page.
Five seats, a four fold spread, zero features compared
For five seats billed annually, the published entry prices land like this:
- Kickserv Start, $48 a month, five users included
- Housecall Pro Essentials, $149 a month, five users included
- Jobber Connect at the five user tier, $149 a month
- Service Fusion Starter, $208 a month, unlimited users
Roughly a four fold spread before anyone opens a feature list. That is why a feature first comparison misleads people. Half the time you are comparing a five user plan against a one user plan, or a per user plan against an unlimited one. None of those four numbers move if the five seats are also fielding the phone badly, and a flat receptionist tier doesn’t care how many of them exist.
The bill also needs judging against the work you lose when the phone goes unanswered. Look at what a missed no heat call actually costs before you treat a $60 monthly difference as the important office decision.
Only one of these is actually free
ServiceM8 is the only vendor checked here with a standing free plan, and it is 30 jobs a month with one user. That is a solo operator or a brand new shop, not a multi truck shop.
Everything else marketed as free in this category is a trial. Housecall Pro gives 14 days with no credit card. Kickserv gives 30 days on each paid tier. Workiz gives seven. A trial is a short test window followed by a paid plan, so do not build a budget on one.
Dial72 runs a free trial too, but on the real flat rate you’d pay afterward rather than a capped job count, so there’s nothing to relearn once the trial ends.
Count seats, jobs, and answered calls first
Prices here change often. These figures came from each vendor’s own pricing page in September 2026, so confirm the current numbers at the source before you sign anything.
Count every person who needs access. Count your normal monthly job volume. Hold those two numbers against each vendor’s meter, because a one truck shop, an eight seat office and a busy four tech crew at 250 jobs reach very different bills from the same list of products.
Then count the calls that never make it into any of these systems, because none of the four meters above are built to see them. Dial72 answers every one of them in under a second, 24/7, on a flat rate that doesn’t move with seats or job count, so whichever CRM or field service platform you pick next is judged against the full call volume your shop actually gets, not just the jobs that survived long enough to get logged.
