Guide
HVAC business software cost: per user, per job or per technician
Updated
Headline price means little here: the six vendors charge for different units. Until you know the unit, a $29 plan and a $299 plan are not comparable.
Talk to a specialist Six US HVAC platforms, the four different things they bill you for, which three will not publish a price, and who lets you trial it on real jobs first.
The four units, and who uses which
ServiceM8 charges by jobs a month and states outright that it does not charge per user; every paid plan carries unlimited users. Kickserv charges by bundled users, 5, 10 or 20 at a time.
Housecall Pro charges a flat plan price and does not specify a user count. FieldPulse charges by seat and distinguishes full access seats from limited field seats. ServiceTitan charges by technician.
FieldEdge does not say. Its page states that plans allow you to customize the software and add-ons based on the features you need, so pricing can vary. That describes a quoting process, not a model.
Why the cheapest vendor changes shape with your business
A three van HVAC firm doing 200 short service calls a month and a three van firm doing 40 installs have the same headcount and completely different bills. On a per job model the first pays several times what the second does; on a per user or per technician model they pay the same.
That is why the honest answer to which is cheapest is a question back: how many jobs per person do you run? Below roughly 15 jobs a month per head, per job pricing tends to win. Above it, a model that charges for people starts to look better, and the more short jobs you run the more true that becomes.
Neither number is a rule, because the tiers are lumpy. The point is that the ratio, not the headcount, is the input.
Where HVAC differs from the other trades
Two things make HVAC unusual on these platforms. The first is planned maintenance: HVAC firms sell recurring service agreements, and the software has to generate the visits, not just record them. Housecall Pro puts recurring service plans on its top MAX tier at $299 a month, not on Basic at $59, so a maintenance-led firm cannot buy the entry plan.
The second is equipment history. HVAC service is asset-based work: what matters is what is installed at that address and what was done to it last time. Neither is priced separately by any vendor here, but both are worth testing in a trial rather than assuming.
HVAC flat rate software: which tier carries flat rate pricing
Flat rate pricing is a price book that quotes each repair at a fixed price rather than by the hour. On these platforms it is a feature you buy a tier for, not a product of its own.
Housecall Pro lists flat rate pricing on its Essentials plan at $149 a month billed annually, not on Basic at $59. FieldPulse names a Pricebook add-on priced per line or per license; its price is not published. None of the other four vendors' pricing pages, as we read them, names a flat rate price book as a priced item.
So the cost of HVAC flat rate pricing software is the price of the tier or add-on that unlocks it, on top of whatever unit the vendor charges by. Ask each vendor which plan carries the price book before you compare tiers.
Source: Housecall Pro, pricing
Price your own shape before you look at a tier
Write down four numbers before opening a pricing page: field staff, office staff, jobs a month, and how many of those jobs are recurring maintenance visits. Then price each vendor against those four rather than against its own recommended tier.
The office staff number is the one people forget, and where the models diverge most. On a per technician model an office admin may cost nothing. On a per seat model they cost a full seat, and on a bundled user model they eat one of your five.